This week has been one of discovery and re-discovery...I began the week re-connecting with a childhood friend whom I had lost touch with over the years but missed just the same. I was delighted earlier this month to find Renee on facebook and living just a few miles from me! We met up at a dessert place that had coffee/tea and made crepes....I had an apple pie crepe and she had the strawberry/nutella crepe. Boy was that yummy! It was a good thing that we chose to sit outside because the place closed at 9 and by the time we were done talking, laughing and getting pictures, it was nearly 10:30! We will definitely get together again as soon as we can, and it will not take 22 years this time! What a blessing that Renee and I are still friends after all these years!!!
The week also included some real help for our house, for Matthew. Finally. We have a team of people who are coming here for the next several months to work with Matthew individually, work with us and all 5 of us, the intent being to help us put our family back together where we can function as a family and be what I had once dreamed of so long ago. The name of the agency really says it all...Hope Services, and for the first time in many, many moons, that is what I have inside. Hope...and to my astonishment, joy in my spirits.
Hope and joy. These are 2 feelings that do not come naturally to me and they have not come easily to me all these years. It feels quite strange to feel emotions other than panic, disconnect and sadness, those being so much of what I had become accustomed to over the years, my auto-pilot emotions if you will. I have come to realize that hope and joy are a by-product of my spiritual journey. Church, religion and the Lord while I was growing up were not what they were intended to be. For me, they were a chore; something I had to do to stay out of trouble at home. The end result for me was once I turned of legal age, I steered clear of the whole thing. I did internalize some of the important things I had learned, however....how to treat others with kindness and respect, to show compassion and for the most part, not to behave like a jerk toward anyone. This disconnect eventually caught up to me once our struggles with autism in the house kicked into high gear. The more stress our troubles at home caused, the more alone I felt, to the point where I finally felt completely emptied out. Something was missing inside me and it was something big. That something to keep me not just going, but to be, not merely exist each day.
Since last year, I have slowly worked my way back toward letting God's presence back into my life. It has been a bumpy journey but has not ended, (although I do need to pause every so often to ask for directions, hahaha) He sent me a big brother (thank you Grant!) to bolster my spirits and get me pointed in the right direction and I found myself attending church again, this time on my terms. It was the first time in a long time that I found some peace while I sorted everything else out. The blessings that He has shown me since then have been very humbling to me. For the first time in a long time, we found people who instead of turning us away, have told us "yes, we can help you; we can help your son". The most significant blessings of this have been Matthew qualifying for help finding and keeping a job once he completes his schooling, and we qualified for funding assistance for an in-home program that will help us all put our family back together. This in-home service would not have been affordable to us for the recommended time frame, had we not gotten the funding help. I am 100% convinced that God interceded on our behalf for this, and I know He is the reason we found out about it, let alone was able to sign on for it. Miracles don't have to part an ocean to be real, and I know I was granted one here. It is not going to be the easiest 5 or 6 months ahead here, but when it takes a long time for a family to get this out of sync, it will take time to make things right. But I have hope now. and some joy in my heart. Two emotions that will take some getting used to, but I like how they feel and I look forward to getting better acquainted.
So here's to my friend Renee....and to my new friends Hope and Joy. Please stick around a while..........there's room in my heart for all of you.
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