This week my child’s presentation evoked many emotions at one time in my heart.
Each week at Classical Conversations the kids have a few minutes to make a presentation. The topics vary according to the child’s interests or parent’s convincing powers. Krisann has done presentations on numerous animals. She has also done presentations on many of her DIY crafts. However, this week, she chose a presentation that took me by surprise. She decided she was going to tell her class about MS. We did not rehearse or practice beforehand.
One of the favorite questions by the kids is, “Why did you pick this topic?” Sure enough, after her presentation, someone asked the favorite question. Krisann’s response was since her dad had come earlier for family presentation and the kids had all seen him in his wheelchair, that she thought she would tell them about MS. And that is what she did!
It was one of those moments that I wish I had been videotaping it, but that would have probably changed the entire dynamics. Krisann stood up, introduced herself and told the class her topic was MS. She then proceeded to explain that MS happens when the brain tells the body what to do, but the communication doesn’t get to the body because it gets messed up along the way. Krisann gave a couple of practical examples. She told the kids to imagine having to look at the world through glasses with vasoline rubbed all over the lens or walking around and up and down stairs with flippers on your feet. (These were some of the things she experienced at MS Camp last summer. You can read about the MS camp here.
At this point in her presentation, she stopped and just stood silently in front of her class. I wasn’t 100% positive what she was doing, was she thinking of what else she was going to say or was she emotional? My gut instinct told me she was trying hard not to cry, but once again I wasn’t sure. In what seemed like an eternity, she started speaking again. She said something to the effect that her dad had a rare type of MS and that is why he was in a wheelchair. She told the class he was worse than most MS patients. And then she asked for questions.
Her class can be a silly class, but their questions were phenomenal. She knew the answer to some questions, and for other questions, she didn’t know the answer, but that was okay!
I was SOOOO proud of her. I couldn’t believe she did that so calmly and so bravely. However, my heart felt sad that she could present that topic. The rest of the day she was off emotionally as well. I think her presentation caused her little emotional self to be imbalanced.
We finished our day and headed to gymnastics, then dinner, and life happened. We were busy, so the topic of her presentation didn’t come up until bedtime. As we were praying, I thanked God that Krisann was so brave doing her presentation. And then Krisann piped in with her prayer, “Thank you God that you helped me not cry.” So if my heart had not already been sad, this made me very sad yet happy at the same time. Happy that my girl recognizes God working in her life, but sad that she was sad enough to cry.
Remember that time when I said she became quiet, and I was wondering what she was doing, she was having an emotional moment and was waiting so that she would be composed when she spoke again. She also felt deeply about the next words she was about to say.
After our prayer time, she and I had the sweetest conversation about how her presentation made her sad. She and I snuggled, I listened to her heart and identified with her pain. I think watching your children experience pain and knowing there is nothing you can do to fix it leaves you feeling helpless and utterly dependent on God to minister to your child’s heart. This was one of those conversations.
Some days MS stinks worse than others.
My last few posts have centered around my eating disorder so I thought I would take a few minutes to give an update on the MS side of life.
Zine had an eye appointment last week, and his good eye had declined pretty significantly from a year ago. They made several changes to his glasses. No wonder he sees a special eye doctor. When we went to order his glasses, they had to get the optometrist to check out how they input into their computer system to account for the things they had going with his lens prescription.
Zine also had some bloodwork done last week. We discovered that his platelet count was low. The hematologist is going to recheck in 6 weeks. Being the detective that I am, I reached out to Dr. L’s office. I asked if the chemo he took a few years ago could cause this. The answer was yes. Come to find out, Dr. L’s office has been monitoring his platelet count as well and realized that it was dropping. I don’t know what will happen if his platelets continue to decline. That is an unanswered question at this point. Some things you don’t ask unless you know you have to. So, we will continue to wait patiently and see what his platelets do.
We continue to see a slow decline in what Zine can do. Getting into bed now is near impossible. It takes as much energy for him to get from the wheelchair into bed as it does for me to run three miles. It is one difficult feat. One of the declines that troubles me the most is the change in his thinking process. He’s still as brilliant as ever, but sometimes thoughts don’t make it through the lines it needs to make it through. Last week, we had one of those instances, where I looked at him and said, “It’s a good thing you have MS or else you would be in big trouble right now.” We laughed, and so did the ladies in the eye doctors office. Humor is a coping mechanism we choose to use to counteract stressful moments.
As you can see, life continues to be in perpetual change. However, to us, it feels normal. And this week that normal includes my child’s presentation that evoked many emotions in my heart.
What’s interesting is this week, I had a podcast episode released where I talk about Krisann being a good gift that I didn’t think I wanted. No, in the moment of coming to acceptance of having another child, I was pretty confident I did not want another baby. But even this week, when I watched Krisann give her presentation, my heart was assured, God has special plans for that child. I walk confidently in that truth. I can’t predict what that plan is, but I know it is good and it is something special. You can listen to that podcast here.
