Celebrating Possibilities
It is hard to know what is okay to share and what violates our children's privacy. In the world before blogging and social media, where would we share our hard-earned celebrations of promotions, won games, and first steps? Where would we seek solace when the dream hoped for was deferred or when a loved one was lost? My first thought is Sunday School. My second thought is around the table on Wednesday night. They call these dying pieces of the institutional church, but they are what I knew growing up, and they are what I have known at every church since. Faces of the Church - individual and corporate - appear before me as I revisit such pivotal moments too personal to even hint at. And it makes sense that this is where such sharing would occur. We rub shoulders with those who would shape us and with who would allow us to shape them in return. We are invested in one another.
I find that some of the same does happen in the mega-room that blogging and social media allow even as I am aware there are plenty of opportunities to do no more than eavesdrop on a conversation without any real investment. In a world where we move around so much -- Morgan keeps saying she wants to go back to Winston-Salem and when asked why, she names families that she imagines still there who are, in fact, now scattered across the United States -- I am grateful for links of social media.
All of that tangent now said, I need to do some celebrating tonight with my friends at large who have been invested in us and in whom we have been invested at some point along the journey. It will not sound big to eavesdroppers (though you are welcome to listen!), but to our friends, new and old...well, they will know. Today I took the kids swimming at the YMCA while Brian worked. They splashed and played for an hour, and then we moved to the therapy pool -- the only one I will get in since shivering and turning blue are not my preferred methods of swimming. I took turns practicing skills with each, and when I got Morgan out there to attempt some strokes, she moved her arms right, left, right, left without any prompt from me.
That's it, folks. That's my celebration. We have worked years on trying to ride a bike, and the motor coordination required sends my easy-going girl into yelling and throwing fits every time. Her brain simply does not process bilateral coordination. Learning to write, to cut, to put on a shirt, to do about any task that I took for granted most of my life has taken considerable work for my girl. She is brave and persistent and so trusting as we continue to push her to try again. She grumbles as any of us would and yet she willingly gives it one more shot. So the smile on her face today when she realized that she was using her arms to begin learning how to swim -- well, there are no words.
We started a new therapy program around the first of January in which Brian or I work with Morgan for around an hour or more each day to move her body in ways that will teach her brain how to connect with itself in all its parts. She is an active participant. There are days we don't get it done (like today) and I feel guilty though I know that feeling is pretty much useless. There are days we have to move through the one hundred "I don't want to do this" comments - from her and us -- to push ourselves to claim what we haven't yet seen and trust that results will come. Today was one of those slivers of light shining through. We can do this. We will reach past the limits to the possibilities. Always. So grateful for the cloud of witnesses who have set the pace and for those who continue to cheer on our strong-spirited girl. We are still shooting for riding a bike by July, Sarge...one pattern at a time. Now that is going to be a heck of a celebration.
I find that some of the same does happen in the mega-room that blogging and social media allow even as I am aware there are plenty of opportunities to do no more than eavesdrop on a conversation without any real investment. In a world where we move around so much -- Morgan keeps saying she wants to go back to Winston-Salem and when asked why, she names families that she imagines still there who are, in fact, now scattered across the United States -- I am grateful for links of social media.
All of that tangent now said, I need to do some celebrating tonight with my friends at large who have been invested in us and in whom we have been invested at some point along the journey. It will not sound big to eavesdroppers (though you are welcome to listen!), but to our friends, new and old...well, they will know. Today I took the kids swimming at the YMCA while Brian worked. They splashed and played for an hour, and then we moved to the therapy pool -- the only one I will get in since shivering and turning blue are not my preferred methods of swimming. I took turns practicing skills with each, and when I got Morgan out there to attempt some strokes, she moved her arms right, left, right, left without any prompt from me.
That's it, folks. That's my celebration. We have worked years on trying to ride a bike, and the motor coordination required sends my easy-going girl into yelling and throwing fits every time. Her brain simply does not process bilateral coordination. Learning to write, to cut, to put on a shirt, to do about any task that I took for granted most of my life has taken considerable work for my girl. She is brave and persistent and so trusting as we continue to push her to try again. She grumbles as any of us would and yet she willingly gives it one more shot. So the smile on her face today when she realized that she was using her arms to begin learning how to swim -- well, there are no words.
We started a new therapy program around the first of January in which Brian or I work with Morgan for around an hour or more each day to move her body in ways that will teach her brain how to connect with itself in all its parts. She is an active participant. There are days we don't get it done (like today) and I feel guilty though I know that feeling is pretty much useless. There are days we have to move through the one hundred "I don't want to do this" comments - from her and us -- to push ourselves to claim what we haven't yet seen and trust that results will come. Today was one of those slivers of light shining through. We can do this. We will reach past the limits to the possibilities. Always. So grateful for the cloud of witnesses who have set the pace and for those who continue to cheer on our strong-spirited girl. We are still shooting for riding a bike by July, Sarge...one pattern at a time. Now that is going to be a heck of a celebration.
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