Chosen Families

One of the most pronounced characteristics of my daughter’s hidden disability is how much she struggles processing transitions.

Which is inconvenient because that’s the one thing in life that will never change:
things will always change.

I can’t tell you how many birthday parties and playdates we avoided because I couldn’t predict how Cami would express her struggles with transitions. Sometimes the meltdown happened at the event location when we were leaving, and sometimes the meltdown happened later in the van on the way home. Every time, the meltdown happened: Cami laying on the floor or rigid in the chair, screaming, arms flailing, fists banging, legs kicking—no intelligible words, with actual tears and snot all over her face. It was intense, y’all.

Through the years, we tried different strategies to help Cami with transitions:

• talking through the schedule ahead of time,
• role-playing how to leave a location gracefully,
• multiple warnings that time-to-leave was coming up,
• a code word to use if either of us was feeling overwhelmed by a situation,
• planning what my friend Betsy calls exit strategies.

There were stretches of time when the most effective strategy we employed was to simply stay home. We didn’t rearrange furniture in her bedroom. I let her wear the same shirt day after day (I washed it when she slept). I didn’t plan anything for the week of Daylight Savings Time, knowing it would take the entire week for us to adjust to the time-keeping shift. As she’s grown older, Cami’s transitioning ability has increased in its effectiveness, although we still need at least a week to adjust to Springing Forward.

A few years ago, when Michael and I started the conversation about buying a house, Cami’s struggle with transitions was foremost in my husband’s mind. We talked about it as a family for at least two years before we looked at our first real estate listing. We stayed on our knees through the entire process, giving God our request list but knowing He would work out everything for our good. I didn’t realize, however, how good He would work everything out where Cami was concerned.

We read about and saw pictures of places all over Northern Virginia. We drove around and looked at the outside of countless houses, checking out the neighborhoods, calculating Michael’s commute time, gauging how long it would take us to get to church. Yet we only viewed the inside of a handful of houses, all in one weekend. None of the houses fit us at all. As I walked the dog one evening, I found myself literally crying out to God, tears running down my face as I realized I didn’t want to leave our street. We began our house-hunt wanting to buy a single-family home with a little land attached, with room to garden and a covered porch to enjoy. We ended our house-hunt asking God to give us a home to buy on our current street of townhouses. We love our neighborhood, and we’d spent six years cultivating relationships on our street. There was only one drawback to the new house hunt: the only unit for sale on our street was far beyond our price range.

We decided to wait and see what God would do. Even though we’d previously been inside it, we toured our neighbors’ house, looking this time with buyers’ eyes. It had plenty of room inside and out, with a garden already established in the backyard. Although it didn’t have a covered porch, it did have a nice deck overlooking the woods. I asked God to make it possible for us to buy their place. We continued to pray and wait on God’s provision and timing.

Two weeks later, as I worked in our front yard, a different neighbor came across the street. “I heard you’re looking for a place to buy,” he said.

“We are,” I said.

“Would you and Mike be interested in buying our place? We found a house a few blocks away we want to purchase.”

You know those moments that charge the atmosphere with their holiness, when God’s presence is palpable in the air? the moments where you feel God shift your reality as He performs His will in your life? It was one of those moments. God rocked my world as I stood there on the front sidewalk of the house we had rented for six years. Within the week, my husband and our neighbor discussed a deal to buy the townhouse, which was smaller than the one we’d prayed for, but had an updated kitchen and bathrooms, fresh paint in every room, and new carpets. The men shook hands on the terms, then we called our real estate agents. Within three weeks, we closed on the home God hand-picked for us and moved across the street.

Cami still struggled with the transition involved in moving out of the house we had lived in for six of her ten years of life. Yet where God had rocked my world, He steadied my daughter’s world. He gave us a house with a floor plan that mirrored our familiar space: different enough for us to make it our own, yet similar enough that Cami’s adjustment was minimal. Instead of Cami’s bedroom facing the woods where she could sit at the open window like she used to, her bedroom now faces the parking lot and our neighborhood’s common areas, giving her ample opportunity to see when her friends are playing outside and to join them. Instead of one master bedroom and two tiny bedrooms, God gave us a house with two master bedrooms, with room enough for Cami to spread out all over her own room instead of spreading out all over everywhere else. Although it took a few weeks for us to unpack and settle into our new home, Cami spent that time in her familiar neighborhood with her familiar friends, building fairy houses and riding scooters and drawing on the sidewalks with chalk.

When we moved, we didn’t leave any of her friends or any of our neighbors behind. Instead, we planted our feet firmly on the street where God had already planted our hearts.

With no transition meltdowns, no time-to-leave warnings, and no exit strategies needed.

I like shifting with Jesus much better than trying to shift on my own.

Grateful for His gentle, steadying hand,

Candi