Thoughts on a good, but challenging season

It is often times hard to put into words what victories look like when you have a medically needy child.  I recently gave a presentation and one of the points that was made during it, was that what everyone can see from the outside and what you see as a victory are very different things.  For most parents, myself included childhood is all too fleeting.  It passes by in a blur, so fast often times you fail to celebrate one milestone before the next one appears.  For the parent of a medically needy child the days often drag on, and the months crawl by at what can feel like a painfully slow pace.   It can feel like your on the brink of a break through and then you get knocked back.  You learn to be flexible and patient in a way that is different from anything you have ever done before.  And then, then you have that one day.  That one day that all of the sudden for the moment it clicks.  It maybe one day in a sea of setbacks and frustrations, but that one day is worth it all.  It's worth ever tear, every battle, every appointment.  It's all worth it.  Because you have seen what came behind every milestone.  What to the outside world may look like a child pushing a button to open a door, you know has taken 5 years and hundreds of hours of therapy to do.  You know that she is holding up her head and eating on her own, when on paper her brain does not have the capacity to do so.  When a parent of a medically dependent child celebrates a victory, know that is it something monumental.  It is not as "simple" as it sounds on the surface.  

It takes a long time to stop comparing your victories to everyone else's and to stop filtering everyone's life through the same lens.  Which is a lot easier said than done.  No matter how many times we say, "Normal is just a setting on the dryer" we all to a degree filter our world through our typical experience.  I have learned the last many years how many times I diminish what the Lord has accomplished in and through my life, and the life of my family and children because I was so busy staring at the chasm of normal.   That chasm can eat you alive.  It is in that chasm that is called normal that we fall pray to ideas that can often cripple us, and inhibit us from reaching our full potential.  The reality is that no one else's accomplishments can act as a barometer for my future achievements, or a gauge for how effectively my life can be used.  

I pray that as my children grow they will learn to not see the world through the eyes of others, but through the eyes of their creator.  That they don't diminish the extraordinary as mundane or allow another human to determine what success looks like in their life.   I pray that I exemplify to them, that there is more success in seeking to do everything you do with excellence, than doing seemingly excellent things with apathy and mediocrity.  

I have seen a lot of failures in the last many years.  I have felt the pit in my stomach from days that a baby can't keep food down, or struggles for Brylee to walk from room to room, the frustration with difficult school days for Maddox and Adaline.  I have felt ill equipped, lost, scared, even alone.  I have been late, missed appointments, failed to return phone calls, missed birthday celebrations, lost my temper, been petty, and mishandled situations.  

And yet even in all the failures I have felt and seen, they pale in comparison to the seemingly "small" victories.  

And I realize even while I am writing this what an amazing picture of God's grace it all is.  I can't even begin to image what my life would look like if the Father had compared my sin and failures to everyone else's.  Sure there would be some "worse" but comparatively  I  would have failed every time.  Instead God didn't focus on my failure but saw the victory that came when I chose Him as Lord of my life.  

God didn't sit back and point to all the reasons I shouldn't be redeemed, instead He celebrates the accomplishment of my redemption.  As we continue to move forward I pray with every long day, every setback, every frustration I never stop celebrating the victories.  That I remember even in my most deplorable moments God extended grace and celebrated my life, not in comparison to anyone else but as amazing piece of His creation, and in His eyes my life in victory is always worth celebrating.