Time and Hope

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Time is suddenly in short supply.  School has started again for my older children and my 4 year old is healthy.

School is an obvious time sucker, home schooling mom or not, but good health?

Healthy 4 year old's need to go to the park to run off extra energy.  Healthy 4 year old's need to be watched every moment and kept busy - especially if said 4 year old has a 2 year old brother with whom to plot mischief.

My 4 year old has never had such a long run of health and energy.  His last hospitalization was the end of April.  Coming on 4 months now of not just the absence of crisis but 4 months of glowing cheeks, growing body, almost normal energy levels. 

Wow.

I remember when he was younger, before his diagnosis, he would sit for hours playing with matchbox cars while I studied with my older children.  I could teach the whole morning with barely a peep.  He was the "easiest" 2 year old around- but only because he was slowly dying and we didn't know it.

Now.

Now, I am constantly being interrupted, my teaching schedule constantly challenged by restlessness.  My writing time ever shrinking.

I'm o.k. with this. I'm more than o.k. I'm in awe.  I'm ridiculously happy in that I-feel-compelled-to-do-a-silly-dance-and-embarrass-my-teens sort of way.  I'm in hope. Hope that this stage will last.

I love being annoyed that he's running around like a lunatic.  Not so much in love that he and the 2 year old took all the sheets, blankets, and pillows off all 4 of the boys beds... 

Hope is a delicious thing when you finally make peace with it.  Hope is not a prayerful demand. It's the antithesis of worry.

I've been afraid of hope.  Afraid of a broken heart.  But to learn to truly have hope that my son will be well enables me to smile and love and trust God- and to enjoy the today that I have.

Perhaps for people like me- people who don't like to be wrong- hope is especially difficult. It's ridiculously humbling.

We've been told that children like my 4 year old often have a stretch without crisis from age 4 or 5 until the growth spurt at puberty.  I thought that sounded wonderful- so hopeful.  My husband said, "Well I'm going to hope for no crises even during puberty."  Hope comes easier to him.

With time I'd like to be able to think that way too. 

With time.

Time is suddenly in short supply right now- because right now I have time with my son- with all my children.

Because of hope- I don't have to waste that time.

I do however have to go put the blankets back on all the beds.... grrr...