Believing in the Best

When I was a kid, I had this very damaging way of handling adversity. For some reason, I believed with all my heart that unless I visualized every possible bad thing that could happen, the very worst would happen. So if Mom and Dad had a date night, I’d envision that phone call – you know, the one from the police. Or the bully bringing a gun to school and coming for me. And so on. Crazy stuff, yea, but I thought it had a voodoo like charm effect of keeping away devastation.

Picture the bad to keep it away??

Unfortunately, this habit stuck me into adulthood, although the visualizations got less awful. On a first date? Imagine the break up. Job interview? Picture the ding letter in the mail.

Somewhere along the way, I learned that this was actually backwards – that you’re supposed picture the good to create it. I figured out my negative visions were setting me up to believe awful things about myself and about life, and keeping me distant from God.

The way I believe means I’m against “visualizing” for prosperity or “laws of attraction” or anything like that. In addition, mothering kids with special needs means it makes much more sense to be a realist. You need to have your eyes wide open to what the future most likely will bring. Plus I wanted to make sure I was following and accepting God’s will. It might not be His will that they improve drastically, it might serve Him better if they don’t.

But it turns out there’s a REALLY fine line between hope and despair, and if you’re not careful, you can find yourself flailing on the wrong side of it.

I wanted to share this with you because I’ve been SO busy focusing on the details, pulling myself out of a funk and keeping an eye on reality that I started to fall back into my old bad habits. I was not picturing a bleak future so much as I’d lost faith that things could get more than a drop better for the kids. I’d not just prepared myself for the worst, I’d resigned my kids to a future filled with lifelong support, devoid of necessary skills, alone and in a home.

I’m not saying that can’t happen.

I’m saying that BELIEVING IT WILL is the opposite of hope.

And if there’s one lesson I could pull out of this bleak, painful winter, following a very difficult fall and holiday season, it’s that I need to believe.

In Good.

In God.

In Recovery for my kids, or if that irks you, in healing their medical issues and helping them to improve their behaviors so they can THRIVE.

And to do that, I need to believe that this can happen. 

This morning I woke up a little bit with this on mind and, unlike my normal habit, went to Facebook pretty early. A warrior mom there had posted about her son’s recovery after years of trial & error. Then she posted a favorite quote. I’m always worried about these, and wished f it could be a that rare quote from a true Christian before I looked to see, fully expecting some whimsical quote from Gandhi or something.

It turned out to be one from famed Christian preacher Charles Spurgeon. After I got up off the floor, I read it:

Don’t you know that day only dawns after night, showers displace drought and spring and summer follow winter? Then have HOPE! Hope forever, for God will not fail you.

Then I googled and read his excellent sermon on Faith vs. Fear.

There’s this mindset of “you are what you believe.” I don’t believe THAT, but I do believe in expecting the best, while making the most of the worst. (Romans 8:28, for all you believers.) I think God was speaking directly to me this morning, to have faith that for my girls, the best is on its way.

And it’s happening already.

As we work with our homotoxicologist, the kids are starting to improve – and we’re not even up to detox yet, just system support. Amelia has had less outbursts, more self control, better language skills (she’s attempting ON HER OWN to converse with greater detail), more initiative and less resistance in doing at-home school work. Zoe is doing well, too, with more sentence structure at school, more self-control again when we are out, and more communicating and engagement. She’s sleeping better too and more expressive. Just last week she told her teacher – via iPad – that “it wasn’t fair” that she had to do schoolwork instead of a clapping game! (Yay, the beauty of normal school aged rebellion!)

I can’t, I won’t be hopeless or angry, and I’m going to stop picturing the WORST. My girls have an excellent chance to do exceedingly better and, while I’m not quite ready to take up the idea that they will lead “mostly typical” lives (whatever the heck that means), I think I best start saving for college too, just in case…