We have a saying, “What we do isn’t always fun, comfortable, or easy, but we do what is right.” That saying of ours helped us through caring for four parents in their last years, and helps us in the care of our son (who’ll be 40 this year!).
FUN: Our job descriptions in caring for one with special needs seldom has the word “fun” in it. The reason? Because it’s a lot of work, work we gladly do because of our love for our child, but the reality is that fun isn’t always a word we can use. However, we tease how much “fun” some things are with our son, or try to turn things around to find ways to “make things fun”—or funny—by jumping the tracks to find ways to notice “perks” in our special needs life: handicapped stickers/car decals for close parking spaces, people who give us freebies like baseballs, bats, caps, etc. We call our son our “free magnet” and we do appreciate what others share with him and we make it fun!
COMFORTABLE: Again, most of us don’t have the comfort of many of our friends. For us, in our retirement years, we’re still tucking in an adult child and waking to him as our alarm. That isn’t a horrible thing, and we actually like it, but for others, you jump to medical alarms going off, poopy diapers on an adult child who needs changing, caring for young ladies with their periods; the list goes on. Yet we can turn those moments around on the tracks, to be able to say that it’s our privilege to get to care for them, rather than someone else having to do it for us.
EASY: We all know this on various levels. Life isn’t easy and never will be, while we have our child with us. Even if there is a time our child leaves us for a support home or facility, we know there is difficulty emotionally and it’s not easy. The complications of medicines, surgeries, seizures, sleepless nights and long days, etc. has us all realizing how challenging our responsibilities are. It’s endless. But perhaps when we recognize someone who has a bit more of a challenge than we do, we can recognize that “easy” is a perspective. We know every day is different, and we try to find something that went well in each day so that we don’t get discouraged. Changing a big train to another track isn’t easy, but when one knows how to do it, we realize it can be done.
WHAT’S RIGHT: By “turning things around” in our thinking, we can choose to do what is right. For most of us we can quickly have a thought about how difficult things are and change that thought to the reality of the need to do what’s right. We often ask ourselves, “So, if we look over our shoulder and see a train coming toward us, what will we do?” Well, we can either try to out run it, we can get run over by it, or we can jump on and enjoy the ride. We choose the last one!
Join us in the New Year as we jump on the train and enjoy the ride! It’s the best way to know we’re on the right track!
Happy New Year! 2021 has to be better than 2020, right?
Dr. Joe and Cindi Ferrini share their newest book: Love All-Ways: Embracing Marriage Together on the Special Needs Journey (order at www.cindiferrini.com). They are authors, speakers, and bloggers for several blogging sites on marriage, family and special needs. They speak nationally for FamilyLife Weekend To Remember Marriage Get-a-Ways, authored Unexpected Journey – When Special Needs Change our Course, and have been interviewed on Focus on the Family, FamilyLife Today, Janet Parshall at “In the Market”, Chris Brooks of “Equipped” and various other radio and television venues. Connect with them at: www.cindiferrini.com, and via social media at www.facebook.com/cindi.ferrini, www.facebook.com/UnexpectedJourney/ and www.facebook.com/MyMarriageMatters/.
