“what ifs” and “will he-s”

Severe language impairment… the words seared into my brain much like a waffle iron molds the batter with heat into that perfectly squared shape, my brain was being molded around those words. They would forever be imprinted, and they stung—once batter becomes a waffle, it never goes back. I quickly skimmed past them, hoping with everything in my soul to read that the tests were inaccurate, that there had been some misunderstanding, that perhaps they had tested the wrong kid. Surely there had been a mix-up and they pulled the wrong child from class and monitored him to find that he wasn’t speaking with clarity, and didn’t have a large vocabulary. I was positive that it was just a fluke.

But no, there it was, in black and white that my Porter Jay Thompson, my four-year old blessing, my handsome, perfectly dressed, bubbly and excited heart-stealer had a severe language impairment.

I was standing in our kitchen alone. There were dirty dishes in the sink behind me and a counter piled with preschool artwork, baby shoes that didn’t fit but had never been worn, and odds and ends that I never seemed to find a home for—a loose screw, a clothespin, a letter from our insurance company. My purse was on the floor, there were dirty clothes and spit up rags in front of the washer and the thick aroma of peanut butter loomed from our never-changing dinner routine with a picky four-year-old. Around me, my world permeated in chaos and bumble, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the paper.  I read every word on the document, a draft that I had convinced the speech therapist to send home the day before our meeting, because I wanted to avoid being caught off-guard. I let every word sink in, even the ones that I wasn’t trained to understand. I committed every score to memory, tucking it away as if preparing for battle.

I’m not sure what was worse. Sitting down at a table with my husband, and our ten month old, and a speech therapist and a few people I didn’t know and didn’t know our son, or standing in my kitchen alone when I read the diagnosis. Either way, it rocked me to my core. Severe. Language. Impairment.

 

To be honest, each of those words, on their own, were bad enough, much less the sting of putting them together and trying to swallow it all at once.

Severe. It wasn’t a small impairment, it wasn’t a moderate or mild impairment. There was no partial issue to tackle, or a small habit to correct. No… it was severe. In my mind, that translates to the worst of the worst.

Language. This is where my heart takes the drastic plunge from its perch at the top of my throat to the pit of my being. There are so many other things that could have been wrong. He could have had nine toes. He could have had a horrifying physical disability. He could have had a speech impediment, like a stutter, or maybe he could have been legally blind. While all of those things are debilitating, and hard to deal with, and seemingly incomprehensible, they are tangible to me. I can wrap my head around them, and I know what they mean for those who suffer with them. I’m not wishing that Porter had any of these disabilities, I have prayed many times to thank my God that Porter is a healthy and able-bodied little boy. At the same time, it is curious to me that Porter struggles with one of the things that I consider myself most proficient at. Language is to me like a second way of breathing. I study it, I think about it, I play with it, I use it to my advantage, I love it, and I consider myself a master at it. Now, I’ve been told that my son, my own flesh and blood, created from my womb, will wrestle with it for years to come. How is that possible?

So there I was, in my kitchen, in the middle of the afternoon, with a million other errands to run and feats to accomplish and I couldn’t move. I was stuck. You may think I’m being facetious, but I literally could not pick up my feet. It’s as if the weight of this burden, all my fears, and failures as a parent and all the struggles that I saw on the horizon for my Porter Jay had nailed my feet to the faux wood floor and I was concreted in place.

I’ll have you know, that I did not cry. I did not shed a tear. I didn’t even fight back tears or have the urge to boo-hoo. I was stone cold and straight faced, not because I wanted to be, or because I had made a decision to be strong. I wish I could tell you that I was such a courageous, superhero, Tiger Mother that I made a solemn vow right then and there to suck it up buttercup and move forward.  No, I was in my house, alone, without a soul to see and I easily could have shed a tear or a thousand, because I certainly felt like someone was ripping my feelings out of my chest and shredding them with razorblades and a cheese grater, but I didn’t. I was too scared and angry and shocked to cry. The tears would wait.

The rest of that day is seared in my mind, much like the SLI phrase. The remarks made by the therapist to Brad and me in the meeting the following day are seared there as well. The phrases used to describe my pride and joy were like little chips flung into the ebb and flow of my spirit. “He has potential,” she’d say and I would cringe. “He’s a smart boy, but…” she’d comfort, and all I hear was the doubt in her voice. “He’s sensitive,” she said, and even though I’ve admitted it a hundred times it made my mind spin in circles knowing that someone else noticed, and it was a problem. Those phrases, however well-intentioned and carefully planned, pinged away at the dreams I’d had of a well-rounded, charismatic, chiseled young man who made good decisions and dated a polite, yet passionate girl who made good grades, planned their Jr/Sr prom, and was most likely president of student council. That dream I had of a slender, tall, light-haired young man with piercing baby blue eyes and wisdom beyond his years was quickly melting with each boiling hot pebble she threw at me. And again, the pieces of debris and chunks of that dream were ricocheting off the imaginary wall that I’d built for myself and pelting back at me with each passing comment, and it stung.

