Dyslexia

Every Struggling Child Should Try This Surprising Approach For Breakthrough

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

Sometimes, after the “Weird!” comes the “Wow!”

So there we were, my husband, children and I, in the canoe, rowing slightly to the left of the big storm that had arrived in one of our children’s life.

We were hoping to avoid the worst of the bad weather.

Join people in over fifty countries who read this to gain valuable life wisdom! (Or maybe they’re just laughing at me? . . . Whatever!)

I was the one paddling this boat.

“We’re going to try this crazy, insane diet,” I announced one day, snatching the Froot Loops from my husband. (Actually, my husband was very supportive. And we’ve never sunk as low as a “Froot Loop” eater, but don’t ruin the emotional effect of this writing.)

And so, “Good morning!” I announced that day to my two beautiful children.

“Are you ready for breakfast? No Froot Loops today!” I announced cheerfully!

“Zucchini and lard soup, anyone?”

Whaaaaaaa…. You know that noise in the movies that we hear when the actors freeze in place, everything stops in their lives, and we think, “WHAT the…?”

Well, insert that sound here.

And let’s back up a bit.

After deciding to jump with both feet into the deep water of trying this bizarre diet, I watched endless talks by Dr. Natasha Campbell McBride, the author of the book we were trying out, and by others who had tried her diet.

My intellect still didn’t agree with the actions I was about to take. Still, we had decided to TRY at least the recommendations of this book in hopes of a few of the helpful outcomes promised for children with learning disabilities, Autism, Dyspraxia, A.D.D., Dyslexia, A.D.H.D., and Depression.

But my intellect screamed in protest – LARD? Who eats LARD anymore!

For example, I was a vegetarian for many years. I had looked down on people who ate fatty foods like butter and other horrors. I ate “But-TR” and other foods with MUCH less fat, THANK YOU VERY MUCH! I looked down my nose at those deceived people who would dump any old fat onto their food. “Too bad they’re not more like ME!” I thought (in the humblest way I could, which meant not saying my thoughts out loud). They could tell by my “Look”1 that I was MUCH higher up the echelon of a healthy eater than they were.

Until I wasn’t.

A decade later, we learned that “But-TR” and other non-dairy “cheeze” that we consumed regularly was 95% trans fat. And trans fat was tidily banned in all industrialized countries. So I MIGHT have been a BIT wrong about that, but why bring that up? Can’t you see I’m trying to assert myself as an EXPERT?

So I was willing to admit that I COULD be wrong.

Anyway, the truth about our first breakfast was actually this:

  1. I announced to our children, after some discussion over the previous weeks, that we were going to TRY a new family diet to see if it helps one child’s tummy feel better. If it didn’t work after a while, we’d toss it and go back to the way we ate before. (The kids kept their Froot Loops on a special shelf “just in case,” patiently waiting for mom to regain her mind again.)
  2. “We’re going to do this diet as a family,” I announced. (Why don’t we eat marshmallows and s’mores for dinner again, while ONE person in the family has rice cakes? was the only other alternative I could discern. This seemed like a cruel punishment for one person in the family who was trying the new diet.) No. And besides, the rest of us CAN go without certain foods for a short period of time!
  3. “I’m actually a little bit sad about this,” I announced to the two girls, both of them shorter than my waist. “Oh, Mommy!” they offered, rushing to hug and comfort me. “I’m not used to eating this kind of food, so I’m a little bit sad,” I continued. They both put on their big-girl outfits and tried to comfort me. Did I mention that homeschooled kids are GOOD kids?
  4. “MMMmmm… “ It’s not THAT bad,” one child offered, trying to cover up her face, screwing into the “I just ate an entire raw lemon” look. SHE was comforting me. “OK, maybe I’ll try a bite,” I thought, trying to be a grown-up too.

We may make it through this, with all of us encouraging each other, was my next thought.

And we did.

And the results blew my mind.

But that discussion is for another time.

Thanks for liking me! I like you too! – Proven HERE, HERE, and HERE! Let’s journey together!

Photo Credit – Child NOT Eating Froot Loops! by Ian Taylor on Unsplash, Exploding Brain by notorious v1ruS on Unsplash

1 For example, see HERE for an example of my POWER LOOK.

How To Wake Up To Divine Moments – Treasure The Clues

/ Lori Lawe / 2 Comments

So, my toddler said she saw an angel one day.

Fast forward about seven years. We had moved to another house by that time. The subject of angels came up over lunch.

“You saw an angel once,” I ventured to that same child, now about ten years old.

I wondered if she would remember.

“WHAATT?” Her older sister demanded. She prided herself, as an older sister’s right, to know ALL of the family stories. How had she never heard this one?

I hadn’t mentioned it in all those years except for telling one friend and my husband what happened immediately afterward.

Who would have believed her anyway?

Children don’t have many words when they are three years old. Would she remember the incident now? And if so, could put more words around the experience? As much as possible, I wanted the conversation to come from her, not directed by me or influenced by my memory.

