Success!

Raising a child with varying emotional and behavioral diagnoses is a challenge, no doubt.  Actually, raising any child is a challenge...kids who have different disorders just take a different path.

Sometimes, depending on the disorder, the path goes up mountains, down through valleys, crosses oceans on a rickety boat and requires tremendous skill and dexterity.  Other times, it's like skipping through the park.  I think when you're used to sailing on a rowboat through a hurricane, you're so much more thankful for those days you get to skip through the park.

I actually shouldn't call it days, because with my son, it's often moments.  We have skipping moments mixed with mountain climbing followed by swimming the English Channel and finishing with watching the stars.  You just never know what life is going to bring with that kid.

Today we had a wonderful skipping through the park moment.  I'm so thankful for that, and for him to experience that success.  He came home from school and announced that his dad and I would be proud of him, then produced two school papers that had been graded 100%.  Yes, I was proud (insanely proud, actually, because although he's incredibly bright he struggles to interpret information and get it on the page accurately).  But more than my own pride, I was so pleased for him.  The sound in his voice--that he believed in himself--was worth a million bucks.

I've blogged for over a year now about our lives...how much this child struggles, my fears and dreams and wishes and goals for him.  His fears and dreams for himself.  A year ago he was in a residential facility, struggling with daily living and making appropriate choices that should have been easy for a child much younger than him.

And today he brought home two 100% papers from school.

God is good and we are blessed.  My son is an inspiration to me, and I'm so proud to be part of his journey...no matter where it takes me.