This week is going to be hard. Not in the “we are all busy juggling life, work, kids, husbands, activities, home”….sort of a way. It’s hard because my mother’s heart is being stretched.
My beloved 9 year old boy has been struggling. At first with some discomfort, and then increasingly it’s been impacting his mobility. It’s been minimized, or considered growing pains, or a variety of other very plausible but increasingly more unlikely reasons.
The first day of school was a beautiful fall morning, and so I walked with the Boy and the Blonde to the bus stop. By the time we arrived, I looked back to see tears streaming down my sons face. He never complains. He assumes he’s just slower than the rest. He has adjusted his expectations. He can no longer run. He’s 9!
It happened slowly and quickly at the same time over this last year, and though I had been asking questions of his doctors, none of us want to assume the worst or be dramatic. So instead we hoped for some kind of resolution that simply has not come.
After an excruciating walk to the bus stop the first day of school, I’d had enough. So I set up an appointment and we visited Children’s Hospital last week. My emotions were flooded. It is certainly not our first time to have navigated medical unknowns for one of our children.
The visit revealed nothing of note, other than a call for more testing and better imaging. What I do know is the specialist agrees there is an issue, but the what is still unknown, and the answer is not obvious.
I refuse to be consumed by fear and part of freeing myself from that possibility is to be open. Honesty gives power to the faith while worry only seeks to destroy as it lurks in the shadows. The what could-be’s are broad and the next week we do have to rule out the scary things. This weeks testing is necessary, but hard at the same time.
All we can do is walk and take comfort during the hard weeks….that we do not do it alone. It’s easy to feel my family has already navigated more than its fair share, and to ask “why us”….and then my own words come back to me….”why not us”.
Knowing what was on our plate this week, my cousin sent me this Shauna Niequist quote and I just loved it.”Brave is telling the truth when all you want to do is change the subject. Brave is articulating feelings even when they are sad or scared or fragile. Brave is being intentional and not saying you’re fine. Sometimes brave is quiet and sometimes brave looks boring….and that’s okay.”
Sometimes being brave looks easy from the outside, but I assure you nothing about being intentional is easy. You make choices because even though the circumstances are often out of our control our response to them is ours to chose.
Motherhood is without question a little extra challenging this week. I firmly believe my own words “Its going to be fine, and “I’m freeing myself of worry” when I say them…..but their are the moments when we sit in doctors offices and he has to hear things I wish he didn’t, or when I have to hold him to get blood drawn as he’s terribly stressed by needles.
Those specific moments and each time I navigate them make that day hard. Some days get to be hard, and I dont believe allowing yourself a few hours to mourn something means you have wavered in your faith or allowed worry to consume you.
I say this because the next day is a new day, and in that day you get to start again stalwart and refreshed. Thank goodness for the new days and the chance to make brave look boring.
I recently had some friends run in a 200 mile Ragnar race. An entire relay team of runners, who traversed a variety of terrain over a period of two days. They ran in unavoidably hot and humid temperatures. They ran at night with mace devices that looked like iPhones and a tiny finger ring containing a retractable knife that, until I saw it with my own eyes, thought was only available in the Bond VillIan starter kit. 
😜
Most of them had never run a race this intensive, and should you survey them today, have no plans of doing so again. In preparation for the race they conditioned both their bodies and minds….why?!?
Because difficult objectives like a long race demand you prepare in order to be successful. I watched their updates with pride and keen interest. I loved watching them strive and achieve personal goals.
Over the last two years, as my sons mobility continued to decline, I was navigating my own auto immune struggles. I too had been forced to discipline my body and my mind at every level. In doing so, I turned a defeated body, and tired mother of four into a determined warrior.
I was unaware at the time that I was in fact preparing for a potentially difficult part of my own race. I won’t lie; I experienced a breadth of emotions over this past week. I was sad, overwhelmed, frustrated, bitter, and angry. Hasn’t my family already dealt with enough in the medical mystery camp?!?
Yesterday after I called and set up the next wave of appointments, most of which are weeks away, I felt a peace…..not because my circumstances have changed, but because I did.
There’s much I carry on these shoulders at present…..so I guess it’s a good thing they are strong. The blessing is I have prepared my body and mind well for a difficult road ahead.
Sure, I wish the part of the race I am being asked to run wasn’t in the dark, but we don’t always get to pick our paths. Sometimes all we can do is to be ready for the unknown dragons ahead.
Summer Smith is a speaker, writer, and motherhood blogger. She and her family are currently navigating the suburbs of Northern Virginia. As the mother to four young children, Summer maintains her sanity thanks to her sense of humor, copious amounts of coffee, and Amazon Prime. Maya Angelou once said, when reflecting on her childhood, that her mother left an impression like technicolor stars in the midnight sky. Influenced by these words, Summer blogs at her website Motherhood in Technicolor, and can also be found on her Motherhood in Technicolor Facebook page.