“Do you remember seeing an angel?” I ventured.

She said, “Yes”

I wanted to test her, to see if she was speaking accurately.

“Where were you when you saw the angel?”

“At the other house.”

I was startled.

Yes.

“And where was the angel?”

She said, “Outside”.

Oh no, I thought, she doesn’t remember. This event happened in the playroom. I was about to clean up the dishes when she continued, explaining more, “The angel was outside”.

Oh! Yes, I thought, the angel was outside the window we were staring at. That made sense.

Without my prompting, she explained that she was looking out the window in the playroom at the time.

She had remembered this very incident, which brought me shivers. This child was officially diagnosed with memory challenges a short time after this event*.

And yet she remembered the details of this event from many years earlier.

“What did you see?” I asked gently.

“The angel was singing. It had gold shoes and a gold sash.”

I sensed that we were standing on holy ground.

“Oh,” I said.

What else was there to say?

And then we finished our lunch.

~

And what is our response when divine moments encroach upon our lives?

Everyone should allow divine moments, either our own or others, to propel them further along God’s spiritual path for them. But how? The softness of our heart, exposed as one of three common responses, will determine whether we stay stuck in the mud spiritually or whether we are launched further and deeper along our spiritual paths.

In the next post, we will evaluate these most common heart responses after God interrupts the mundane.

He ordered his angels to guard you wherever you go.

The Message

God, thank you that sometimes, for a brief moment, You open our eyes to the possibility of the divine through our or others’ experiences.

Help us wake up to grasp what is right before us when our eyes are opened and our ears can hear. Help us to speak openly about what we have heard and seen. May the unusual become commonplace in each of our lives, we pray.

While we do not place our faith directly in angels, we should place it in the God who rules the angels; then we can have peace.

Billy Graham

What unusual divine moments have you experienced? Or what is a sacred moment that another has told you about that seemed plausible? Has this moment or a curiosity about this experience propelled your spiritual journey?

Blogpost Footnotes

*These cognitive challenges were later healed years after this event through diet, but that is a story for another day.

What Did God Say? Heal Our Children? Are Our Ears Clean?

/ Lori Lawe / Leave a comment

I wasn’t sure if I could keep the car on the road because I couldn’t see through my tears.

The downpour we were driving through didn’t help, either. “Keep it together. Keep it together. . .” was my mantra until I could get inside, close the door to the world, and let these emotions out.

I wasn’t sure I would be able to drive the car home.

Inside, I collapsed behind a closed door and told my husband the news. His sadness began deep, deep in his soul, in the place where love resides, and found its expression. It was the future we mourned.

A dark cloud had cast a shadow over the future of one of our children. Like a candle in the snow, her joyful little light was sensing wind on the horizon. And the odd pieces of cardboard I found nearby to try to shield her from the wind didn’t look like enough right now.

Heal her, God whispered to me months later.

I was minding my own business, letting my mind wander while in the hot tub.

“Um, what now?” I asked. I sat upright and perked up my ears. “What did you say?”

Silence.

I had heard him. Would I take the next step in faith? Or would I put cotton in my ears and dunk my head under the hot tub, ensuring I could not hear any more of this foolish talk?

They told me this was incurable. Everyone knew that! The best we could hope for was some moderate success with behaviour modification – a few small wins.

And so, which road should I take?

This is where we stumble.

Is that a jewel I just about stepped on along the path of life?

Will we pick it up, inspect it, hold it to the light and find a friend with a hammer to crack it open?

Or will we put it in our pocket to consider later if we remember?

The joys and the sorrows of life arrive, and we hang up our clothes at the end of the day. We forget them there for awhile. When we remember, through foggy memories, that there may be a jewel in our pocket (!), we look again, but it fell out. There are only the singed edges of our pocket to remind us that we were holding a bit of heaven for a while.

But it’s gone now.

What’s for lunch?

And God feels far away, again, even though He just descended from heaven to meet us. We treated His gift like just another stone on the path. Will we catch the next jewel He holds out to us? Will our eyes be open enough to see this time, or will we trample, again, the precious jewel that He offers, His firelight shining in the darkness?

It’s only a sparkle at first.

Time to bow low and fan the flame of His voice in your life, friend?

Come along. Let’s journey together.

Oh. And she was healed, God guiding and then redeeming my pathetic attempts to listen, Him re-directing me and helping me up when discouragement hit. For that is His way.

Jesus said, “There is no need to dismiss them. You give them supper.”

“All we have are five loaves of bread and two fish,” they said.

Jesus said, “Bring them here.” . . . The disciples then gave the food to the congregation. They all ate their fill. They gathered twelve baskets of leftovers. About five thousand were fed.

The Message

We give Him what we have. It’s all we have but it’s not very much. We work with Him, following His direction so that the miracle can occur.

But that is a story for another time.

It’s also a repetitive story found here and here and in any heart willing to receive what He offers.

Ready for an adventure into the miraculous?