Mourning...

A few months ago, I went through a period of mourning... again. I came to the conclusion...again, that my child will never be "typical." Typical is a word that parents of autistic children use to refer to normally development kids who process information in the typical manner. I had one of those 'It's not going to get me anywhere' daydreams where I thought about how Jacob would be if he wasn't in the spectrum. This type of thinking is so futile and silly. My child is what he is, and trying to figure out the 'what could have beens' doesn't help our situation one iota. All of this came crashing back to me tonight when I read this quote by a doctor talking to the parent of a newly diagnosed child.

"MOURN THE LOSS OF THE CHILD YOU THOUGHT YOU WOULD HAVE, SO YOU CAN ACCEPT THE CHILD YOU DO HAVE."

I seem to go through these mourning periods over and over. I come to grips with life as we know it and the unforseeable future, tell God that I know He has a greater plan than I can see and move on. But every once in a while, it sneaks up on me. 'It' being the normal child. I can get envious of my friends with unaffected children. "Do they appreciate what they have?" I ask myself. "No," is my resentful response. "They think their child is difficult, but they don't know what difficult is." Their child doesn't get stared at for being different. They think their child's tantrums are hard to handle, but they haven't ever walked on egg shells around their own toddler. Anger, sadness and jealousy surge to the surface in me. The part of me that wants it "easy."

Jacob isn't easy, but God, I love him so much. There is a fierceness in me when it comes to my child and helping him. I can't imagine my life without him in it. I can't imagine our family without his presence, so I continue to mourn the boy that I didn't have and celebrate the boy I was given to love. I keep praying that God shows me how to love him the way he needs to be loved and that I can accept him, challenges and all.