It’s a raw, deeply vulnerable feeling when you realize there are moments you don’t know how to help your child. You wonder if strangers with expertise could easily dissect your intentions and efforts, pointing out flaws you’re blind to. You watch your child struggle to hold an ocean of emotions in a fragile paper cup, spilling over in every direction. And all you can do is trace the edges of the flood, wiping up what’s behind, what’s beneath, and what’s yet to come.
I’m sitting outside a room right now—a metal door blocking my eyes from my child and a caring school psychologist. But my hands are stretched to the heavens for I know where my help comes from. It turns out that He uses people all the time to provide it.
In choosing to homeschool, I had created a beautiful, but naive world in my mind where only tea parties and read-alouds, handicrafts and adventure would hold our time together. But so often, as with what comes with not only adoption but parenthood in general, are those unforeseeable needs to pivot. Sure, we’ve indulged in those tea parties, read-alouds, handicrafts and adventures, and yet as this year comes to a close, I see all the hours of appointments and therapies that have filled our calendar.
Is any parent truly prepared for what the future holds? Does any mother truly dream of the hardships her child would endure, what obstacles of faith she’d embark upon, rather than those sweet hopes for love, belonging, and joy? And yet, I watch my child emerge from her evaluation with a confident smile, her eyes sparkling with self-assurance that I quell inwardly. She doesn’t seem prickled by the extra time and care from another person outside of me. Why is it so hard to trust another with her intermittent care?
Well, for starters, there’s an irrational fear of course. What if this person steals her? What if she likes her better than me? What if she teaches better than me? What if our attachment proves to be insecure, insufficient? What if everything I’ve done up to this point is proven a colossal blunder, and I’m actually not cut out for this entire connected parenting thing? What if I’m a terrible mother? Oof. The words thud as I write them—I am revealed, I am undone, I am exposed.
And yet, I smile. Oh, how I need you, Lord! I feel incapable, I feel embarrassed, I feel worried, I feel tested. And yet I think about how many of us mothers with special children feel this way. That somehow our children struggle because of us and our failures. Lies. All of them.
I remember the story about a blind man. Jesus passes a man, blind from birth, in the street. “And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him'” (John 9: 1-3).
I’m beginning to realize how vulnerable I am to believe lies about my identity in my mothering. These fears—irrational and raw—whisper lies about my worth and capability as a mother. They shout that her struggles are my fault, that my failures have shaped her hardships. And yet, those fears stand in direct contradiction to the truth I know deep down: that her story, like the blind man’s in the Gospel of John, isn’t a reflection of my flaws or sins but an opportunity for God’s works to be revealed.
As I wrestle with these thoughts, I am comforted by the reminder that my child’s struggles are not the sum of her being, nor are they a condemnation of my efforts. They are, instead, the canvas where God’s love and grace can shine through—in her life and in mine. This truth steadies me even as I face the unknowns of this journey, leaning on a faith that assures me her story is unfolding according to a far greater purpose than my own understanding could ever grasp.
by Cristina Schnizler 
by Sarah Lango 
by Rachel Weidner 
