Anyone have something to share?
Psalm 108
A song. A psalm of David.
1 My heart, O God, is steadfast;
I will sing and make music with all my soul.
2 Awake, harp and lyre!
I will awaken the dawn.
3 I will praise you, Lord, among the nations;
I will sing of you among the peoples.
4 For great is your love, higher than the heavens;
your faithfulness reaches to the skies.
5 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens;
let your glory be over all the earth.
6 Save us and help us with your right hand,
that those you love may be delivered.
7 God has spoken from his sanctuary:
“In triumph I will parcel out Shechem
and measure off the Valley of Sukkoth.
8 Gilead is mine, Manasseh is mine;
Ephraim is my helmet,
Judah is my scepter.
9 Moab is my washbasin,
on Edom I toss my sandal;
over Philistia I shout in triumph.”
10 Who will bring me to the fortified city?
Who will lead me to Edom?
11 Is it not you, God, you who have rejected us
and no longer go out with our armies?
12 Give us aid against the enemy,
for human help is worthless.
13 With God we will gain the victory,
and he will trample down our enemies.
Wandering Views 
I posted fairly late last night on yesterday’s prayer thread, thanking you for prayers for 5th Arrow. I was feeling down then, but had a pretty decent night’s sleep last night and am feeling upbeat today. It’s not just the sleep that did that, but God is also bringing blessing through your prayers, friends. Thank you so much.
I’ll share 5th’s diagnoses after we’ve talked with family. It didn’t feel right to reveal the details here before sharing them with all the family.
New/related prayer request: One of 5th’s siblings is likely going to have difficulty coming to grips with his diagnoses. She’s gotten irritated with me in the past for “treating him like a baby” when I’ve tried to greatly simplify things to a level he can comprehend. She’s long been in denial about how deep his challenges are.
My husband, OTOH, sometimes hears me working with 5th and 6th Arrows on the schooling we do as a group, and says that some of what he’s heard is too difficult for 5th, and even too hard for him to understand. (But he wasn’t there for most of the context — we studied ancient Rome this entire last year — and for 6th Arrow, it was easily understood as part of that context. He’s right, though, that what he overheard was indeed too difficult for 5th to fully grasp. It’s a give and take, providing material that’s challenging enough for 6th and simplified enough for 5th. There isn’t time enough for me to singlehandedly do two separate programs to perfectly meet 5th’s and 6th’s extremely varying needs; some of what I do is highly specialized, some of it is generalized and will either be too easy for 6th or too hard for 5th.)
Anyway, if you could pray for family dynamics as we process all this and adapt as needed, I would be greatly appreciative. God’s got this, that I know. Praising Him!
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I have to take my mom to an appointment she doesn’t want to go to this morning. Pray that goes well. Thanks.
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Praying alongside, Six.
And it sounds like you are doing very well. With all our challenged children, we found they thrived when given the opportunity though they certainly did not attain peak levels of education. Right now it is working with fourteen and fifteen. To be determined if fifteen will ever be independent but we thought the same of his older brother who has been a truck driver for several years and a grocery store employee before that. We don’t know. But we give them opportunity. Fifteen is getting the same input as fourteen though output is different. It is always amazing the things he picks up.
Sadly, when we put them in public school for any length of time they regressed as there were no expectations or opportunity. It is hard but you are doing well the path that has been put before you. Praying.
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Husband and son pulled over in Nebraska and napped. For nine hours. A bit behind schedule but that is fine. Continued prayer for safety and wisdom and good bonding.
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6 Arrows – My Chickadee’s situation (the one with her probably being autistic, with no sign of her ever having a job or being independent someday) weighs on my heart, and I do worry about what will become of her, although I try to surrender her into God’s hands and not worry. (That’s something I have to keep doing.) We have such hope for our children when they come along, and these situations break our hearts. Praying for you all.
