I've lived through many of my own pits throughout my life. I completely understand the varying shades of darkness with depression and health. I've been there, I've asked for relief through the going home to God when there. So I know the truth of this other more horrendous pit. The pit where instead of asking for relief through leaving, you beg for more time and more help and promise a willingness to do anything for it.
After years of crying myself to sleep at night because my child was in this pit - this hell - and knowing that he didn't even recognize the hell it was yet, we have just crested the top. And I sit here weeping because I didn't know if there would ever be an end to the climb. I certainly didn't expect the Lord to bless us so quickly.
I look back and know that to some people, four years seems like a long time and my thanking the Lord for the quickness is ridiculous. But when you've spent years believing that the trial will never end for him in this life, four years is miraculous! And I just can't stop weeping for joy.
Landon's gone through a lot in his short life! His birth was traumatic. We were lucky to have a doctor available to catch the problem immediately and save him from death at birth. Not two years later, he nearly lost his arms in a horrific burn accident. A miracle to this day for the doctors and nursers that attended him over all those months. And then after his first and second years at kindergarten, when he could not read a single word, he was diagnosed as dyslexic. He wasn't just your "run-of-the-mill dyslexic" either, but one of the worst cases those that worked with him had ever seen.
But God stepped in and blessed us in ways that didn't become apparent until now.
We moved into a "little" home in 2004. It was the "good-enough-for-now-to-be-replaced-with-something-more-appropriate-later house". It is small, in far rural country and to be honest, with primitive facilities. There are only one set of schools for the whole town and it's a good-ol-boy town to boot. But I KNEW we were supposed to live here. The Lord spoke to my heart immediately when I walked into the house and said that this was the place. And over the years, we've talked about moving to someplace larger with our expanding and maturing family, but it has never felt right.
Today, I know why we were brought here. This home is situated in a place where the school district was bad enough that I home schooled after several years of trying to work with them. It was because of homeschooling and my girlfriend, a teacher I had met several years earlier around the corner, in the same neighborhood, that I asked for some help with Landon's reading program. It turns out she's a Bi-Lingual Dyslexia Therapist, which I didn't know at the time, and was the one to diagnose Landon as dyslexic. Then she worked with him for a year and a half and we would spend about 3 hours a day at home working on what she had done in her two lessons a week that we felt we could try school again.
In the meantime, Colbey had reach high school age and wanting him to have a high school experience, we were able to get him into the next town overs school the year before they closed all out-of-district-student-tranfers. Because Colbey squeaked in that final year, the other two were grandfathered in the following year we enrolled them. This is a school district that is the closest thing to a private school you'll find in all of Texas, perhaps even more, in a public arena. This is an amazing school district and we are VERY blessed to be in it!
This school district has a dyslexia specialist on every single campus and we've been blessed to work with an extremely special one for the last year and a half.
So this boy, who I have cried myself to sleep more times than I can count because he had NO FUTURE without the ability to read, whose personal pit of hell has been gaping and looming and torturing me for the last four years had been slowly being given the tools to make that ladder to climb out. Tools that seemed insignificant and singularly unrelated to each other. But this morning, as I checked my emails on a rare day that I'm not working, I received an email that has sent me to my knees in thanksgiving and tears of joy.
This is the email:
I just had to tell you how AMAZING your child is! I’ll be sending you home the full results of his testing from the last book, but just had to let you know that he read the passage better than ANY student I have ever had! He only made four mistakes out of 250 words! -Just incredible! I am so proud of him and all the reading he does outside of school! Thanks so much for all your support!
Shelly J
Shelly Spears, LDT, CALT
Dyslexia Therapist
Rucker Elementary, Prosper ISD
God's grace has been shining down on us for all these many years, even before I knew we would need it. And in the grand scheme of things, my prayers have been answered so quickly. I know that you reading this will probably never be able to understand how significant this is and how miraculous that in just 4 years my child went from having no possible way to have a future or ever supporting a family of his own, to surmounting this trial and doing it with humor and tenacity and amazing ability. It gives me greater insight into the knowledge that the Lord's time and plan is far superior to anything I may come up with! It shows me how much He loves us to start us on the path to overcoming before the need to ever arose!
I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father and for His angels that minister to us here on the earth. I am grateful for faithful children willing to follow the promptings of the Spirit that lead them to the places where they will be needed - to be those angels. I pray that I may someday show my appreciation to all those, specifically Robin and Shelly, by being an answering angel to someone else in need.
.JPG)
