Tears

I was teary all during church yesterday. I could not figure out why. Was God touching me? A young man was praying hard in front of me and I prayed for his family. It is so hard to love two people and then find out each has done awful things to each other. They want to be able to trust each other again, but nothing the other says can cause that to happen. I still love and ache for both. How much worse to be a child in the middle of that angry marriage and angry divorce. Then I figure out that he is just sleeping. I thank God for the family facing cancer and the good diagnosis after surgery. I pray for the families in much deeper financial crises than ours. The sermon was about, among other things, tithing. My good friend is crying because she and her husband had had just the day before another fight about her tithing the subsidy checks for their adoption of handicapped kids. I told her she didn't need to tithe those checks, and then I dragged her to the pastor who said the same thing. Then he pointed out that she also needed to honor her husband, and if he forbade it, then she was free of the requirement to tithe. God knew the desire of her heart. And then I realized why I was teary. Yesterday, I opened myself to the thought that I just didn't do enough for my daughter with autism plus.
That always agitates me. We tried all sorts of special diets, supplements, as much sensory training as I alone could provide (which actually did help, she stopped cutting her hands on broken glass and fingerpainting blood on the walls), auditory training, and advocating for her at school. I would still like to try a secretin trial. Beyond that, we could not afford to do, or were too tired to do, or felt would be unfair to our other children.

     I read Mixed Blessings by that guy who played the chaplain in MASH. As I read it, I grew more and more resentful of the gain after gain they made with constant interventions, costly interventions we would never be able to give our daughter. Then I cried when their son lost it all in his teens. I decided then that our daughter was getting all she needed and I need not be jealous of other people's resources.  After all, if nothing but sensory and auditory training had any effect on her, why did I think these other therapies would do anything for her?