He's in There

I came across a video last year about this time that sparked the possibility of hope again. Its about Carly, a girl who seems to be like Caleb in so many ways. It really made me believe that maybe we could reach him, that he was in there after all....
Here is Carly's story...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_GXVzZ0Unk

I know this is a long clip, but this was a very pivotal 10 minutes that actually changed my life. Carly opened my eyes and once I opened the door to hope I started to talk to Caleb differently, I began to talk to him like he was in there, and that I expected him to understand what I was saying. You can always tell when Caleb is thinking hard, he gets a very distinct (and cute) look in his eyes. He began to have that look when I talked to him. I started to pray for him differently, instead of the typical, memorized simple prayer I usually did, I began to pray earnestly and deeply with him. What happens is subtle and really hard to put into words, but there are changes, they are slow but they are there. Hope actually changed the atmosphere and it has changed Caleb.

I have to say that this whole thing challenged my faith though. Carly’s family had the money to hire therapists to work with her 1:1 for years. I began to question God as to how He could give me a child with these disabilities and not give me the resources to help him. It made me feel like He didn’t see us or didn’t care. I would like to say God and I have resolved all of this but, well, lets just say its in progress. I am working on my understanding that God is in this, sometimes I really see His hand and feel Him in it and other times I feel abandoned. God and I have been talking about it though and I have come to believe that God is bigger than therapists, He is bigger than our money issues and most of all I believe that God is writing Caleb's story, it will be different from Carly's I know, and probably different than what I ever expected but written by God just the same. I have to make a choice to believe these things because I don’t always “feel” it or see any reason to think differently, but then I suppose that's the essence of faith isn’t it?

In this new world of hope, I am choosing to believe that God sees, hears and knows my discouragement and my ache. I choose to believe that He has a plan.
Since I have moved from living in discouragement to hope, Caleb is responding in ways that I can’t explain, he is using more words and is more interactive than he used to be. It may not be in leaps and bounds but it has been enough to break the hard shell of skepticism that was “protecting” my heart to believing that we can possibly reach him. He is responding to hope, he is in there.

                                                                Here is my boy!!