Love, Honor, Commitment

When I was a child I never grew up thinking love was a fairytale.  I knew someday I would find the man I loved but that love is work.  I paid close attention to my parents, grandparents, and aunts and uncles.  I watched the good and bad times for everyone.  I saw my parents feed off each others love for each other.  It amazed me.  They hate to even be away from each other, and they were always happier together.  They always have kissed goodbye when they leave each other and think about the other when they are gone.  But all the love in a relationship like parents does not mean a lack of struggle or bad times.  I have seem them fight, cry, struggle, and fall apart.  But the thing about my parents, is that they always find a way to work through what life throws at them and they love each other still.  I have seen things plague many couples around me and some don't always pull out of the situations very well.  I have seen couples who lost their love and stay together out of commitment.  I have seen couples divorce, and I have seen couples still fighting to find their way.  Love is a tricky thing.  Love can bring so much happiness but it can cause the most pain.  When you love someone you put your heart in their hands.  They hold the power to disappoint you, support you, lift you up and make you cry.  To marry that person is to promise to to commit that love forever.  I am thinking all of this today because I have been reading my Facebook and noticing people who don't seem to understand love and the commitment of marriage.  Now don't get me wrong, I have only been married nearly 4 years.  I'm not an expert.  The experts among us have been married 50 years and still kiss goodnight before bed.  But my 4 years of experience make me want to hope that the people who need to know what marriage is find out.  I am 23 years old and I have seen at least 4 people my age married and divorced already.  These people have told me they rushed into the marriage for the wrong reasons.  It breaks my heart to know the statistics associated with divorce in our country, and I am seeing it happening to people my age.  A few of the people I know who divorced this young have talked to me about it.  They talk to me about a love that is like a fairytale.  The PERFECT spouse. But then I shake my head knowing there is no such thing.  I am not perfect, I never will be.  As individuals we are all not perfect, so what makes people think that after marriage the couple will be perfect?  Is your boyfriend or fiance a coward when they face their parent, even if their parent treats you horribly?  Do you really think a wedding ring around his finger will instantly make him cherish and protect you from that?  Does your girlfriend constantly put you down? Do you think after she weds she will honor you?  Now with this logic no one should get married.  But its alright to get married if you both go into the marriage wanting to change the imperfections and love honor and cherish your spouse.  It takes work, fights and tears.  You are going to go to bed angry sometimes and wonder what tomorrow will bring.  But if you put in the work at the end of the tunnel you and your spouse will be stronger.  The best advice I can give a couple getting married, go to marriage counseling.  Learn the skills you need to grow as a couple and individuals.  Spend time discussing what you want from life.  How many children? Do you want to live near family, across the country? Make sure you can make a plan for your life.  Make each other your first priority.  Take your time and find your intended match.  I have been lucky to find my husband.  We compliment each other.  But I will never claim we are perfect.  No one is perfect.  My husband has things about him that drive me nuts and there are things I do that drive him nuts but we know they exist and work on them for each other.  It will take time, and we will go through ups and downs as we have for 4 years but we Love, Honor and are Committed to each other.  Don't be in love with love, be in love with yourself, your spouse and God.   

