Being Still

Influenza has struck our house and its current victim is my five year old daughter. Anyone who knows the struggles that we have had in re-parenting Shaylee would be surprised to hear me say what an absolute joy the past couple days have been with her. But it's true.

I am not going to go into Shaylee's history here, because that is her story to share or not share someday. Suffice it to say that she has a very severe form of attachment disorder that manifests itself in many difficult ways. Every morning, Steve and I wake to the challenge that is raising a child who fights every attempt at the help that she desperately needs. Constantly watching her to make sure that she is kept safe from herself is tiring at best.

Along with attachment disorder, my daughter also has major sensory regulation issues. A look of praise from us will send her into a frenzy of excitement, a look of disapproval into sullenness or rage. There is not much middle ground with our beautiful girl, and so in the hectic days of trying to take one step forward in her development, it is many times hard to just enjoy her.

Enter the flu. Wracked with fever and exhaustion, all she can do is rest quietly. There are no temper tantrums, no rages. There are no screams from other children and there are no punishments. All there is is a tiny little girl who needs a mother and father to love and care for her.

In the still moments of illness, I get to show her all the good things about a mother's love.

In a few days, she'll be all better. We'll be back to trying to reconnect the dots in the midst of chaos. But she will know for a fact that the words we've been repeating for eighteen months are true, "You can let go, we'll catch you when you do." She doesn't need to be in control anymore. How many times have we said that to her? I couldn't even begin to count. But never was she able to do it...because she was scared that our words were empty promises she's all too familiar with.

Now she knows.

We love Shaylee the same whether she is listening to us or not, but she only is able to make progress when she makes herself stop to hear us.

In the busyness of life, if we forget to stop and open our ears to Our Father, He still loves us. But when something happens that halts us in our tracks and causes us to throw our arms up to Him, He gets the opportunity to fully show us His love and grace. It isn't that He wasn't there before, it's that we weren't looking for Him.

Shaylee doesn't have to get sick to see evidence of our love, and we don't have to go through difficult times to see evidence of God's. When she chooses to reach out to us, we pull her into our arms. When we choose to reach out to Him, He does the same.