Prayer and Duct Tape

A month ago, almost to the day, I was confident I would never sleep again.

October and November were a blur of emails and calls from the school talking about our son's behavior, every time I turned around I found some bit of information pointing to some new misconduct he was involved in, lies were unending, and our home was filled with a fog of arguments, disrespect and tension.  When we weren't struggling with overwhelming issues with one kid, we were dealing with challenges with the other.  There was yelling, tantrums and fits of rage.  Hurtful words were daggers to these parent's hearts.
On one of these nights when a kid was throwing a fit, items in his room were ripped off walls, things were thrown across the room, and everything from hangers to parts of the wall were broken.  I tip-toed into the battle field the following day to assess the damage and my gaze settled a frame that had been shattered and lay in a pile on the ground.  The photo that had been in the frame now resembled Swiss cheese.  Apparently Matt's face had been remastered with a pair of scissors that lay nearby.
I held the photo in my hands and cried, I looked around the room and cried, I thought of the chaos that had overtaken my home and cried.  I was frustrated and weary.
In the early hours of a December morning, after chasing my kid through the neighborhood, I crawled into bed with tears in my eyes, panic in my heart and hopelessness in my mind.
I feared the worst: my child wouldn't fulfill his destiny because of his own poor choices,  the joy and laughter that has been a staple in our home was gone and I would never sleep peacefully again.

In Exodus 17 we read about the time that Joshua was fighting the Amalekites.  Moses stood on a hill and raised his staff.  As long as his hands were raised, Joshua was winning, when he grew tired and his arms lowered, the battle turned.  Aaron and Hur saw this and helped Moses out.  They gave him a stone to sit on and physically held up Moses' arms so that Joshua could defeat the Amalekites.

Like Moses, I have my own Aaron and Hur who have lifted my hands up when I couldn't do it myself.  I have slept peacefully, my family has shared laughter, we enjoyed a great vacation over Christmas break, I've seen changes in my kids and my hope of my boys' successful futures has returned. I know beyond a doubt that it is the prayers that have sustained me and made an impact on our family.

While putting laundry away in one of the boys' rooms tonight I noticed someone had picked up the picture that suffered under the wrath of anger and scissors.  It was sitting on the desk and all those holes that once pierced Matt's face were patched with duct tape.  The photo wasn't pretty but there was something beautiful about the effort taken to restore it.  These past few months haven't been pretty either, in fact they have been disastrous, but there is beauty in the repairs and hope that there will be more healing in the future.

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