Strength

Isaiah 41:10 

 fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; 
I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous hand.

                                                     

Every now and then when I am giving Jordan his supplements I think about what an amazing little guy he is. Not because most parents think all their kids are amazing, or even the fact that because he has autism. And all parents that have children with autism think they are amazing, because....well, they are amazing. Despite of all their challenges, kids with autism are the most lovable, special, unique children God has ever created. But Jordan, he is a trooper, my trooper. I say he is my trooper because since the young age of 4 when he started treatments directed by his DAN! doctor, he has had to endure so many things. Supplements, diet changes, blood drawings, urine/stool/saliva collections, green juices, and chelation and possibly some other things I've forgotten. Yet he is the most happy of the children that I have.

A typical day starts out with him taking 3 supplements. If it is a urine collection Saturday he has to take 24 pills in juice within 15 minutes even though he downs it in less than 2. If it's a chelation weekend, when he comes home from school I have to give him the DMSA and from there he has to drink every 4 hours. So in the middle of the night and early in the morning I am waking him up to drink. Sometimes taking him to the bathroom as well to make sure he doesn't have any accidents. Throughout all of it I look at him and think he is a kid of amazing strength. When we have pizza in the house, a food that he loves, he goes on about his normal routine and doesn't look to have any. He'll take whatever food he has in the house if he is hungry at that time. When summer starts and all of the other kids are at home and he's the only one that has to get up and head to ESY (by the way I loathe ESY) he gets up just as happy as he does everyday, and gets on the bus without a care. It could be because he's been doing it ever since he was 3, or because he doesn't really quite understand all that's going on. Whichever it is it just makes me look at him as one of the strongest persons of this household.

Being the one that has to give him 12 different supplements a day, 6 of them I give him 2 times a day and 1 I have to administer 3 times a day, every time he eats, it's hard to watch all of this happen before my eyes even if it is to help him become better. Because it's simply not a normal life. No other kid in the household do I have to call in the kitchen every couple of hours to take some supplement, or wake up in the middle of the night to drink something that will rid their bodies of a toxic element. But it has become normal to me. Not because I feel that I have the strength to handle all this without feeling sad or overwhelmed. Part of it is that it has because the normal thing for me to do daily, but all of it is because of God. Philippians 4:13 says "I can do all things through him who strengthens me." Nothing I do, nor the strength that I have to do anything that I do when it comes to autism is of me. My strength to give him his supplements, send him off to school in the summer when everyone else is home, wake up in the middle of the night for chelation, the struggle to understand what he's trying to say, and the frustration of knowing my son can't converse with me like others comes from my Lord and Savior. 

I thank and praise the Lord daily because without him I couldn't do this. I couldn't watch my son take all these medicine and not feel some sort of guilt as to why he is taking them. I couldn't send him to school with no worries as to what's happening to him while he's there or that he has to attend some sort of summer school while the other kids get to relax at home. I would give in to his requests to have french fries from McDonald's or pizza from Pizza Hut because of the sad look on his face like I did in the past. But because the Man upstairs bears all my burdens for me, all I have to do is the work and enjoy the benefits. Psalm 18:32-34 " the God who equipped me with strength and made my way blameless. He made my feet like the feet of a deer  and set me secure on the heights. He trains my hands for war, so that my arms can bend a bow of bronze."