I recently wrote an article for our church’s newsletter and wanted to post it for other friends to read. It sums up where I’ve been in the past six months–not blogging, but find a new school for our little girl. Here’s the essay.
Recently, as we were driving home from the year’s first soccer practice, my 5 year-old asked me a question.
“Is St. Martin’s a special school for kids who aren’t very smart?”
This was not an innocent question. Lena was envious of the girl with the long blond braids on her soccer team. She was digging dirt on her. I’ve never heard of that school…What kind of sorry place is it? She was on a mission to seek and destroy.
I told her, of course, “St. Martin’s is just a regular school for regular kids, and even if it weren’t, God wants us to be kind to each other.”
Lena’s cruel intentions rattled me, and I said a prayer for her. Parenting isn’t easy. There are no atheists in foxholes, or minivans, either.
I have a new understanding of God our Father, now that I am Jane their Mother. I remember finding clumps of hair in Lena’s room, realizing the children had cut their own hair. I called and called for them. They had hidden from me under the bed, as Adam and Eve hid from God in the garden, guilty and ashamed.
In the car that day, Lena’s sin nature on display made me want to hold her closer. It made her all the more vulnerable in my eyes. And that fact made me realize how God can love me through my failings. My sins seem huge to me, but to Him, I’m just His little girl in the backseat, plotting her earthly designs.
“Is St. Martin’s a special school for kids who aren’t very smart?”
Maybe the question stayed with me, also, for the Sophoclean irony of it.
Lena doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to The Schenck School next year, a special school for children who have dyslexia.
I have been working behind the scenes, preparing this path for her, and it’s one she will resent and resist. She loves her current school. It has a castle and cheerleaders and ice cream on Fridays. If it was up to her, an army of cheerleaders couldn’t budge her from it. But she’s only five. She doesn’t know what’s best for her. She isn’t in control.
Neither am I. And the fact that I have made plans for her that she can’t see reminds me that God has a plan for me also, a plan I cannot see, which I may resist and rail against like a child. : “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11 NIV)
The brains of people with dyslexia are wired differently. They can be taught new strategies. Through practice, their brains can build new pathways to compensate, but the dyslexia never totally goes away. What schools like Schenck offer is remediation.
As soon as we learned of Lena’s diagnosis of dyslexia, we realized it was an opportunity for her. I thanked God for the words of Paul, that adversity teaches perseverance, and perseverance yields strength, and strength, hope. ( _)
And in writing this, I’m beginning to see dyslexia as a metaphor for our earthly condition.
The secular world would just as soon see us stumble along, illiterate to His Word and way, but God has a special school for us. He is in the process of rewiring our hearts.
As sinners, our hearts are naturally broken. We throw dirt. We hide under the bed. We are missing the ability to read other people as Christ read them, but knowing God, immersing our self in His word, and obeying the call of the Holy Spirit: these are our sacred remediation. Like dyslexia, our sin nature never goes away. We can’t be cured, but still there is hope, because Christ died for us and made it right.
When Mary Magdalene came into the tomb, and finally recognized the stranger there, she didn’t call Him Father, she called Him Teacher, and every disadvantage, insult or obstacle, we face, whether humdrum or great, is an opportunity to be taught by Him.
It is beautiful to hear Christ call my little girl into the trials of her own life. The comfort of the castle will pale in comparison to the wonderful, rugged adventure God will lay out for her through a faithful walk.
My hope is that Lena will learn to say with confidence, as Paul did in Philippians 4:12-13: “I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”