still sad

I'm having a really hard weekend with my girls. 

Emily and Abby are twelve years old and they can't talk.  It is so frustrating!  I can't even imagine what it feels like for them.  They cry when they can't talk.  They cry and cry and cry, then they scream.  Then I cry.  I'm completely powerless. I can't fix them, and I dont' know how to help them. Jeff and I really try, but after a while I am so frustrated-- I'm no longer helping things.  I get mad and overwhelmed, at the end though, I am simply sad.

After all of these years the loss of parts of them is still so sad, so profound.  How can it still be so sad?  It's not like I'm surprised that they cry or that I don't understand.  I know what sets them off, I know they feed on each others crying, which makes it worse.  What I don't know is how to change it. 

Hannah had prom tonight, Sarah had a band concert earlier in the day.  I couldn't stop everything I was doing and wait patiently for the twins to settle down.  What we were doing had  to be done.  Emily and Abby spent a lot of time upset while we were busy with their sisters.  Hannah left, looking beautiful, and band was over--I think Beethoven may have even survived a group of fourth graders. 

I  then turned my attention to the still upset Emily.  I picked up her stiff little body and wiped her runny nose.  She put her head on my shoulder and cried a little more.  I felt my own tears coming for my child.  How I wish I could take it from her. As I held this long person and swayed with her just as I had done when she was a baby, just as I've done her entire life, I felt sorrow fill my heart.  The sudden and raw pain that still jumps into me absolutely shocks me.  It happens so rarely now, but it is just as powerful as the day I first learned of her disability. 

I'm speaking at my church on Monday night, I wrote about how God healed my heart from so much sorrow and loss.  The way He made me new again.  Then a really hard day--probably because I wanted it to be a really happy day-- breaks my heart again.  How many times can my heart actually break for my little girls?  I have a feeling I am going to spend my lifetime finding out.   I keep thinking that I might get to a place where it is peaceful to live in the world of disabilities.  A place where I can find peace.  Does that exist in this human circumstance?  God does not give peace as the world gives it.  I have to just keep running to him, probably not ever understanding here on earth why we walked such a rutted road.  I have to admit, God hurts my feelings a little by not helping me a little more after twelve years of dealing with it.  I still trust His plans and His ways, but I'm sad, and sometimes disappointed.   

Hebrews 12:12
Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees.  Make level paths for your feet, so that the lame would not be disabled, but rather healed. 

This verse means spiritually, but it speaks to me.  As a woman, the heart of my home, leveling my path heals my family.  I can not make Emily  and Abby talk.  I can't even make them calm down and communicate.  I can help to level the path though.  I have to learn to be Jesus to my children, more than I am their mother.  To exhibit patience, kindness, self-control, gentleness, goodness.

Today I need to strengthen my feeble arms and weak knees.  I need to cry a little, break a little and then rest a little in the arms of the one who holds His child, and maybe feels a little sad too.  The sorrow of this world breaks His heart, and the tears of His daughter, he holds in His hand.  I pray tonight for my girls, that God would calm their spirits and give them joy, and I dream of the day when there is no more "still sad".