Monday Racing

I was running all day yesterday, tutoring, staffings at school, doctors appointments, swimmimg practice and we didn't even make the cub scout meeting. As I lay in bed last night I looked over at the book beside the bed; Margins by Richard Swinson, a book about slowing down and giving yourself margins to live life at a livable pace, to have time for God and family. "What is going on in my life?" I thought. Then the phone began to ring, over and over, M's number on the caller id. I just turned off the phone, too exhausted to deal with anyone elses problems. I thought back over the conversations at the SST meeting for two of my children. One long time friend who was there knew my other girls said, "It must be really hard to deal with this after having Cori and Aimee."They had a reputation for excellence that anyone who knew them had not forgotten. I had just been told the test results for the battery of tests that they had given to the little girls and it was grim. It's like being told you have something wrong but continuing to believe it's a mistake until you've gone to the 4th doctor who confirms it. I knew that there was probably alcohol damage to my childrens brains, but I kept hoping it was developmental delay or my impatient teaching methods or something else. Now I was hearing from an ESOL teacher, a testing expert, a speech and language specialist and a classroom teacher that had all been working with my children for 4 months and saw the same things that I did, documented on paper, retested several times to make sure. On one, 2% score on the language assesment, no understanding of abstract concepts, very little progress in spelling or reading or math above a k-1 level, overall 72 IQ. The other slightly higher but with much of the same results and a more profound deficit in understanding sound-symbol connections. They had never seen anything like it and were mystified as to how to write an IEP.
I have read so much about FAS that I'm afraid for them. I don't know what the ultimate outcome will be for my children but I do know what it could be. I know what they probably won't be able to do. I know that they are real people with strenghths of character, loving hearts and the desire to live "normal" like everyone else. And I know that I have an enormous task ahead to keep them from the fate of so many children with FAS/FAE.
I thought about why my life is so busy now compared to when my birth children were small and how I could simplify my life now. I know that I can streamline things and make it better but basically I am going to be running hard because I'm trying to give these kids every opportunity to succeed at being good people that will love God with all their hearts and will have every advantage I can offer them to succeed at finding their place in the Kingdom of God. It's not going to just happen. The truth is, though, that I'm not in control of their lives, I've given them to God and I'm just a tool that He can use. I need to keep that focus and not make myself or FAS or anything else, more important than His power and what he can do.