Today I normally put out top 5 recipes for … I will do that tomorrow. Today I am thinking about graduation and changes in our life. When my daughter was born she needed surgery when she 10 days old. I had stayed up for several days with her during her testing and refused to leave her hospital room unless it was to carry her to testing. After the surgery she was in the PICU on a morphine drip. They allowed us to see her but told us she is hooked to all kinds of monitors that will go off if she even moves. They sent us home and told us to rest for the next phase. We left that night feeling helpless. They had her and we had to put all our faith and trust in them that they would take care of her.

Faith. Trust. Something that doesn’t come easy.

Someone asked me the other night what I did. I said I stayed at home with my kids because they needed me. Between my daughter being moderately/severally hard-of-hearing with learning issues and my son needing extra support they needed me to be there in the schools (I spent tons of time volunteering at the schools and running book fairs and PTAs) and at home. I needed to go to teacher-parent conferences, make phone calls, and drive him to therapies (OT, PT, and speech).

We reminisced about how my son hated school before we moved. He was combative and would bite, kick, and scream every day as we tried to get him to school. If we hadn’t moved I was going to homeschool him because I couldn’t take the fighting with him all the time just to get him into the school. Once he got there he was fine but getting him to go was unreal. Honestly during those times of about 7-10 years old I never even thought he would graduate high school. We thought we would be lucky if he didn’t live with us the rest of his life. People told us it would get better. We couldn’t believe them because you didn’t know our son.

But, as we look back now (don’t you love hindsight) we can see the little upward steps. Sometimes they came at fast intervals and sometimes they were so far apart we never thought we would see another. Tonight was another step upward. He will continue to take steps forward towards his goals and wants in life. It will continue to be big bursts and little bursts but he will continue to find himself and his place in life.

Though I feel like I did that time with my daughter in the PICU I have to have faith and trust in him and let him go. It makes me so happy and scared all at once.

Faith. Trust.