Let’s hear it for the boy!

I hope I have helped develop an awareness for RAD and the little ones dealing with it.  Today I would like to talk a bit about how it affects the families that live with these little RADishes. 

This is my husband, he prefers to remain faceless on the blog (sigh) but I promise, he does exist.  Because he works outside of the home much of the time the care of the littles falls to me.   We homeschool and I do not work out of the home.   Honestly, I am doing pretty well for the most part now that we have a diagnosis and a therapist.   But…on off days I am exhausted (okay, every day I am pretty tired), and irritable.  These guys make it their sole purpose in life to find my buttons and push push push!  Todd makes his business to see when I am under pressure more than normal and take over.  Sometimes that means a bath, or a drive to a friend’s, sometimes I drive and drive until I can finally bear to face it all again.  We manage to tag team pretty well but I won’t lie, RAD is hard on a marriage.  We have been in tough spots before, we have lost a son to cancer….but there are times when we feel like we have enemies in our very own home.   Nothing prepares you for that.  Yes, we love these children, we are committed to this BUT this is not easy.  This past week Twila and I went to Irish dance and then to an empty home so I could veg in front of the TV and for one night forget that I was a RAD mom.   I mean really, lets hear it for the boy!

But as much as I love him and couldn’t bear to live without him these children are my heroes….

They love and show compassion even when their home has been turned into a war zone.   They sit at the table and finish their schoolwork amidst the screams and the chaos.   They never judge.  They never blame.   (okay sometimes they do but any wrongs committed are quickly forgotten)  They greet me with a hug and a smile every morning.  They miss out on things, they miss out on time with me and the sacrifices made to care for the RADishes is no less theirs then it is mine and my husband’s…but they do it with grace.  They have taught me to laugh when I want to cry and hope when I want to despair.   May God give me wisdom to protect their hearts as we walk through the fire.

Tonight as I sit in my robe in front of this computer and fumble to sound intelligent I listen to my husband and the RADishes talk about God and Moses and little lights and it feels like nothing could ever be wrong in the world again.   The older children are at karate and it is almost time to put the RADishes to bed.  And I realize what I had almost forgotten….God does His most amazing work during the storm.