Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

Waiting on the Other Shoe to Drop

However you want to call it, we all experience this fear sometimes daily and it can choke the life out of you. You know what it is: the fear of regression.

You see a symptom or feel a symptom and before you can even say “boo” your mind has fallen off the deep end into the fear of a regression syndrome.

Because we have all experienced real, actual downturns, or setbacks along the journey, we know regressions can take place. We also know that as time goes on, mostly they are shorter and less severe – for the most part.

There are however’s, however, that include getting exposed to anther pathogen, chemical, or environmental hazard that trips a trigger in your immune system and sets off a calculated domino effect that seems to have an endless bottom. These are the ones that make me want to live in a bubble.

Like the one 1 1/2 ago where we stayed at a family member’s house for Thanksgiving, where we encountered a toxic black mold exposure that took us almost 6 months to recover from. Or the one that we stayed in a small town toxic smoke filled hotel (no other choice) and took 2 months to recover from. In the old days, 2 doses of dye free Motrin could set my son on a tailspin that could make me cry to watch it and fight for days to recover.

Each one and each time, wondering, praying, is this going to be the one that is the worst. Is this going to be the one that won’t disappear. Will this one take me heaven?

Believe me, I’ve been on the yo-yo now for 9 years and it flat out sucks. You would think I would have gotten brilliant at handling them, but no. I’m only a human and have only so much gumption for one lifetime and feel like I’ve used up my gracious fighting spirit to the last drop. Watching my kids regress is the one that literally feels like a knife in my back – it kills me to watch. Give the illness back to me and let me fight this wicked beast, but stay away from my kids.

The mommy guilt will come on with a vengeance, as they got these weakened immune systems from me and all of my evil pathogens straight in the womb. I beg and plead for them to be normal, to regain strength, to live and play and love without recourse to their fragile physical state.

And then I wake up surprised to see my son able to play flag football and get into the finals in the speech contest at his school. I see my daughter graciously and compassionately helping others and sweetly dancing in dance class.

Are they getting stronger, are they getting “normal”? Ummmm, not sure normal is ever a word I will utter. But I’m quite sure of one thing. The normal days I do not take for granted. I cherish them, every last one and beg for them to continue and grow longer and stay stronger and live, love and laugh better.

I don’t need for their lives to be comfortable or without issues, just without regression. Those of us with chronic kids know how distinctly important that difference is. I talk to them about it often, the burden they have to bear at such young ages that most grown ups don’t even encounter. It must be because God is preparing them for some amazing work to build depth to their characters so young. I will cling to that hope that this will help them someday cope with what life throws at them with more grace and patience than I have stumbled through this thing. That one ride of the bronking bull won’t throw them the first time or every time like it seems to do me.

I have to settle my heart in the end on truth or the regression fear and checking the weather report for flying shoes will sap my strength. Though now for a little while you many have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold (1 Peter 1:6-7)

I love how The Message says it – I know how great this makes you feel, even though you have to put up with every kind of aggravation in the meantime. Pure gold put in the fire comes out of it proved pure; genuine faith put through this suffering comes out proved genuine.

There is no doubt a purification process happening in our lives of suffering and “unnormality” that will be proved PURE and GENUINE.

Blessings,

Janice

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