The Fruit of Long-Suffering
Capable of enduring lasting suffering. https://www.thefreedictionary.com/long-suffering
It has been a long while since I wrote a blog. In my last one, I thought I was okay when I fell head first on an icy road on April 10, 2021. After a visual inspection and stitches, the ER doctor said I didn’t have a concussion but promised I’d have a headache the next day. I rested that weekend and I took Tylenol as I returned to teaching. A couple of days into teaching, I realized that my multiplying symptoms were not going to go away with Tylenol.
On the day my principal told me to go home, the fluorescent light was making me so nauseous I had a hard time following my thoughts from the head pain. Even though I had concussion training as an educator I didn’t understand head trauma at the time and I honestly wasn’t able to think clearly to realize I had a concussion.
At first, I thought I’d be better in a week, a couple more weeks, a month, then I started to wonder if I was going to ever get better. As I had to fight every day to be me for months on end I began hating my bed and the endless need for sleep, I lost hope that I would ever get better.
As a 1st grade teacher, I teach reading yet I couldn’t read without intense pain. My eyes wiggled back and forth or jerked and went blurry (they still do, just not nonstop). I couldn’t even listen to audiobooks for more than 2 or 3 minutes without severe nausea and head pain from trying to understand the information. I couldn’t work. Sleeping became my job. I’d sleep when my kids were at school and get up when my kids were home and then I’d go to bed early. Thinking, hurt, and made me get so tired that my brain just shut itself off. After trying to follow a conversation I couldn’t keep my eyes open. My husband was a saint, taking care of the kids during this time. When I wasn’t sleeping, the only things I could do were light housework like cooking and doing laundry since they didn’t require reading or thinking.
After MANY doctor appointments, specialists, and prayer I am slowly recovering. For a year I felt horrible for the majority of every day and then as I have gotten better I have had to plan my day carefully to avoid symptoms so I could be a mom when my kids needed me. Ear plugs, covering a page of words with a brown napkin as I read a line at a time, having the kids play outside or downstairs, a baseball cap and sunglasses, not looking while one of my younger daughters read aloud to me.
My writing and texting are affected too. In addition to not being able to focus on words. I accidentally type a similar word such as “that” instead of “then” or “over” instead of “open” I erase or delete it and then rewrite the same word sometimes three times! Or I write a word mixed up multiple times the same way like, “ytas” when I was trying to write “stay.” I recognize right away that was not what I was trying to write and think, “What? That is not what I was writing!” Then I rewrite it the same way again.
I could look and act normal for short windows of time if I was careful to limit noise, thinking, fluorescent lights, reading, conversations, and stress. Even happy stress sabotaged my days. The day my parents flew in I was looking forward to their arrival. I had a headache and was nauseous all day from the mild excitement!
Needless to say, foster care is stressful. There is no way around it.
I hear some stories about foster children's adoptions that are quick (a year from the time they moved in). The decision and the process to adopt have never been simple for us. We have had children we thought we would adopt that were not to be. The grief from these losses is as real as physical death but the children we love are still alive we just don’t have access to them.
My doctors kept urging me to decrease my stress as my post-concussion symptoms continued to multiply as circumstances and rejection from the children we wanted to adopt continued to become more complicated.
We decided to become guardians when the kids didn’t want to be adopted. Then when someone from the state flew into Fairbanks to do our case study for guardianship the kids said they wanted to live with someone else.
When circumstances didn’t make sense and I felt blindsided by the ones I loved, and friends I trusted, I have begun to learn to listen closer to God’s leading. He is the one I can fully trust. He is my help. He is the one that knows my heart and will help me find hope again.
Our foster children have moved on to another home and I find myself in the broken place again. We have been here before, it doesn’t get easier, but I know I’ll come out the other side. I just haven’t been through it while having health issues.
I am so thankful for my faithful and trustworthy husband. I’m trying to heal and do what the doctors are asking me to do and I see that my symptoms are decreasing now that the kids have moved out. It was never our dream to be parents to ten kids, but we always said that if anyone needed a home and they fit into our family we were open to adopting. These foster children seemed to fit easier into your lives that any other foster children we ever had and we are attached even though they are gone.
Lord, you know that the intent of my heart is to bring you glory in all we do including parenting and loving the children you bring. Right now this is just straight-up painful. Thank you that you love these children more than anyone on this earth ever could, including me.
Bless each of these children with your presence and comfort and heal every hidden hurting place in their hearts. I’m trusting your promises.
As they received Christ Jesus as their Lord, may they continue to live their lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as they were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. Colossians 2:6-7
Help them to remember to “Do everything without complaining and arguing.” Philippians 2:14
And Philippians 4:8 “Whatever is true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.”
May each of them know they are loved, and help them to live in the freedom of who you made them to be. Let them discover the gifts you have given them and develop these gifts for your glory.
My functional neurologist has asked me periodically if I am writing yet. He says I will know that I am getting better when I want to do things I have loved all my life. It has been a year and a half since my accident and until recently my brain injury robbed me of my lifelong joys and desires including teaching, reading, writing, and taking pictures of my kids. Thankfully, I’m able to listen to audiobooks again! This blog has taken three nights to accomplish and each night I have had a headache when I was done, but I can’t put my life on pause forever. Praise God, HOPE is a spark that is beginning to flicker to life. I know I have a ways to go yet, but look at me, I’m writing!
Love is NEVER wasted.
Whatever hard thing you are going through today. Listen to this song and know you can do hard things.