Welcome to Take Heart, where our goal is to give you hope and offer insight and encouragement, so you can flourish in your journey as a special needs mom. Each week, Sara, Amy, and Carrie will explore a theme, share an inspiring story, a practical tip, and an encouraging blessing using their combined experience of over 30 years of parenting special needs children. Thank you for joining us today. Welcome to the New Year. I'm so glad you're here. I’m Amy Brown, and before we get started, we have some new resources we’re excited to share with you. Stay tuned to the end of the episode so you can get the details.
This month we are talking about the phrase “New Normal.” What comes to mind when you hear that phrase? Does it bring dread, sadness, excitement? We have had many new normals in 2020. Some new normals are welcome like a baby or a job change, a puppy or a vacation. Some we didn't ask for like the diagnosis, the death of a loved one, the loss of a relationship, and a global pandemic. Some are big and change the whole landscape of our lives. Some are small, and we do not even notice them until they pile up. As humans, we are always living in a state of a new normal because life is constantly changing. But as special needs moms, it seems we have more changes than most.
I am going to tell you something. I do not like change, unless it's a good change like a vacation, and even then, after a few days I am ready to go home and back to my routine. I often joke that it takes me about three years to warm up to anything. Okay, maybe only a year, but still, I like consistency. I have had many changes in my twenty-eight years as a mom. There have been huge shifts, specific moments I can point to where my life changed dramatically. Some I have chosen, and some were thrust upon me. I want to tell you about a huge shift in my life that happened about twenty-one years ago. Twenty-one years ago, my husband and I moved to Kenya to be medical missionaries. This was the mother of all new normals. In the space of the year, we sold our home, left our jobs, friends, family, and gave away most of our belongings. We learned that we needed to homeschool, so we had to research homeschooling, pick out the curricula, buy the curricula, and ship that. We raised support. Then finally we packed up several large trunks and boarded a plane with are seven and five-year-old for our new normal. Oh and did I mention I was six months pregnant? After struggling with infertility and some failed in vitro attempts, I was finally pregnant with my long awaited baby, and I was going to have that baby in Kenya.
For a girl who hates change, I’m totally understating it when I say, this was a bit stressful. All of these huge changes in my life: a new culture, a new lifestyle, a new baby, homeschooling. There were so many changes coming at me, life altering changes. Was I scared? Hmmm. Was I nervous? Yes! Did I wake up my husband in the middle of the night on several occasions and say to him, “What in the heck were we thinking?” Yes! Before you assume that I was a really holy missionary, let me tell you about one new normal I really obsessed about. And, I am embarrassed to admit this. I was obsessed and worried about the fact that I was not going to be able to have my daily Diet Coke. Yup, you heard that right. In the midst of being hugely pregnant in a foreign country, which by the way, no pain medicine or epidural for that baby, a new homeschool mom, a new country in the middle of Africa, I was concerned about Diet Coke. Here’s just a little explanation about that. When we lived in Kenya, we had to make everything from scratch. We did not have access to a grocery close by, and we bought vegetables and fruits and things from merchants at the back door and in little fruit stands. We had to travel four hours on bumpy roads to Nairobi every four to six weeks to stock up. There was no running to the corner store to get what I needed, and on top of that they didn't have Diet Coke in Kenya, or if they did it was really hard to find. Why was I so worried about a little thing? Because it was something I thought I could control. In the midst of all these big changes, this little one was the straw that broke the camel's back.
In my experience, when we have big changes, we armor up. We go into battle. We make the best of it. We’re active. Some new normals are so big, we know we don't have any control over them. We can't change them: the diagnosis, the news that changed our lives. We know they are big because they've taken over our entire lives, and we can acknowledge the shifting of the ground beneath our feet when they happen. But the little things, the little losses, we do not often acknowledge them because they are little. We feel they are not significant enough to name. In the midst of all that change, all those big changes, I focused on the small ones, the one I thought I could control because it felt so out of control. So, just please hand me my Diet coke!
As special needs moms we live in a constant space of adapting. Our lives and circumstances change all the time. You know what I mean: new medications, new doctors, treatments, changing diagnosis. Just when we think we have it figured out, we have to adapt again. The life we thought we would have, or even the day, or even honestly the next 30 min we expected, changes constantly. Both of my co-hosts, Sara and Carrie, had distinct moments when they knew their life would change forever. The day they got the diagnosis or the result of an ultrasound, they knew they were going to have a new normal. For our family, we did not have a big moment like that, and let me just say here, if you want to hear our diagnosis stories, you can go listen to episodes one through four. Our family had a different experience. There was no diagnosis, and it was years of trying to figure out what was going on with our kids with mental health issues, fetal alcohol syndrome, and reactive attachment disorder. For those of you with kids with hidden disabilities, I know you understand this. There’s misunderstandings and therapies and confusion and for the most part people thinking you just need to be a better parent. During this period there were no huge moments for me to armor up and adjust to, but little small shifts in our lives that went unnoticed. Before I knew it. I was in the midst of a new normal - one that I did not like very much. Our new normal included alarms on our doors, hiding all the sharp objects, calls from teachers, dangerous behavior, and a frantic search for a little nine year old girl that ran away. So what does this all have to do with Diet Coke? Bear with me.
