eSpecially Parents June Edition: Elisa's Story

Your Fathering that Makes Me Smile

As mother of a “different” child, my key role is to shine a guiding light on the path God paved  for him. All along that path are my son’s gifts that illuminate the darker days - days I cannot even grasp a glimpse of light. I am grateful that God’s plan for me is that I do not walk the parenting path alone. In our days and nights of chaos and commotion, I can draw just enough of my sweet husband’s determination to keep focus on the higher things. My fortune is to have a hand to hold as I walk a challenging path. So many things you do remind me daily of the gift of laughter – little things like:

I love that you are “thankful” when you get home at night to see that we cleaned all the windows in the house with baby wipes.

I love the way you cut chicken from the bone into perfect Samson-sized bites with the precision of a surgeon.

I love how you combine the colors, plaids, and stripes of Samson’s clothes on Saturday mornings when you both go to the farm market.

I love how you comforted Samson on that night he thought the valet at a restaurant was stealing our car and that we never used the valet service after that.

I love how calm you can be when the cops are parked in front of our house when Mrs. Hoffman reported that we had been robbed when she saw the screen to Samson’s bathroom window had been punched out.

I love that it never surprises you when you drive up and see that the front lawn is full of toothbrushes, socks, and stuffed cats.

I love how calm you can be when I tell you about our dear boy’s daily whirl of destruction through the house and how the pile of stuff that needs to be glued back together gets larger.

I love how you can still shoehorn yourselves together to both fit in your chair during football season, and how you laugh when Samson mimics the quarterback and shows off his throwing arm.

I love the way you do not seem to mind when Samson cuts all the pictures of cars from magazines (even issues you haven’t read) and tapes them on the walls to decorate the kitchen.

I’ll cherish forever how you looked the first time you held our son in the early hours of his birth, and how I knew from that moment that you would never be the same.


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