“This Too Shall Pass” – Nathan

Hello again friends, thanks for taking the time to once again visit with our interesting family adventures. The past several weeks have been good for us, but it has definitely been a time of transition. As spring ebbs into summer our eighteen month old and two-and-a-half-year-old have found themselves the victims of long-running springtime colds. While the colds did bring with them a double trip to the emergency room for dangerous fevers, luckily the boys didn’t get admitted and after a few days of watching closely for seizures, everything seems to have calmed down. In addition to the usual changing of seasons and all the fun that goes with the warmer temperatures, we also feel blessed to have transitioned to some new in-home care providers that seem to be improving Eli’s care by leaps and bounds.

With all that being said, we still had a few interesting times, and it really brought to mind a phrase that has gotten us through a large number of hardships. This phrase was given to us by one of the handful of amazing mentors that we have been blessed with who seem to show us the path far before we even see the road. The phrase that I refer to is, “this too shall pass”. While this has gotten us through some amazingly hard times by reminding us that the rocky roads of life are only temporary, the more that we traverse the roads of life, the more I think there is to this short saying. As I struggled with getting my giggly eight-year-old Eli (CTD), to lay still for his diaper change today, I suddenly realized that this too shall pass. Not the difficulty of the diaper change itself, but the whole experience. It is bound to change. The smile that a little boy gives me while I try my hardest to keep the “mess” from spreading won’t always be there. The laugh he gets as he thinks he has gotten the upper hand will surely fade in the future and I fear that I will let myself simply focus on “getting through”. One day I fear that we will celebrate that Eli is compliant during his diaper changes without realizing that there is something that we lost by getting through the struggle.

I know that all of this sounds really deep, but it has occurred to me that even during our hardest times, there is value in our struggles. While we should aim to get through and prevent future struggles, we should always take a second to remember the silver lining that existed in the cloud that we just went through. I will admit that sometimes this silver lining may be minor, it still helps to remember the good that happened during the bad, even if that was just a new person met or a quiet moment of reflection experienced in that well known state of severe sleep deprivation. Basically, when we hear that “this too shall pass”, it can be valuable to re-evaluate whether we are looking at it as a dreadful experience that will soon be over or as an experience to be learned from and (to whatever extent possible) enjoyed. This is important because in the end, regardless of what we are going through, “this too shall pass” and we will never get it back.