My Diet Coke was the small shift in a big sea of changes. I think it is the small shifts, these barely noticeable new normals that take their toll on our hearts and souls. In the scope of all the big changes, the new diagnosis, new town, the new doctor, they often go unnoticed and keep piling up, making us feel sad and tired. But I think these small changes matter. Why do they matter? Because in the space of what used to be and what is now, there is grief. And we need to name our griefs, especially the little small griefs. The reason we need to name our griefs is because when they are acknowledged, we can deal with them in healthy ways.
So, how do we do this? I’m going to give you three steps. The first step is:
- Name what you grieving, all of it, not just the big things, but the little things. Make a list. Ask yourself, ‘What has changed or what do I miss?’ I’ll tell you here that whenever I sit down to do this and I write out: ‘what do I miss?” I start crying every single time. I realized there were small things I missed that in the midst of all the hard and big things, I’ve not acknowledged. Maybe you miss moments with your other kids, time with your husband, the yoga class you can no longer go to, coffee with a friend. Maybe you just miss not always having to be on. What are the things that you miss? Name them. I promise you, nothing is too small or insignificant. Make that list.
Once you’ve made the list, sit down, and tell God about it in prayer.
- Give it to God.
I promise you, He can handle whatever you wrote down. It’s okay to be who you are with God because He loves you. Now, I could not find one place in the Bible that talked about how God felt about Diet Coke, but I do know this. He cares about you, and not just your child or your family, or your church attendance. He cares about you. All the little things you care about, He does too. But, don’t take my word for it. I would like to share some verses. Ps 33:18 tells us that the Lord watches over those who fear Him and who rely on His unfailing love. God is watching over you. I’ll paraphrase Psalm 23 to tell you this: He leads you to rest, He renews you, He guides you, He walks with you even in the darkest moments. God is with you in every moment, and that’s what Psalm 23 tells us.
Psalm 139 tells us this: that God has examined my heart, and He knows everything about me. “You know when I sit down or I stand up. You know my thoughts even when I am far away. You see me when I travel, and when I rest at home. You know everything I do. You know what I’m going to say even before I say it.” So, here’s the deal. It’s okay to say it to God, He already knows what you’re going to say. Name your griefs. Name the list and put it in His ever loving hands.
Then three, after we’ve acknowledged what we are grieving, after we have given it to God, then I want you to live in the moment of your new normal.
3. Live in the moment of the new normal.
Say to yourself, “This day is enough.” Don’t look over your shoulder at the past and don’t scan the horizon for what may come next. Just stand where you are and today's new normal and breathe.
I'd like to end with a prayer. It's called Death of a Dream. I'm only going to read a portion of the prayer, but you can read the entire prayer in the book Every Moment Holy, and we will link that in the show notes,
“O Christ, in whom the final fulfillment
of all hope is held secure,
I bring to you now the weathered
fragments of my former dreams,
the broken pieces of my expectations,
the rent patches of hopes worn thin,
the shards of some shattered image of
life as I once thought it would be...
You are the sovereign of my sorrow.
You apprehend a wider sweep with wiser eyes
than mine. My history bears the
fingerprints of grace. You were always
faithful, though I could not always
trace quick evidence of your presence in
my pain, yet did you remain at work,
lurking in the wings, sifting all my
splinterings for bright embers that might
be breathed into more eternal dreams.
Let me remain tender now, to how
you would teach me. My disappointments
reveal so much about my own agenda
for my life and the ways I quietly demand
that it should play out: free of conflict,
Free of pain, free of want.
My dreams are so small.
Teach me to hope, O Lord,
always and only in you."
Guess what? Here at Take Heart, we have a big New Year's giveaway, We are giving away $50 in Amazon gift cards, five books, and two coffee mugs. If you'd like to enter our giveaway, go to the links in the show notes to get the details. You can also find out the details on our Instagram page @takeheartspecialmoms, or on our Facebook page. Thanks for joining us this week on Take Heart. Our prayer each week is for your heart to be encouraged. We are grateful that you are walking on this journey with us. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts, so you'll never miss a show. You can follow us on Instagram @takeheartspecialmoms or on Facebook @takeheartspecialmoms. We also have a website which is www.takeheartspecialmoms.com. If you have any questions or comments, follow the links in our show notes, we would love to hear from you. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next week.
