For many years I thought the one great good that came out of my decade of struggling with my older son’s anxiety and mood issues was that I could help others through similar problems. A couple of weeks ago I discovered another silver lining.
One of my other children was recently diagnosed with a serious health issue. As I sat in a support group for parents whose children share this diagnosis, I recognized the barely-holding-it-together look of moms and dads desperately hoping their children will make it.
Yet for some reason I didn’t feel I was tumbling down an emotional mineshaft. What I felt instead was overwhelming gratitude for all I’d gone through with my son.
You see, I knew that a decade of dealing with my son’s difficulties gave me the empathy, the coping skills, the resourcefulness, and the perseverance I'd need to help my other child.
My son’s challenges had taught me that when I don’t know how to handle something, I can learn.
My son’s ups and downs forced me to focus on taking responsibility for what I can control, rather than panic about what I can’t, and have pushed me into the habit of looking at crises as a way to draw closer to God, and lean in to prayer.
The silver lining to my son’s difficulties was that in this new crisis I wasn’t afraid. Instead of being filled with fear, I was filled with gratitude.
I could thank God for the skills he had built up in me over years and years, skills that I hadn’t wanted to learn but that would serve me well. His ways are indeed not my ways, and his thoughts not my thoughts. What a very good thing that is.
