“For me writing has always felt like praying…”
~Marilynne Robinson, Gilead
.
A couple weeks ago I blogged about Rhema learning to trace the letter “R”. I wrote about Heather, her OT, believing in her and the dream she had that Rhema would one day write her name independently. I believed with all my heart that that “one day” would come, but I knew it would be in the far-distant future. I settled in for the long haul (-standard procedure where Rhema’s concerned), happy to have a reason to dream again.
.
So I was totally not ready for a miracle when I picked Rhema up from school.
Jenny, one of her teachers met me at the door.
“I don’t know if you’ve gotten an e-mail yet. But you’re going to receive a video we recorded.” She paused. “Rhema traced her entire name independently today.”
I stared at her, confused, and my heart started pounding.
She must be mistaken. Rhema is still just learning the R, and that took months!
Maybe I heard her wrong.
Or maybe I heard her right.
But, oh, don’t make me hope… because in this moment I want nothing more than this.
She was wiping away tears, and wonder and gratitude filled me up and began leaking from my eyes.
“Come back to the classroom. They’re going to have her do it for you.”
I cried. I did. Right there in front of people. Nose running and everything.
.
There’s a song that our old youth choir used to sing based on Habakuk 2:1-4.
“Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it.”
I’ve always loved the phrase “write the vision”, and even dared to hope that blogging might be something like that. The writing out of faith like a prayer, recording the good, hard lessons, waiting, and then watching Him give what we don’t deserve and do “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine.” Thank you, Lord.
.
Some may watch the video clip of Rhema tracing her name and think it insignificant. They won’t know the hours and hours it took to get her there, and that some said it couldn’t be done. They won’t know the happy tears her teachers and I shed as we watched her trace with no physical prompts at all. They might not even notice that her pencil grip is still immature and her E needs a lot of work. They won’t realize that we still have a long way to go before she can write (instead of trace) independently, but that she just took one super-sized leap toward that goal.
They won’t understand how my girl wrote the vision, made it plain.
And gave us a little more hope to run on.
.
[...] Futures School her language has greatly improved. She understands so much more now, she’s learning to trace her name, and she can say single words when [...]
[...] I met the parents of one of Rhema’s teachers a couple months ago at a fundraising benefit for Rhema’s amazing-no-place-like-it-in-the-world school. Their daughter, Heather, loves my girl. She believes in her when others don’t, she is teaching her all of those important OT things I don’t know about, and how to trace her name. [...]
[...] us, to communicate through PECs, to use scissors, to potty, to zip and button, to look at us, to trace your name, to ride a bike, to identify your family, to understand and say small-big words, to sit in church [...]
[...] Last summer they taught her to trace the letters of her name, [...]
[...] This Dream Does Not Tarry [...]