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Lifting you, 6, and your family. Day by day, prayers for God to show His presense with you leading, guiding, and giving a nudge if ever needed. You have done a great job. So much better than public school would have given. Prayers for understanding, as much as your family members can process at their level of individual maturity.
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Prayers for safety on the roads for all traveling homeward this week.
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Btw, I didn’t mean to focus to Chickadee, but to say that I have some understanding of how you must feel.
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Today is Nightingale’s 33th birthday, and it is a busy one for her even though it is a day off. Praying for her to enjoy the day nonetheless, but even more for her to hear from the Holy Spirit, drawing her to Jesus. May the eyes of her heart be enlightened, and her heart turned to God.
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My mom’s appointment went well. Thanks for praying.
Thank you so much for all your kind words and encouragement in my teaching of my kids. You don’t know what a balm that was. Yesterday after 5th’s appointment, when we got his testing results, I felt like I must be one of the worst mothers on the planet. That’s some of why I was crying on the way home.
Son is 18 years old, and I had plenty opportunity to have him educated somewhere else besides home, with people who had more training than I in working with academically struggling children.
Most of his scores were at dismally low levels when compared to others who are 18 years and 3 months.
But … what Mumsee said. I saw little to no change in the elementary special-needs students I had in my public school music classrooms over the 5-year span I taught in the second school district in which I worked years ago. So I don’t know that 5th Arrow would have done any better in his testing if he had had a public education for part or all of his school years.
So many what-ifs or might-have-beens that can cloud a parent’s mind…
The psychologist we met with yesterday (and also at the initial appointment), was so encouraging. Testing revealed two areas of strength that 5th has — those scores were at the 75th percentile (upper end of “average”) compared to his peers. She really expressed her desire to help us find opportunities for 5th to express those strengths.
A different score was near the lower end of average, but everything else was far below that. It was hard to receive that news. Before then, I had kind of a fuzzy picture that a lot of things would be below average, but how far below they actually were was disheartening.
I felt that I had seriously failed my son in trying to help him with only minimal feedback from others I had too infrequently sought out.
The psychologist, though, helped me focus on more than the raw numbers, and hubby and I told her about various aspects of 5th’s development over the years that gave her a more rounded-out picture of son that also goes beyond numbers.
She commended us for asking many questions yesterday and told us that in her 18 years of doing this work, she had never seen parents who were as interested as we were to know what things meant on the forms we received yesterday, explaining the assessments and results. She said most parents just want to know the diagnosis and aren’t inquisitive about the meaning of the data.
There are glimmers of hope. Pray that we’ll be able to keep our eyes on the big picture, even as we continue to work on the fine points that combine to make the big picture. But especially that we’ll keep our eyes on Christ throughout the journey.
Thank you again.
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Prayers, Mumsee and Kizzie.
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Two prayer requests here.
A friend’s almost 30 year old son-in-law came home almost two weeks ago looking a little jaundiced. His wife insisted he go to the hospital. They have three children under 8, a middle child with special needs, and a 3 month old. He has never had any health issues and never been hospitalized. It was discovered he had no gall bladder and has cancer on his liver.
Another young woman is 27. She is related to a friend of mine. She has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and her liver is over 60% covered in tumors.
So sad on so many levels.
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I do know, Six. We are out here doing our best while others are sitting back judging. Some are, others are not but we do tend to generalize.
But, for example, fifteen had speech at age four. The therapist determined he would never read and never speak so needed a picture book to help him express his wants. She ran into him a year or two ago and was shocked. (Ever read a G A Henty book? That is his favorite read right now.) Shocked by his speech, which is challenging but he can generally makes his wishes and thoughts known, as well as by his knowledge base. But if he was tested with standardized testing, he would top out at less than zero on most things.
When we hear that our children are actually accomplishing things, it is wonderful. Especially when they have layers of labels. But they don’t generally compare well with testing. And that is okay. We are more interested in their spiritual state and their character and then as much ability to do the rest as they can attain.
