i'm sticking with you, 'cause i'm made out of glue

it's been a while since i've written about zoe. 

there was a time when i was so afraid of jinxing the goodness with her, that i was afraid to speak of it.
there can be fear in the naming of things.
in 'harry potter' the evil character is so feared that his name is not spoken, instead he is referred to as 'he who must not be named'.  for me zoe's shining moments, her good days were 'the stories that shall not be told' out of fear that they would magically go away.
somehow we believe that speaking it has power- either to empower the bad thing being spoken of, or in my case, to take away the good things.
but it's time for me to speak of the good, to trust it's not luck, but progress and mostly God sprinkly grace.
it's time.


















so this is a story of a girl who climbed a tree.  not just an ordinary girl.  a special girl.  a girl with visual spacial processing difficulty, a girl with vestibular challenges, basically a girl whose sensory system doesn't send her brain the right messages- so, much of life is scary or hard.  something gets lost in translation between her skin and her brain.  pain, vibration, awareness of her body in space (propioception) are perceived and delivered- but the volume for her is either turned way up, or turned way down. 
a girl who cried walking up a steep driveway a few years ago because she felt off balance.  a girl who can't go upside-down, who has never done the monkey bars, whose palms sweat profusely when she feels she might fall, when the surface is unstable, or narrow, or high off the ground.  and here is my girl. high up in a tree.

this day zoe's friend came to the door,
"we were climbing trees and zoe is stuck. can you come and help?"
so mike went.  sure enough- there she was way up the tree (the picture doesn't do it justice).  she had climbed up all by herself, with the encouragement of her friends, but getting down was looking tricky. it was getting dark and so mike helped guide her down- but she did it by herself.  initially she was upset by having had help to get down, but after a couple of minutes she was back to feeling proud about climbing the tree.

i know that doesn't sound super impressive.
so she's a kind of uncoordinated 12 year old who climbed a tree.  but.  you have no idea. 
(unless of course, you've read the first year of this blog, or you have a child with nonverbal learning disorder or aspergers or something like this. unless you belong to that club you never meant to sign up for- parents of kids who are different.)

zoe used to get stuck on things.  she had 'sticky thoughts' -  ideas that glued on and wouldn't let go- irrational beliefs that preoccupied her.  one of her favorites was 'getting help'.  she would ruminate, perseverate, and fall to bits over getting help, or anything she considered assistance.  perhaps the most annoying of all would be the crash and burn following my response to her asking for help.

"mom, have you seen my shoes? i can't find them anywhere!"
"yeah zoe, i saw them on the back porch."
"OHHHH!! why did you HELP me??  I HATE HELP!"foot stomping, dramatic body language.  "MOM i don't NEED HELP OKAY!  'oh, here they are'- DOHHH why did you TELL me!!!" throwing crocs off the porch down onto the back yard.
"but zoe, you asked me where they... oh never mind."
and i would break into that old velvet underground song "i'm sticking with you - 'cause i'm made out of glue"

this was my life for a long long time- this was her life for a long long time. every day, many times a day.  these sticky thoughts were like a giant vacuum sucking away our joy.

when we moved to africa, i began to do a lot more praying.  not just because the roads are practically a death sentence and malaria and other tropical illnesses abound, but mostly for other people who live on the other side of the world- for our senders, our supporters, who have made sacrifices for us to be here serving the people of uganda.  one day soon after we arrived, i began to pray specifically for zoe's sticky thoughts in a bold and clear way.
i didn't do the usual, 'help!' or 'please help us as we try to help zoe'.  i decided to pray with conviction, to plead with conviction: 'God, i know you can take away zoe's sticky thoughts completely, so i'm asking you to- okay, i'm begging.  i don't want help dealing with them, i want them gone. over. done with. please cure her of sticky thoughts, free her from the limitations of her own mind.'   and really, He has.

do i hear an amen?

as zoe likes to say, "those were hard times."

so her little blip back into the land of not wanting help getting down from the tree, was not that big of a deal,  it was only a blip and not falling apart. the turn-around time was a few minutes- not hours. and this is good.
sometimes i wonder if her brain doesn't 'visit' it, like an old memory- or if occasionally the wires get crossed for a second.

the other day, we were at a store and zoe saw a 'police set'.
"oh the boys would love that!" she said.
"you're right! do you want to get it and give it to them for Christmas?" i said.
"oh yes! what a great idea."
i was shocked.  that was it?
a year ago, my mere suggestion of something that she wanted to think of first, would have resulted in a meltdown. she would have fallen to bits, and probably so would i, only later when no one was looking.

the funny part is later that same day, she called from the back seat very calmly, "mom, i wish i'd thought of getting the boys those toys for Christmas."
and i started to laugh.
"what's so funny mom?"
"zoe, you know what?  when we were in the store and i made that suggestion, you told me it was a great idea and i was shocked and thrilled.  last year, you would have been so stuck on this- the afternoon would have been ruined for both of us and you wouldn't have let it go.  i actually thought all this in the check out line.  and now hours later, you are so calmly telling me you wish you'd thought of it first."
zoe began to laugh.
"oh! sorry! you're right, my bad!"

so there you have it.  my girl. climbing trees and getting stuck, but in the tree not her own head.  my girl able to let it go.  my girl being slowly freed from a brain full of sticky.  my girl able to laugh in reflection with me. 

and did you hear the part in the story about getting up the tree 'with the encouragement of her friends'? yes.  i said friends.  she has two really amazing and wonderful friends. girls that include her, put up with her idiosyncrasies, remind her gently, that she 'already told them that', cheer her on climbing up a tree, and actually genuinely like her.  did i mention i prayed for them too? i think it went something like this, "Okay God- can you just give her one good friend?  just one.  she's desperate.  i'm begging!"  and it's just like him to give her two- because that's the way He rolls.

and who would have thought all this was possible in the middle of deepest darkest africa?
away from therapy and psychiatrists and social groups and psychologists and PT/OT and special schools.  oh yeah- God did- because that's the way He rolls.  He likes surprises and tough odds, like parting the sea and turning water into wine, and providing friends for a girl who now likes to climb trees, in the middle of uganda.