Tears of a Mother

We all cry for our children.  For many reasons we cry, we cry for their pain, heartache, mistakes, triumphs and sickness.  I will never know the tears cried by a mother of a child dying, God willing, or a mother crying because her child has down syndrome or Autism or some other life changing illness.  But something very few people will share with me are the tears involved with a deaf child.  As a hearing mother to a deaf daughter I struggle with a lot.  I struggle with why God did not let my daughter be hearing, and I have honestly hates him for it at times.  I struggle looking into her future and seeing her struggle day to day.  But I will get into all of this into detail later on, for now I want to go back and tell you the beginning. Baby girl J was not officially known to be deaf until 4 months old.  This is a late diagnosis in this age.  After seeing multiple doctors and doing tests we finally got the news.  I cried.  I sat on the floor of the doctor's office crying.  I thought of so much and I cried all the way home on a 2 hour drive.  I remember crying again when they re-tested her and she went from moderate and severe hard of hearing to Severe hard of hearing and profoundly deaf.  We were told she might have a progressive loss that will continue to deteriorate.  These are all major moments when I cried.  As a mother it is hard to carry a child for 9 months and protect them only to find something went wrong.  The doctor's can not tell us why she is Deaf but that they know it is not genetic or something I caused in pregnancy.  Every mother wants her child to be perfect, when you find out something like hearing is not present you need to learn a new perfect.  No one, not even my husband knows all the tears I have cried for my daughter.  He takes things day by day but I worry about tomorrow.  I worry about her tomorrow.  I am a stay at home mom who sees her every move every day.  I see her fly and fall.  My daughter is now 2.5 years old and wears high powered hearing aids.  She does some talking and is first language American Sign Language.  She says Mama, Dad, Bye Bye and other words perfectly but most of her words are only understood by a few people.  Ice cream has become I Kee.  The word Sheep is Shhhhee.  My daughter uses what is known as Total Communication.  She learns ASL and speech and uses them both to communicate with people.  I am so happy she can do what she does with her speech but I cry thinking about this.  At this point in a public school environment, she will need a translator.  This could make it harder for her to become close with friends or boyfriends.  I see her struggle even at this age.  Most of her friends and cousins do not have the patience or understanding to talk to her.  I cry because this information is forcing a choice for us to send her to a Deaf school or a public school.  I cry because I do not want to choose wrong and subject her in the future to the wrong education, social environment or bullying. I cry when I see my daughter struggle.  She has to focus more than other children to listen and hear causing her to become cranky and upset.  She has to learn the sign and sound of words using a device only partially working for her in certain environments.  I feel bad she has to work so hard to learn when speech comes so easy to other children.  I cry when I see other people's children the same age as mine talking full sentences.  I get angry at God because my daughter cannot do that yet and her tantrums and discipline are harder because she cannot hear.  Its hard to tell your child not to kick when neither of you know the ASL sign yet and she cannot hear or understand the word fully.  Sometimes I cry because she does something amazing and says a word she just learned nearly perfect and she smiles so big! Very few parents experience the joy and equally stressful worry of watching your child talk word by word and seeing your toddler's face light up in pride.  I sit up at night frantically searching articles about Deafness or learning ASL. I do not want to make the wrong choice and fail her.  Family and friends try to tell us what to do with her, sending us videos of children signing, or speaking with a Choclear Implant, or another article about Deaf culture, But many fail to see how big of an issue this is.  I know they are trying to help but they tend to not do the research or fully understand our child's situation.  Not everyone is Deaf or Hearing.  There is a spectrum for speech and hearing specific to each person. We have been asked 100 times by friends and family, "why not get a Cochlear Implant?", but many people are uneducated on the device.  I wonder every day if we should get it for her and have researched it and will continue to do so.  Are Cochlears a good device for some people, of course!  But Jasmine's hearing in her one ear may possibly be slightly to good by 15 points to keep her from the surgery.  She falls into a crack where hearing aids are working to some point and has a small bit of hearing but it is so bad she misses a lot.  The CI does not fix hearing like some magic wand.  Children with it do not hear like a hearing child.  It sounds computerized.  Is it fair to take away the hearing my daughter has and replace it with something different than she has been hearing with for 2.5 years? What if it is and we do not do it?  She cannot get am MRI or play contact sports with the CI.  Its expensive and life altering.  It might be the miracle fix to her deafness or it might not change anything.  And like hearing aids, the CI cannot be used in water so in the bathtub or pool she is still deaf and needs ASL.  Her situation could go either way because her hearing is on the line for the surgery.  I cry because all these questions plague my thoughts every day.  I wish she would wake up tomorrow and talk more, it could happen, but it might not.  She might use ASL her whole life and only talk sometimes.  But with all the questions and tears I bear every day it all comes down to one thing in my head.  Does she need fixing? Is she broken?  Is this how she is meant to be?  My daughter has made it 2.5 years using hearing aids and ASL and is an amazing child.  Because she slows down to hear and watch the world she sees things others don't.  She sees emotions on my face when others can't.  When I am sad she asks me about it even when an entire room of people miss it on my face.  She sees bugs and she stops to talk to them when other people miss and step on them.  My daughter is so happy and learning every day. Sometimes, beyond all the questions of her future, her options and her struggles, I cry.  I cry because she is so wonderful and I am full of joy watching her amaze me every day.  I know there are a lot of uncried tears, questions to answer and choices to make in my future but I hope someday my daughter knows how my heart is with her every step of the way.