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Lifting those two up in prayer, Kim. The thought of that is almost too much to bear. May God bring miracles along their treatment paths that will bring Him glory and bring them back from the brink of no return to full well-being. Prayers for their families, too.
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Praising God for the encouragement found here for those going through difficulties such as 6. Mumsee brought out the priorities of life that are not touched by standardized testing.
How wonderful to hear effort will be directed upon areas of strength that can compensate so well in our world where much has been broken down into specialties instead of needing more generalized talents and skills. In particular I am thinking how in hospitals they have compartmentalized so much that one person does the same thing over and over for patients instead of a nurse doing everything for a patient.
Praying, 6, knowing that God can do more than we can think or imagine with His creation that bears His very image. You have served your son well under the set of parameters you were given.
And some people just don’t show all they can do in a testing environment on a particular day.
Focus.On.God.❤
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So thankful for Mumsee’s wisdom and insight for you 6. Praying as you journey forth with 5th and the rest of your family.
Kim – so sad. Praying.
Kizzie – continuing to pray for you and your girls and boy.
D & I need continued prayer. D now has to sign a letter stating he will abide by what’s in the letter. I don’t think he will be able to sign it with any conscience and will thus lose his job. Thankfully, he is near retirement and will be able to retire and find other work and they’ll be okay financially. Added to all this now is that I’s daughter thinks they are nuts and told them until they change their world view she no longer wants contact with them. She also told them she doesn’t want them to pray for her either. So heartbreaking.
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Praying, Kare.
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Wow, Kare, that is really difficult. Prayers for you all until things settle down. Forces in this world have brainwashed many so rapidly. It is heartbreaking.
Kizzie, I lift up a prayer for breakthrough again, that your girls and grandson will all know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. I think Nightingale must have known Jesus as Lord in the past at some point based on her backgroumd in church with you and Leon. I do not understand why God tarries when we keep asking. But then I remember how many years Art smoked and finally, unexpected, he stopped. May the Holy Spirit breathe new life into Nightingale’s heart.
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While D and I have faced this difficult situation and as painful as this has been I am ever thankful they remain steadfast. Continuing to lift them in prayer as they move forward.
The response of their daughter is heartbreaking….we have been and are there with one of ours. It hurts when a child rejects our Lord…the very breath of our life and for Whom we live. Asking the Lord to soften her heart and bring her unto Himself.
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How very sad, Kare and Kim, with the circumstances you each mentioned.
Mumsee, yes, sort of, with the Henty books — I’ve heard of them, but never did actually order them.
I am so glad that 5th Arrow, like fifteen, is able and willing to read. Sounding out words was an ability he acquired relatively easily. Comprehension is another matter entirely, so when I say he’s able to read, I’m only referring to decoding ability. Which some would say is not true reading unless comprehension also occurs. Whatever the term “reading” means to people, I love to see 5th with a book in his hands and hear him read aloud (which is how he always reads — never silently).
A language arts book we’ve used the last couple years has excerpts of writing gathered from various books. When we finished the language this spring, I had 5th and 6th Arrows examine the bibliography of books from which those excerpts were taken and to select a few of those books to independently read in their entirety.
The longest book 5th selected was A Tale of Two Cities. Wow. I thought that was so cool that he was willing to tackle a book like that.
Is he understanding the words he’s reading? I doubt it.
But he’s learning to stick to a schedule. He planned out his readings in advance and is diligent to do them every day on his schedule (weekdays — he’ll finish June 3, I think he said).
And he reads from his Bible every day, a couple chapters, without fail.
Thank you for the special-needs homeschooling encouragement, Mumsee. I teared up reading your 10:10am above.
Thank you to all of you who have offered thoughts and prayers. They and you are blessings.
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Prayers for all here with children who have turned away from the Lord — NancyJill, Kizzie, I’m sure others who aren’t coming to mind right now.
Lord, draw them close to You.
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Sounds like 5th Arrow has some good solid skills that will help him go far. Praying.
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