mountain moving {let's talk about what is}
I really don’t know what to say anymore, she says to me, and I understand, because when you say everything true and it doesn’t seem to make a difference you finally run out of words. They drain and fall away, leaving only echoes like bits of fluttering ash. And in the aftermath of a wordy, difficult week, I feel it too–that deep, hollow ache left behind.
But maybe that’s okay, because God’s words never fade, and His hope-building promises sustain. He sees. He hears. He is.
In the background, I hear my friend’s son, repeating the way to school, and I smile. Turn right, he says. Turn. Going to school. His tone alludes to a depth unreflected in the brevity of his words. He is both insistent and certain, and every so often she stops mid-sentence to acknowledge his sentiment so that he can stop repeating the same phrases. The gift, for me, is that my friend doesn’t need to explain or follow any sort of silly decorum when she talks to me, because I have an exceptional son too. Our children teach us; they shape us into something better.
Today, this is the heavy weighing down our conversation: The State Board of Education voted to revoke the charter of the first year school our sons attend, and we find the decision terrible, misguided, even cruel. As a community, we have fought the entire school year against a predisposed idea, a looming can’t, against a lack of faith in possibility that, in exceptional education, has become the acceptance of a failing beauracracy. As exceptional needs parents, we’re all familiar with this persistent negativity. We fight insistently, repetitively, against a barren view.
Turn. Turn right. Go to school. My friend’s son’s words seem like an echo of something significant.
For years, we’ve all endured endless evaluations of our children that focus on what they can’t or will never be able to do, and from the outset of this endeavor, we were told that what we want to do for our children cannot be accomplished. So for an entire school year, we have shouted about what is happening, and in the end, the only thing the governing bodies care about is whether or not our methods fit into their limited perspective on possibility.
My friend sighs, frustrated, and again, I understand. This is perhaps the greatest gift of the past year: In the midst of great difficulty, we’ve found a whole army of friends who understand.
Exceptional needs parents survive mountains of unanticipated and often overwhelming struggle by blazing new paths and building tunnels. We work on solutions. We cannot simply stand still and point at the mountain. Instead, with a little faith, we move the terrible thing standing in our way. Together, we find a way. Together, we are strong.
Lately I’ve run all out of patience for negative paradigms unshifted by truth, for the sort of blindness that makes us all hold on to our cinder block walls so hard our knuckles turn white. We must be careful. We must have the faith to venture into open spaces, to make new paths. Our moving God has told us to go and fill, to grow and bear fruit. He’s never been powerfully invested in paralysis, except to heal it. And by His enduring Word—the Word that never returns empty—He has obliterated impossibility. So, we must be careful not to pick up that miserable refrain, nor to let it creep like a settling toxin into the fabric of our living. Our speech must fill and re-fill with what is, and our thoughts with everything excellent. These are the words that change the world, that root and establish our children, that strengthen and build our community.
Maybe it seems irrelevant to some, what a year building a community means to a group of exceptional needs parents advocating–no longer alone but together–for their children, but honestly I think the gifts we’ve gathered are meant to be universally shared. Weary of hearing what isn’t and what won’t be, we have chosen to focus together on something better. So here’s just some of what is, what has been gained and accomplished and built over the past year; here’s some of the excellent truth our children have offered us:
- Despite the challenges that always threaten to limit them, our rare children have taught us to see. They have shown us that reality is far greater than what can be evaluated on the surface of things.
- A community unified behind a single purpose becomes a formidable force for change. We have discovered the weakness of individual comparison, the inherent beauty of diversity, and the strength bound up in mutually pursued progress.
- We have experienced first hand that those who truly care about the blessing and benefit of all will gladly sacrifice selfish interests, even unto the exhaustion of personal resources. I don’t know a better reflection of Truth.
- In a community that lives above us and them and other, notice, friendship, and inclusion elevate and transform experience. A new normal redeems the past. The strong no longer bully the weak. The popular no longer mock the insignificant. Instead, such extreme categories disappear in favor of a superior sentiment: If today I am more readily able, I will help you along. Tomorrow, you will be the one helping me.
- It’s okay–even best—to learn and grow in a way that is uniquely yours.
- And, in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, creativity and resourcefulness vibrantly offer us limitless possibility. Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
So, this is what we do, to find strength again at the end of a depleted week: We set aside our sighs and we talk about what is and what can be. We speak again of possibility.