You might be wondering why the SLI diagnosis made me jump to conclusions about how he’d shape into a teenager and eventually an adult. After all, this diagnosis wasn’t degenerative. It wasn’t like he was going to get worse and worse until he shriveled up and died. It wasn’t like she had said he would never talk, or would never read. No, saying he has a Severe Language Impairment was not literally the end of the world.  But you see, I’ve always been a planner. I plan parties, and vacations, and outfits. I plan where to eat, and what to eat, and even when to eat. I plan our lives, because if I don’t my mind starts wandering and all the sudden death and doom are certain. Even the most miniscule decisions, especially about my childrens’ lives have always been of the utmost importance, because their future rested on each move. When Brad and I chose the name Porter, it had to pass the Supreme Court Test. In other words, could he be a Supreme Court Justice with the name Porter Jay? Well, of course he could. It was strong, and masculine, and it invoked trust and respect. But all of the sudden, along with his trustworthy name I had to consider that he might not have the words to succinctly craft a dissenting opinion in the great civil rights case of his generation, much less to graduate high school with Honors. What if he never grasped the concept of conjugating verbs and he never understood the need for pronouns? You may well find it silly, but it was my reality. It was suddenly, in my mind, the issue that his entire future hinged upon. If he has trouble with words, will he ever learn to express his feelings? Most men don’t, but it’s not because they don’t have the right words. Would he learn to love reading. He already has hundreds of books in his personal collection. Would he be a good test taker? Everyone knows that success in education depends on it. Would he....?  I had always been set to make him an extraordinary man. I wanted him to be a gentleman, a scholar, an athlete, and most of all, madly in love with our Savior.

Then it hit me, all in a total of probably thirty seconds, while I was still superglued to the floor in my drafty kitchen, after I’d run through scenarios about his high school girlfriend and how he would or wouldn’t say the Greek alphabet while he was pledging a fraternity in college, and even which career path he could choose with such an impairment, it hit me that above and beyond all of that, he didn’t need words or language to love God and accept Him as Lord. Even more than that, God our Father is the one who gives, and the one who takes away, and just as easily as He could take away my sight tomorrow, He can take away Porter’s words, and even more than that, He can GIVE them too!

Over and over again, I’ve seen God use unusual circumstances to work in miraculous ways. That’s what God does. He’s still in the miracle business. In the bible, Moses tried to use his speech impediment (I’m drawing some conclusions here) as an excuse to disobey God. Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. Jeremiah tried the same thing when he said:  “But Lord GOD, I don’t know how to speak. I am only a boy.” (Jeremiah 1:6) Again, God wasn’t interested in excuses.

That’s how God sees Porter, too. He sees him as a perfect and flawless creation. One who can be used for God’s glory, if Porter, and most importantly, Porter’s Mom, can get out of the way long enough for that to happened. Oh, how I want this! Oh, how I’ve prayed for God to use Porter Jay! He has so many wonderful qualities, and a stellar personality, and I just know that God has a mind-blowing plan for that little boy.

So what now? What happens now that we have a diagnosis and Porter’s mom has come to terms with it? Well, I’d love to say that I’ve accepted the term SLI and I’m dealing well with it, and that all those fears and worries have disappeared because I’m trusting God and believe in his provision.

While that’s true, I do trust God and I am believing in His perfect provision for Porter, I still struggle with worry and doubt. a lot. I still struggle with all the “what ifs” and “will he-s”. I still turn really red and start sweating when someone brings up Porter’s language issues, and I still want to run and grab him up and take him home and play in a blanket fort for years on end until I can retire and hold his hand all day long when I think about the trials and teasing that is possibly headed his way. None of that goes away with the realization that God is in control, at least, for me it hasn’t gone away yet.

But. But it does help to know that God can use Porter Jay, in spite of, or because of whatever impairments and struggles he may have. How lovely it is to think that God may have given Porter this impairment so He can use it later on. Who knows… maybe this is all part of the beautiful story that God is most certainly writing for my beautiful little boy. I can hear the charmingly penned words that Porter fashioned himself now: “It’s amazing to think that God has used a son of a fireman from a small town in Northeast Texas who had a language impairment to write books, speak to millions all over this world, and ultimately be given the honor of leading the free-world as President of the United States of America, but He did, and for that, to God be the Glory!”

 

James 1: 19-- But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger.