It's been a long time since I've had time to sit down and collect my thoughts to write online.  It has been a challenging couple of years with the last two being the toughest.  Everyone around you moves on in life and you are just left there alone in your grieving process still trying to do your best to parent the remaining children you have left (and they have no shortage of needs either).   There is no practical support for our marriage-which has struggled and over 80% of couples with special needs kids end up in divorce; for our personal respite from parenting a teen with special needs or for the siblings who DESPERATELY need a break from their special needs teenage brother.  We are all so focused on our own families and busy ourselves with many things that Oswald Chambers would say are the 'urgent' things in life-we miss the most important things in life.  As a family with a special needs child, we are limited and life is experienced in a different way.  There have been a number of times as a special needs parent that I would find myself wishing we could serve others or participate in activities or events that other families do-but that's not our reality.  I'd love to invite my friends and their families or my neighbors over but have hesitation in doing so.  We have appreciated the few times that others have invited us over and have shown hospitality to us-it's something we'd love to reciprocate but have difficulty doing so.

I have done my personal best to 'bloom' where I've been 'planted', accepting the circumstances and situation in life that we continually strive to move through.  If you would have asked me even three years ago about finding God's blessing in my life, I would have struggled to come up with answers.  I have been processing at a deeper level the fact that we all mentally know that God's ways are higher than ours-but I'm beginning to understand that fully.  We have a tendency to believe that 'blessing' implies positive, good, fruitful things in our lives.  We are so wrong about that.  The hardest things in life are equally if not more of a blessing than the good.  We should be able to be thankful in ALL circumstances.  Typically, feelings want to dictate anything but thankfulness. We fail to realize that those dark, ugly things in life can bring us the closest to God and open new opportunities to grow closer to Him and allow Him to work more deeply in and through us.  He is counting EVERY tear we shed and someday there will be a reward.

Everyday I wake up and am grateful for God's grace and provision of dear friends (also private therapists) who have facilitated healing in my life and the kids through their hands, the Holy Spirit and the various techniques God has imparted to them to help us in our healing journey and to grow.  Taking it a step further, God has also been equipping me for personal growth and also to support what he is doing in the life of my family, typically coming from hands on work on my massage table.  It's not surprising though that because of all the great 'work' God is doing in and through me and the kids that we are spiritually attacked on every side.  I am continually having to face people and situations who have no regard for me, my feelings or those of my kids and yet I feel this inexpressible expectation that it's incumbent upon me to be the 'better person'.  I can't begin to describe the anger and rage I feel when others who have not walked a day in my 'shoes' and have had to experience the full range of experiences and emotions, want to tell me that I'm the one in the situation who needs to respond better.  I'm guessing that's because there is a false belief that Satan wants to impart to everyone that if you are a 'Christian' you 'should' be perfect and have a stereotyped, scripted response.  The truth is that we are still human, have our own feelings, and are simply forgiven-not perfect.  Standing on positional truths about my identity in Christ has been liberating during these times.

I choose as an act of my will to forgive others who hurt me and choose not to let the things of the past continue to drag me down.  So many of us hold onto bitterness, anger, resentment, etc. that came as a result of someone else and fail to realize that if we never work through that and let it ALL go, we will continue to struggle.  I've also learned the past few years that our physical bodies are absolutely amazing.  If we have unresolved issues from our past they will manifest in physical symptoms and disease-another excellent reason to seek out full and complete healing.  I may not have an M.D., or a P.T, M.eD, or a D.O.C. licensure after my name but after spending half a day with me you will see that I have all that and more.  I have been on the road less traveled all these years.  If there's been one thing that's been clear to me lately is that no matter what it has been in my life that has a 'formula' (home business, raising a family, pursuing my dreams), the path I have to take is not the same path as everyone else.  When I graduated high school I wanted to be a doctor.  Little did I know that the way I'd get to that goal would not be the 'typical' path most follow to obtaining that title.  Even if I never get a license or an actual 'title', I know that I have the gifts and talents to achieve the same thing based on my own study and treatment within my family.  Someday I will be facilitating treatment and healing for others who need it.

As we approach what would have been Braden's 5th birthday next week, I would ask that you would keep Alan, me, Alex, Logan and Evan in your prayers.  We just became an aunt, uncle and cousins to twins last week and there is an opportunity for more healing but that is not dependent upon us.  How do you journey through grief when there is something new happening in your extended family and you aren't sure that you are a welcome part of that?  As we do every year since his passing, our family celebrates Braden's birthday and the short time we had with him on this earth.  We have dedicated the first week of July to his memory and it is a very sacred time of year for the Reddings.  I hope if you feel compelled to share a word of encouragement that you refrain from trite words with good intention i.e. 'he's in a better place', etc.  We are grateful for support and prayers in any form.