Dreading The Morning

Dreading The Morning August 6, 2014

Here it is nearly 11:00 and I’m still not sleeping. I have to be up at 5:30, but I can’t stop my mind long enough for sleep to find me.

Tomorrow morning is the neuromuscular specialist, Dr I. There is no anticipation of help, only dread. I’m afraid of hearing Conversion even with proof otherwise. When has a neurologist listened to us? When have they investigated except to prove their colleague’s theories, reverse engineering until they arrive where they want to be? There once was a time that we hoped and prayed for doctors to find nothing wrong, but a mere four months later and we’re praying that they do. Please to find, to acknowledge, to see….please can she see the things that we see? Can she, if not name them, say that they exist? I don’t know where we go from this point if she doesn’t. It is a dead end, a box from which I don’t see an escape.
And then too, our eldest is leaving. The tiny girl we once held and marveled that she was ours…and she’ll be gone. She has packed her possessions up, and they stand in our garage neat stacks, ready to be moved to her apartment. Her apartment. That just feels so wrong. How is it already time for our house to be no longer her home? I am not ready for this.
I had plans for this last summer. There were things we were to have done, and smiles and laughter…and they were overrun by the drama of Ella’s legs. So much has been lost to this march toward answers. Time doesn’t stop because life spins past it, and now she’s grown. I worry about how our family will function once the children lose their captain. She has been their mother hen and the director of fun for the whole of their lives. She is their role model, keeper of secrets, and amazing big sister; and they are already crying at the thought of her departure.
It is right and good that she should grow up and become a woman on her own. We didn’t raise her to be a woman who was dependent and clinging….and she’s not. She’s strong and determined, and such a source of joy for out whole family, that tomorrow night’s prayers will ache without her.
So I’m dreading the morning and the day it will bring with it, the morning for fear and the rest for sorrow. It will be a day of tears and pride, a demented mix of wistfulness and the inevitability of growing up. I can only pray for the calm and peace in the eye of the storm and to be carried safely through to the other side.
Let’s not let it all go to waste, shall we? Please let me offer it up for you, just tell me if you need prayers today.

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