September 27th

A Psalm for Sojourners

            I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade at your right hand. The sun shall not strike you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The Lord will keep your going out and your coming in from this time on and forevermore.

Psalm 121: 1-8

            Psalm 121 is nestled into a group of 15 Psalms that are known as the “Songs of Ascent,” or the “Blessings for Travelers,” as pilgrims made their way to the Holy City of Jerusalem.  The Psalmist wanders along, looking up at the hills and observing the alters to foreign gods where idol worship was happening.  He reflects on whom he puts his trust in.  The Creator of the Universe is the one who hovers over the travelers as a protective parent, shielding them from the sun, guiding them away from danger and never sleeping.  The One with the power to speak creation into being is also the One who is close enough to hear the cries of our hearts.

            Travelling is tricky.  Travelling with a child is a next level challenge.  Travelling with a special needs child involves doctorate-level problem-solving skills and saint-like character.  The complications morph as the child gets bigger and older, but there is always something there.

            We had a client at the day habilitation center who was in his 30s and had extreme developmental issues.  His parents were both well-established professionals who could afford to take him on exotic vacations throughout the year.  But they knew that flying was stressful and would deplete his reserves so severely that he could become susceptible to seizures.  They would go to Thailand or to San Diego or to the Bahamas and my client and his mom would spend their first day in their new location lying down in a dark room as he convulsed and recovered.

            When my son and I went to Ecuador for a school trip, he got dehydrated.  He developed a fever, threw up for hours and was headed down a scary road before we were able to rest in our hotel, get some fluids to stay in him and nurse him back to recovery.  As we were lying in our small, hot room with Spanish soccer highlights playing in the background, I wondered if we were going to make it through the end of the trip.  The rest of the tour was out visiting some coffee plantation and were getting ready for another island-hopping boat ride the next day and there was talk of leaving us behind.  School trips always involve talk of leaving us behind.

            I decided in that room that my goal was to give my son a good travelling experience.  If that was not the itinerary that we had prepared or what everyone else did, that would be okay.  We went at our own pace, chose to stay in our room for some of the excursions, read books and listened to music and we did as much of the tour as we could without stressing my son out.  That was why we raised the money to send me on the trip as well, to make this trip to the Galapagos Islands accessible for my kid on the autism spectrum.

            When we travel and we have to adapt all the plans and all the preparation and we wonder why we ever decided to leave the house in the first place, I remember the blessing for the traveler.  God is with us through the immunizations and through the heat stroke and through the weird food and through the bugs…oh, the bugs…God is with us through it all.  Powerful enough to create the universe, close enough to hear our hearts’ desires.  Whether we are travelling around the world or just to the corner store for the right type of bubbly water, God sustains us as we transition from the way that things were to the unknown new normal.

A moment to reflect:

Where is your household transitioning at the moment?  How can you help make that easier for both yourself and your child?