"I am tough and very tough."
There is a heaviness around my heart this Friday morning. It has been building and growing since a week ago Wednesday when Lacy and I went to LifeStyles celebration luncheon and he fell on the sidewalk.
These falls always seem to happen in slow motion. Even while I was reaching to catch him, he was careening away from me, stumbling until his hands reached out and slammed against the glass doors of the convention center and his knees slammed into the concrete.
He sat dazed for a few seconds. He did not cry out. I would have dropped to the concrete beside him and held him, but he doesn't like to be touched. So I stood there, encouraging him to stay where he was for just a few minutes, and waiting while caregivers hurried to our aid.
I asked him over and over where he was hurting. "I'm all right," he kept saying. "I am tough and very tough, Mom. And that's all there is to it."
I don't know how to explain the reaction I have when Lacy has a fall or loses function - physical or mental - but it is similar to the dazed look on Lacy's face when he fell. I feel light-headed, a little dazed myself. Kenny says he feels the same way. Seems that these incidents always happen when we are just beginning to get used to the way things are; our new normal that changes every few months. We begin to forget that HD will shock us again with its relentless progression. Nothing is safe from this disease. Like locusts that march across the landscape eating everything in their path, HD will steal, kill, and destroy.
I can imagine farmers shaking their fists at the locusts devouring everything that had been labored over so long, tended so carefully. I shake an emotional fist at HD, knowing that it won't make a difference.
It is at these moments that I most believe in the goodness of God. Not because He will make things better, but because He will not leave any of us. Not Lacy, with his failing muscles and fractured mind; not Kenny, with a father's heart and a painfully complete knowledge of what is ahead; not me, with a mother's anguish that her son is suffering.
The Prophet Joel writes: "I will repay you for the years the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter..." (Joel 2:25)
We will be alright; our little family will endure. In the life to come, we will be given so much more than has been taken from us, of this I am certain.
"So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day." 2 Corinthians 4:16
These falls always seem to happen in slow motion. Even while I was reaching to catch him, he was careening away from me, stumbling until his hands reached out and slammed against the glass doors of the convention center and his knees slammed into the concrete.
He sat dazed for a few seconds. He did not cry out. I would have dropped to the concrete beside him and held him, but he doesn't like to be touched. So I stood there, encouraging him to stay where he was for just a few minutes, and waiting while caregivers hurried to our aid.
I asked him over and over where he was hurting. "I'm all right," he kept saying. "I am tough and very tough, Mom. And that's all there is to it."
I don't know how to explain the reaction I have when Lacy has a fall or loses function - physical or mental - but it is similar to the dazed look on Lacy's face when he fell. I feel light-headed, a little dazed myself. Kenny says he feels the same way. Seems that these incidents always happen when we are just beginning to get used to the way things are; our new normal that changes every few months. We begin to forget that HD will shock us again with its relentless progression. Nothing is safe from this disease. Like locusts that march across the landscape eating everything in their path, HD will steal, kill, and destroy.
I can imagine farmers shaking their fists at the locusts devouring everything that had been labored over so long, tended so carefully. I shake an emotional fist at HD, knowing that it won't make a difference.
It is at these moments that I most believe in the goodness of God. Not because He will make things better, but because He will not leave any of us. Not Lacy, with his failing muscles and fractured mind; not Kenny, with a father's heart and a painfully complete knowledge of what is ahead; not me, with a mother's anguish that her son is suffering.
The Prophet Joel writes: "I will repay you for the years the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter..." (Joel 2:25)
We will be alright; our little family will endure. In the life to come, we will be given so much more than has been taken from us, of this I am certain.
"So we do not lose heart. Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day." 2 Corinthians 4:16
Thank you for sharing once again. I really like the scripture you put, 2 Corinthians 4:16 We love you guys.
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