The Promotion

I was driving home yesterday and as I waited for a light to turn green, I was looking through some old memories on Facebook. A picture popped up of one of my twins on the day he got his braces removed. I didn’t pay attention to the date, but it was probably about 6 years ago.  It was an old enough photo that I couldn’t help but stare at it because it highlighted not only newly straightened teeth, but also how much that kid has grown and matured in the last few years.  The light turned green and as I pushed the gas pedal down slowly, the tears started. I’m not a super emotional person and seeing an old photo of a grown up kid does not always send me into tears, but seeing that picture brought to the surface something I’ve been pushing down for several months. This son of mine graduated from high school in May – a major accomplishment in life, especially for someone with the obstacles he had to face.  He was a preemie, weighing only 2 lbs., 8 oz. at birth. He had lots of surgeries for plumbing issues as a baby and at 2 yrs. old,  had to get a g-button (a type of feeding tube) because he had severe reflux and was becoming malnourished.  Around kindergarten, he was diagnosed with ADHD and by 1st grade, with Autism.  In the last couple of years, he has also been diagnosed with epilepsy.  He struggled with school and needed lots of extra help to get through. He worked really hard to graduate and I couldn’t have been prouder.  Unfortunately, the end of high school is only the beginning of adult life and that’s where we are now.  And it’s scary. He is one of the kindest, sweetest, most loving people I know and he loves to be around people and desperately desires to be important and needed. Like we all do. Sometimes I feel very sad for him because I know his struggles in life are not over.  He tried some college classes and it just wasn’t his thing. He got a job at Wendy’s and it didn’t work out. So we have begun to seek help with agencies that exist to help people with similar struggles.  He is in the process of getting trained in various ways in order to be able to get and keep a job. I know he will succeed, but watching the struggle is hard on my heart sometimes because I know it’s hard on his. When I saw that picture of him, at about 13 years old, beaming and just happy to not have braces anymore, it broke my heart a little because he didn’t have a care in the world and now he does. I see it in his face sometimes. He’s scared, too. Being a responsible adult is a lot and he knows it.  When he decided he didn’t want to go back to community college this semester, I said that was okay – he is an adult and he gets to make decisions about his own life. But since his job training has not started yet he had nothing purposeful to do and after a couple of weeks of basically sitting at home, I told him to start volunteering somewhere because it was not good to be at home so much with very little to do.  (I know, I just said he was an adult and could make his own decisions…mostly).  He had done some volunteering at the local food pantry a couple of summers ago with me, so he got online and signed up.  I expected him to sign up maybe once or twice a week, but he wrote down his schedule and brought it to me and he had signed up to volunteer 4 times a week. Okay buddy, don’t let me hold ya back.  He would have to Uber to and from the food pantry most of the time because he doesn’t drive and my work schedule doesn’t allow me to give him the rides. So he started volunteering. It’s his very own thing that he signs up for online every week, sets up his own Uber rides, gets himself up to go, does whatever they ask him to do, and then he Ubers home.  That, in itself, is amazing. I’m super impressed with him for doing all of that independently. I ask him a lot how his day went and he usually says ‘Fine’. Then I ask what he did and he usually says ‘I stocked shelves.’ Today when I got home, he came to the kitchen and I asked how his day went, ‘It was good’ was his answer. He stood there and I could tell he had more to tell, so I asked again what he did today and he said ‘I started filling grocery orders. By myself.’ And I wish you could have seen the look on that kid’s face. He was so proud. I told him what a big deal that was and how proud I was of him and that it was kinda like he got a promotion.  I don’t even care that I may have overdone it a little because that is really how I feel and I could see on his face that he felt the same way. We reveled in this ‘small’ step forward. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that God gave him and me this little boost today. We needed some encouragement and a reminder that our sweet, loving Father is interested in the details of our lives and is never going to let us down or give up on us. We’re gonna struggle, yes. But we are never alone and never forgotten and the plan God has for us is perfect. He rejoices with us when we get our braces off and when we graduate from high school.  He holds our hand when the future is scary and we struggle.  He gives us hope exactly when we need it most in the most unexpected ways like a promotion from stocker to grocery order filler.