11/12/21

 Peter’s Shadow

            Now many signs and wonders were done among the people through the apostles. And they were all together in Solomon’s Portico.  None of the rest dared to join them, but the people held them in high esteem. Yet more than ever believers were added to the Lord, great numbers of both men and women,  so that they even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on cots and mats, in order that Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as he came by.  A great number of people would also gather from the towns around Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those tormented by unclean spirits, and they were all cured.

Acts 5:12-16

            What is the craziest therapy you have ever tried?  I assume that it does not reach the level of Bring-your-sick-to-the-temple-so-that-the-shadow-of-a-prophet-could-pass-over-them-and-they-will-be-restored.  What are all the things that you have tried?

            We have done weighted blankets and vests.  That helped for a while.  We tried hanging swings and installing slides in my son’s room so that he could get some swinging motion and movement during the cold winter months.  We tried diet changes…so many diet changes.  We tried cutting out dairy and we tried cutting out gluten.  We cut out yeast and sugar because there was a thought that he had an overabundance of yeast in his system and we tried getting it out through diet.  We tried letting him cry himself to sleep which never worked.  We tried music therapy.  We tried martial arts.  We tried a treadmill.  We tried no media.  We tried all the media.  We tried headphones and earplugs to bring the world’s volume level down.  We tried pets.  Complete disaster.  We tried turning our garage into a beach complete with sand and a filled wading pool.  We tried swimming and weightlifting and painting and meditation.  We tried lying on our stomachs to do homework because that was supposed to help with concentration.  Mostly that just hurt my back.  Oh…then there was cross country running…those are not pleasant memories for me.

            There are plenty of other pursuits that we have tried for either short-term or long-term periods.  We are always on the lookout for opportunities and activities and therapies that will help our son move towards a healthier life.  The people in the Portico were in a similar place.  They had come to the end of traditional medicine.  There was nothing else that they could do other than hope and pray for a miracle.  Peter’s shadow seemed like as good a miracle-delivery-device as anything else.

            What do we do when we have come to the end of the treatments?  What do we do when our therapists say that there is nothing more that they can do for our kids?  Do we dive into medications?  Do we look to legalized marijuana?  Do we turn to Essential Oils?  Do we go to see faith healers?  Or do we just give up and say that healing will probably not happen on this side of Heaven?

            I’ve watched and listened to parents who have chosen each of those alternatives.  I have seen them go well and I have seen them go incredibly poorly.  And in each of the results I have seen people choose joy and gratitude and I have seen others choose despair and bitterness. 

            Health for our children is a process and a relative term.  Sometimes therapies simply help with a single life skill.  But that is one life skill that they did not have before and one step healthier than they were.  We can choose to celebrate that one skill or be upset that they have not reached typical-peer-level-healthy.  My son is miles beyond where he was ten years ago thanks to a lot of those things that we tried.  Is he done and healthy and ready for independent living?  Not by a long shot.  But I can be grateful for not having to lock all the doors and not having to hide the knives and not having to put his clothes on backwards and not having to make gluten-free chocolate chip cookies anymore.

            Those steps are worth celebrating, even if we took some wonky paths to get here.

A moment to reflect:

How has your child changed and developed in the past 10 years?  What can you be thankful for?