Do Not Worry About Tomorrow

When Zach was a baby, I refused to call him colicky.  Even though he was absolutely colicky.  He could have been the poster child for colick, but I wasn’t about to slap a label on my newborn.

I didn’t want to call him a “bad” baby right from the start.  People would judge him.  Or judge me.  You may think this is ridiculous, but I’ve seen the way people coo and smile at the “good” babies, the easy babies.

And I’ve resisted labeling Ezra as dyslexic even though has many of the classic signs of dyslexia.  We are plodding along nicely, making steady progress, without the help of any labels.

But I have resisted no label so strongly as Zach’s most recent diagnosis.  Every time I think about it, which is all the time, I feel like someone punched me in the gut.

My baby has a brain that makes it difficult for him to do things that he wants to do, things I want him to do.   How do I make sense of my belief that he is “fearfully and wonderfully made” alongside the reality of that brain?

I have spent the last months worried about his future.  How will he ever get married?  Be a good father?  Find a job he loves and where he can fulfill his calling?  What happens if Ezra dies?  Who will adore Zach after we are gone if Ezra’s not around?  It’s not pretty in the part of my brain that concocts worst-case scenarios.

So I have to keep pressing into this day and this moment.  Because right now, the boys are great.  They have major challenges right here, right now.  But in the present, those challenges aren’t frightening.  They are frustrating, sad, even maddening, but they aren’t scary.  We deal with them the best we can, and on some days the worst we can.  But we deal.  Only in the future, can I not deal.

Yesterday was the last day of Homeschool Naturalists, and the teacher gave out awards. As I came in the room at the end of the class, Zach came bounding over, waving his construction paper award wildly in my face.  “I got this award!”

It was the friendship award – the award he should not get given his diagnosis.  I’m aware that the same reasons that he gets the friendship award with eight-year-old homeschooled boys will make it harder for him to have friends in high school.  But that’s all in the future. Today, his class sees that Zach is a great friend.

Ezra screamed at the top of his lungs from across the room, “And I got this enthusiasm award.  Which means I’m really good at ENTHUSIASM!”

Which he is.  He may never be able to spell it, and all of that enthusiasm may end up as an untamed fire, but that’s in the future.  Today, an entire class appreciated Ezra’s joie de vivre.

I don’t know where I will land on all of this.  For today, I’m gonna tape those awards on the fridge.  And when I get anxious that Zach will be lonely and Ezra will be a convict, I’ll go stare at those awards and thank God for today.