Photo Credit: papaija2008 at www.freedigitalphotos.net

Special needs parents need rest. But where to find it? That’s the problem guest blogger Rebekah Benimoff asks and answers in today’s guest post. So put your feet up and rest while you read her post.

Special Needs Parents Need Lavish Rest

In this moment, I need the simplicity of quiet and rest. I live just far away from family to not be at every event, and often, phone calls bridge the gap between celebrations and attending. My special needs family requires living differently, in many ways.

This creates an overwhelming need in me to draw apart and simply seek peace in the inmost places.

Daily, weekly…even on special celebration days. Years ago I would have made the trip, two weekends in a row. I would have pushed through managing multiple medical issues, until I was spent, filled only by fatigue and utter exhaustion. I learned the hard way what works, and what, in the end, only depletes wellness.

Sometimes I feel confined by diabetes, post-traumatic stress disorder, and sensory processing disorder. Yet, most days I recognize the intentional hemming in. Not despite the boundaries, but because of them I have learned what it is to continually press in. I understand that I can not deal with all this on my own.

To move forward, I have to seek strength beyond what I can muster.

Still, it is easy to become engrossed in the day to day managing of so many special needs–and when I am engulfed in a mess of medical mayhem, I often press on without pressing in. In these times, I tend to carry an awful lot of baggage and not even know it. Life tumbles on, and I deal in bursts–bursts of hormones and blood glucose levels, eruptions of emotions, and battles of will. Balancing diabetes symptoms with hormonal surges in these last months has been exhausting.  After a long season of addressing diabetes complications due to puberty, this first week of summer has lit up an urgency in me, an essential letting go and an intentional filling up.

My son’s endocrinologist asked him this week what he was doing over the summer. His answer? Resting. Simple and to the point. We need recovery time. While other families traipse to camps and theme parks and family vacations, what my family needs most right now is rest.

We need a different kind of recreation in this season.

A quiet refreshing, a time to recover, to be enfolded in tranquility, allowing serenity to nestle deep into the places that are filled only by seeking stillness, quietude. It’s all good. Relaxation is a needed resource, a necessary life gift. A way to unwind before I unravel, a conduit of connection with my Source. So today, I will call those I love, connecting over the miles, and then, I will engage in purposeful refueling. I will close my eyes, breathe deep, give thanks for the many gifts in my life, and I will revel in…

…lavish rest.

Your Needs As a Special Needs Parent?

What’s your greatest need as a special needs parent? Is is lavish rest, like Rebekah, or does something else restore you? Share your insight in the comment box. 

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