“To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk pain. To try is to risk failure, but risk must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.” ~ Unknown

Today is a big day in the Pruitt household as the minis are off to college!  Ok, so it’s not really college, but it’s an Early Intervention Program at UCLA where E will go as a student and Q as what they call a “Peer Model” and I am full of mixed emotions.

The past few weeks have been fraught with anxiety, laughter, some tears and lots of hope.  As I type this post, I somehow feel peaceful, more peaceful than I have felt in weeks. Perhaps the anxiety was in some way due to the preparations which were ever so thorough based on the fact this is a medically based program. The preparation on their emergency disaster kits alone nearly put me over the edge. When you are running all over town looking for a “Space Blanket” (those shiny silver blankets they put over people in major disasters to help them retain their body heat if they go into shock) will put unthinkable ideas in your head.  Needless to say, the Mini Pruitts’ Disaster Kits rival those of people hiking Everest.  There are things in there that weren’t even on the list, but if something happens, they will be safe until I can get to them.  As you can probably tell, the thought of something happening to them where I would not be able to get to them was almost more than I could take and comprehend.

On top of all those mixed emotions, everyone in the house has been sick, with E suffering the brunt of it and that means me too. More than twice in the past 10 days, I have held her as she screamed in my arms. Sometimes vomiting, feverish, achey, and sometimes just screaming out of pure exhaustion and/or the discomfort of her 2 year molars.  But alas, she cannot tell me and the bigger she gets, the stronger she gets and the more desperate I become for the hope that she will have words at some point to tell me what’s wrong.  The emotional taxation I have felt over the past 2 weeks has been like being trapped on a rollercoaster where I can’t see the next twist or turn. One minute we are all laughing and holding our hands up as we go up and down over the gentle hills and the next minute we are in a dark tunnel throttling downward at top speed only to suddenly head upward with the exhilaration that we made it through.

While E would scream, Q would inevitably come running as he gets very distraught when she cries resulting in him once tripping and slamming his head into the hardwood floor on top of a previous injury resulting in golf ball size swelling and all 3 of us in tears. Last Wednesday was my proverbial straw.  As I sat holding E while she screamed I started to bawl.  Crying, bouncing, looking up and asking for a break. For a much needed hall pass. A minute to gather my emotions to have some peace. To not feel like things were going to come tumbling down or more specifically that I was not going to come tumbling down.  I was crying so hard I could feel the mascara running down my face and stinging my eyes. I wiped my eyes with my shoulder and repeated my requests out loud while bouncing and swaying E.  And then suddenly, E stopped crying. She was watching me cry!

She looked at me with a grin in her eyes and it slowly spread to her lips and then her mouth. She gave me a small amused grunt and waited for me to collect myself. I watched her nearly dumbfounded and as soon as she was confident I was going to make it, she started to scream.  At that point I started to laugh.  Sway and laugh.  Laugh because I couldn’t believe what had just happened, laugh because I had nothing left and laugh because it was really the only thing to do.

Sometimes we get just what we need when we least expect it. I got just a dose of hope that I wasn’t going to fall apart and that she was ok and this was going to pass. Hope.

So tomorrow as we go off into our new adventure, I am nervous. Not so much about having them go out of the home or having them away from me, but nervous to hope. I am hopeful for progress, to see great strides, hopeful for something that even I don’t really understand.  All I know is that whatever it is it brings my little E closer to a 2 and 1/2 year old.  I know that whatever happens it will be ok, but I want to be able to hope…to feel the excitement and nervousness so intensely that it almost brings me to tears because she is my baby. She is my girl who fights so hard to do anything and everything.  So of course, no matter what happens, how big or small, fast or slow, I will be by her side cheering for her, but today, I want to risk hope.  Because, my little E is off to her next level of progress and Q is by her side. Today is full of the best kind of risk.

As I risk amazing faithful hope in my heart today, I hope you feel the same. Hope is quite powerful and today it brings me to my knees, but that’s ok and it makes today ‘mynewfavoriteday.’  I wish you hope for whatever is bubbling in your heart and mind. To not be afraid of it. It’s ok to hope even if there isn’t something you can do to surely influence your desired outcome. Let the hope make today ‘yournewfavoriteday.’

And please wish us all some good positive hope today as we walk and scoot one foot in front of the other through our door of hope.

Featured image shared from vitalyogathebook.com