Run With It

“Go Landry!  Go Landry!  Run!  Run!  Push it!  Push it!”

Landry is my 7^th grade son, participating in track for the first time, and these were the words that the other fans and I cheered out as Landry competed in his first few races the past couple of weeks.

These are not words that Landry is accustomed to hearing.  As a child growing up with ADHD, he has often heard the opposite.

“Sit down.  Be still.  Lower your voice.  Be quiet.  Think before you act.”  These are the words that Landry is used to hearing.

But on the track, it was a different story.  Landry wasn’t asked to harness his energy, he was asked to release it.  He wasn’t asked to curb his enthusiasm, he was asked to exude it.  He wasn’t asked to quell his intensity, he was asked to embrace it.  He wasn’t asked to suppress his impulses, he was asked to act on them.

He wasn’t asked to sit down, he was asked to rise up.

Landry was told to run with it, to go for it, to give it all he had.  The collective societal voices that had been telling him ‘no’ were now telling him ‘yes’.  The voices chiding him for his inexhaustible energy were now cheering him because of it.  The voices saying he was less than enough were now saying he was more than enough.

And I can’t tell you how much it made this mama’s heart smile.

I’m sure any parent of an ADHD child or any kind of “different” child can relate.  We are constantly fighting a battle to help our children exist in the world of “normal” without compromising their identity.  It can be frustrating and exhausting, even confusing at times.

But it can also be extremely rewarding when one recognizes the amazing qualities these children have to offer, and in turn offer them patience and encouragement.

That is my wish, my hope, my prayer, for Landry and all of the “different” kids.  That they will be embraced for their uniqueness and what they have to offer the world.  That they will emboldened to speak their voices rather than be silenced.  That they will be allowed to flourish in their natural bents rather than be stifled in them.  That they will be encouraged to break out of the mold rather than be conformed to it.

That not one of these precious children will be told to abandon his/her true self, but rather to run with it.

“But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God?  Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’  Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?” – Romans 9:20-21 (NIV)