Growing Pains

I'm someone who generally likes change. With jobs, for instance, I tend to get bored easily if things become too routine or lose the challenge that held me at the beginning, so I enjoy learning new things and trying new skills (more on this in another post).

If change is what I like, then change is what we've had in our world lately. This past month, Caroline started attending a local Montessori school at the same time I went back to work for our local city school district at the middle school.

Until this point, Caroline had stayed with my mom or me, sitters in our home, a wonderful family from our church who are like a second family to her, and had attended a weekly mother's day out program. Jeffrey and I knew Montessori would be a challenging transition for her, and she did have normal adjustment woes for a few days. She had to adjust to increased expectations for independence and self-help on her part. Plus, she only knew one person in her class and had to get over being one of the "new kids."

Surprisingly to me, I had the hardest time with the transition. The school has a wonderful outside play area that presented a big challenge to Caroline because of her physical delays and deficits from brain trauma sustained at birth and the resulting Infantile Spasms she developed at four months old.
*Infantile Spasms is a seizure
disorder defined with words like
"rare, catastrophic, devastating; I
call it our personal hell. Caroline is
one of the blessed very few- she is a
MIRACLE- who is cognitively on
track, but she has motor skill delays
such as not being able to run or
jump yet that are noticeable
compared to her peers.

My heart clenched in a new, unwelcome kind of pain at the thought that she now realizes she is different from her friends because of these delays. My initial, irrational reaction was to withdraw her immediately, and..... Yeah, that was the problem. There was nowhere I could take my precious little girl that would make it all better or make it all go away. There was no one I could legally yell, scream, hit, and throw things at that would make ME feel better.

Finally, in the midst of it all, it dawned on me that this would be just one of many times I will want to protect Caroline from the world around her, just as I am sure my mom did for me and her mom for her.

And as much as I may think she is too young to learn hard lessons about life not making sense this side of heaven as we live in a fallen world, I pray the Lord is teaching her young heart compassion for others who may be different. I also pray she will grow to recognize and respect the unique and special gifts she and others possess.

Because I know I need those heart reminders daily.