Parenting Passionate Mom

Ponder What You Can Sacrifice for Your Kids

 

Who has time to ponder? No one. 

No one, today, has time to ponder.  Well that is not entirely true.  It is true that we pack more into a day than ever before in history, but the reality is that we do still have time.  I often pitch the complaint to my husband that I just don’t have the time to do something.  My husband always swats it right back with “Everyone has time and so do you.  You are just not making this a priority for your time.”  Ouch.  Point being we have time to ponder, we just use that time for other things.  Pondering is not a priority.  Pondering takes sacrifice–the  sacrifice of time, sometimes lots of time.

Isn’t that what we want to do for our children – to deeply ponder what they need in life?

How would our children benefit if we made the time to really think about their character, their behavior, their struggles, strengths and weaknesses?  What if we purposed to dwell on things that deep down caused us to wonder from time to time? Could it help turn a child from destructive behavior? Could it even save a life?

We used to call one of my daughters Snow White.  She had such different coloring than her siblings and it bothered her.  We live in Florida and love to be out on the water.  Her siblings were of the easy tanning sort, where as our lovely little Snow White had to be lathered with sunscreen every four hours to avoid a severe blistering.  She was never able to acquire that Florida tan.  The spring of her junior year of high school, after several trips to the lake, she excitedly informed me that she had a tan.  Strangely enough, she did.  It bothered me.  For several more months every time she sat in my lap (very affectionate child, still likes to sit in my lap) I couldn’t help noticing how brown her hands were.  It bothered me.  My husband thought it was nothing, my friend thought it was nothing, my daughter thought it was great.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered reading about skin developing more pigment.  I started Googling and read about Addison’s disease, but it was very rare.  I finally took her to see the doctor.  He wasn’t too concerned and told me that Addison’s was so rare that he had never even seen a case in all his years of practice.  But he ordered blood work.  Two days later I got an urgent call, my daughter was in danger and needed to see an endocrinologist immediately.  She had Addison’s disease.

Addison’s is seldom diagnosed before there is an acute life threatening adrenal crisis because there are so few symptoms.  The first question the endocrinologist asked me was how did you know?  I told her the Lord prompted me to notice and when I did he wouldn’t let me let it go. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.  I was told by the doctor that my “pondering” may have saved my daughter’s life.

The time it took to ponder…well worth the sacrifice.

This post was an excerpt from my book, The Passionate Mom, available on April 16, 2013.  You will want to wait to get the book because we have some very special bonuses and giveaways  lined up for the week it releases. In the mean time, you can get more information here!

passionate mom,susan merrill

 

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