The Life I Never Expected

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I've always had a deep respect and interest in special needs parents, but I never thought I would actually be one.  I've followed the stories of children who had to have feeding tubes, but I never thought I would one day be a tubie mama as well.  I've read countless books and blogs about people living with life-altering diseases, but I never thought several of my children and I would be diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, a degenerative, incurable genetic disease.

But here I am, living a life I never expected.


Life doesn't usually turn out the way you planned it.  I have a dear friend who married, bought a fixer upper with her husband, and started having babies.  They planned to have a large family and live in their home forever.  He was devoted to her and their kids and worked hard to provide for his family so she could live her dream of being a stay at home mom.  But then he made some bad choices, and suddenly, my friend was a single mom to 4 young kids, living in an apartment across town from her repossessed dream house, and struggling to survive on a minimum wage, part-time job.  Never in her wildest dreams did she imagine that's where she would end up.

She's living a life she never expected.

I recently read The Life We Never Expected by Andrew and Rachel Wilson, who have two children with regressive autism and every page, every paragraph, every sentence resonated with me.  While it was written with special needs parents in mind, it can definitely be applied to anyone whose life has not turned out the way they thought it would.

Liberty University English professor and author of several books that can be found here, Karen Swallow Prior, says in her review of the book, "I am not a parent of children with special needs.  In fact, I'm not a parent at all.  Even so, I couldn't put this book down.  The Life We Never Expected is about so much more than parenting.  It is about loss, lament, hope, humility, contentment, joy--and about finding God to be more than sufficient through it all."

The Life We Never Expected is divided into sections for each of the five cycles of enduring suffering and each section has chapters titled Weeping, Worshiping, Waiting, Witnessing, And Breathe.  By reading this book, I was able to organize my thoughts and feelings about what I'm going through and understand them a little better.

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Win a copy of "The Life We Never Expected" at @SunshineNspoons  #flyby #lifeweneverexpected #specialneeds #parenting

 

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If you'd like your own copy of The Life We Never Expected, you can enter to win one in the rafflecopter giveaway widget below.  The book can also be purchased on Amazon.  

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This post is linked up at: 1. A Different Dream