So You Have a Challenging Child? I Love This Song.

So You Have a Difficult Child? This Song is For You.

Photo Credit: blueforce4116 via Compfight cc

Some of you have children on the spectrum. Autism, Aspergers, Tourette’s, ADD, ADHD, OCD, ODD, Pervasive Development Disorders, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, RAD, or ________fill in the blank. This post is for you. This song is for you.

I’m in a serious funk. It must be the middle age blues or something, but the melancholy side of me stuffed under a thick cloud of choleric for so many years is finally seeping out and will not be pushed away anymore. I’m analyzing everything I’ve believed and experienced for the past 25 years, and I see now, more than ever before, how hopeless the human race is without Christ. How hopeless I am without Him. We are a sick and desperate people.

I never in a million years dreamed parenting would be this fascinating and this agonizing. Just when you think you could not stretch one ligament more, a meteor comes flying out of nowhere to slam the lever of your rack through the floor. Rip. Shred. Hearts splintered in a million directions.

I thought we all lived on the ground. You know, grounded. Where everything was predictable and safe. Where rules were followed and life went smoothly. Babies were born, cuddled, cared for, kept safe, and grown into healthy trees with deep roots by rolling rivers. Oh, if only. If only. But some are not grounded. This world is stacked against us. Wounds in every heart ooze out and poison the atmosphere, deforming souls.

Some people aren’t even close to being grounded. This broken earth has cut them loose, and they are spinning out in space. Lost. Tilting, twisting, turning. If you have a child like this, you know what I’m talking about. If you get near to these little satellites, their vortex pulls you in and shatters you to pieces. It’s a never ending hope. A never ending cycle of whirling movement and scattering heart shards.

I want so badly for things to be different. For my rotating girl to come down to me and grow strong and deep and high. But sometimes it feels like all I can do is helplessly watch her from below.

Want to experience a song?

The first time I heard it was at night. Somehow I found it on my phone and listened to it alone in the dark. By the time it was over I was sobbing. All I could think of was my daughter – along with other pin points of light waaaaaaaayyyyy out there in the night. Somewhere hard to reach. When I use the word “experience,” I mean just that. You have to step into this kind of song and sink under.

The one thing this song leaves out (it’s coming from a secular viewpoint) is the fact that while we are small dots on a planet, there are Hands holding this little universe together, including all the satellites within it. We are helpless, but He is not. When I listen to this song, I cry, but I also pray. I pray that He will Someday bring these little satellites Home. I know He can. I believe He will. When she sings her “satellite call” – let it be your heart’s call to Him too. This makes me think of Romans 8:26:

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”

If you are reading this in an email and you want to hear this, I think you need to click over to this post to play the Spotify button. And I also think you need to have a Spotify account. (It’s free!) If you don’t want a Spotify account, you can listen to the song on YouTube here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stmjb9EHzg0&feature=kp

Also, I’m putting the lyrics here, but the words themselves don’t do justice to the experience of the song. So when the sun goes down, find your headphones and go outside. Look up at the sky, turn on the music, and listen. Think of your little satellite. I’ll be thinking of mine.

Satellite Call

by Sara Bareilles

This one’s for the lonely child
Brokenhearted, running wild
This was written for the one to blame
One who believe they are the cause of chaos and everything

You may find yourself in the dead of night
Lost somewhere up in the great big beautiful sky
You were all just perfect little satellites
Spinning round and round this broken earthly life

This is so you’ll know the sound
Of someone who loves you from the ground
Tonight you’re not alone at all
This is me sending out my satellite call

This is so you’ll know the sound
Of someone who loves you from the ground
Tonight you’re not alone at all
This is me sending out my satellite call

A mother of nine, homemaker, business owner (Apple Valley Natural Soap), and most importantly, a Wemmick loved by the Woodcarver.

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Category: Parenting
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2 thoughts on “So You Have a Challenging Child? I Love This Song.”

  2. I keep waiting for the day when the struggles will end and we will make sense of it all. :) thank you for sharing this song. Made me think of many lonely nights, many years ago, when I would walk outside in the dark and look up to the sky and listen to Enya. There were so many unspoken prayers said then. Many of them were answered. I finally understood the reason for some of the loneliness I experienced. It finally made sense. I hang on to that hope that the struggle I am (my child is) going thru right now will one day make sense too. Hang on to Him.

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