Our New Lease

Every once in a while, the stars align and, yet again, you get to lease an angel. All the dead ends and speed bumps along the way make it worth it because the road brings you to these people that you feel honored to bring in to your child's life. Therapist, respite, teacher, nurse, doctor, surgeon.
This is their job.
They downplay their role in our life. They try to turn it around to give us the credit. They discount the magnitude of the joy and relief I feel seeing him connect with others outside our family.
They love him and they get him. And they get me, which is also a task. When I see Luke run to any of these people and embrace them, I feel a tightness I didn't even realize that was there, release. He is going to be ok. One day, when I am not here anymore, he is going to be ok.

Knowing they are my safety net. Knowing that they pick up what I miss.... That is the reason I am ok. That is the reason Luke is ok.

Luke started school today. Now, not preschool in a conventional kind of atmosphere. We aren't there yet.
Today he started homebound school. This is a program for medically or emotionally fragile students in public schools to still receive an education, even if they can't come to school with the other kids.
So as the buses full of students pulled away from Mt. Tabor, where I work, I clocked out as a teacher and for the first time, I stood on the sidewalk and became just a mom. We walked into the building and I swelled with pride, hoping to run in to people in the hallway who have been praying for and rooting for Luke for almost four years.
We walked hand-in-hand to the classroom and I watched Luke explore and process his new environment with no fear and so much excitement and wonder. His teacher is someone I have had the privilege of knowing for twenty years and someone I have been working with and in awe of for 10. She, just like so many people who are in Luke's life, reinforces the Special in "Special Needs". They are people you pass in the grocery store and have no idea the lifesaving talents and gifts they possess.
When we first walked in I had convinced myself that it was just like another therapy session, no big deal.
But as we pulled out of the parking lot, it hit me. And yet again, the realization began to leak from my tear ducts.
Luke just went to school. Luke just used crayons. Luke just sat at a table... on tile...without a helmet.
Luke Harrison, the boy who had 15 seizures a day in December just went to school.

To the angels in our life now and the ones we have yet to encounter, remember, your drive to work might as well be in a chariot with trumpets blaring in the background.
I know you don't get paid much, but I know that money is not what fills the account that you value the most.
​The work you do matters.
The work you do is noticed and appreciated and valued.
The work you do saves.
Thank you, Angels, for being available for lease...