Colorado - our beautiful battlefield

I've been writing this post in my head for over a month.  Not really sure how to share what I want to share.  I want to keep private what needs to be kept private but write hoping that it can help another family that may be struggling with similar things.  I had a lot of time to think through the course of our lives over the past two months and it is all but remarkable where God has brought us to.   At the beginning of January, I would have told you it would have been impossible.

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We stepped off the plane at the Denver airport after being delayed because of weather.  It was already dark and we had to locate our rental car place and still drive another 90 miles.  Mike and I were a little snippy with each other and the kids sensed the tension.  Neither one of them were exactly sure why we boarded a plane that didn't end up in the Dominican.

After waiting for what seemed like forever for a shuttle to take us to our rental car, we were on edge.  It had way less to do with a delayed flight and the inconveniences of airport transportation and way more to do with the reasons why we were in Colorado in the first place.

In March of 2012 our world felt like it was falling apart.  Our sweet, sensitive, endearing, caring and loving 4 year old became angry, violent and sometimes utterly belligerent.  It felt like it was completely out of nowhere.  Like, one day he woke up and decided to hate us.  He used words that were hard to hear coming from a child's mouth.  His actions were completely incomprehensible.  His demeanor and even his expressions changed to something we had never witnessed before.  It was scary and unnerving and we thought that this couldn't possibly be happening to our family.

Our first morning at The Ranch

After months and months of trying different things and meeting with different people I had resorted to the fact that this was going to be our lives forever; a child that we loved so deeply, falling apart at the seems.

We arrived at Blessing Ranch in absolute darkness; both literally and figuratively.  We unpacked our things and settled in.  The kids were burning off energy, because of an 8:00pm nap, by running circles around every room.  I sat on the bed and the unknown loomed over me.  What if this doesn't work?  What if this is what the rest of our lives will look like?  What if he only gets worse?  I cried again like I had almost every day for the previous ten months and Landon walked in on me.  I lied and told him I was just happy to be in such an awesome place.



I don't do well with the unexpected and I am always skeptical of quick fixes.  I didn't believe for a second that five days in a place could change the course of our lives, even though I really wanted to.  But I woke up early that first morning ready to give this place a shot.  I mean, what did we have to lose.  I rounded the corner from our bedroom to see a sight we hadn't seen in our late night arrival.  A wall of windows gleamed back at me as I stared at the blue mountain scape caressed by the most perfect color of orange terrain that seamlessly blended into one another.  Years of art classes and studying the effects of complimentary colors literally panned out in front of me.  God reassured me, only He can do something this spectacular.  It was as if that first glimpse gave me what I needed to throw caution to the wind and trust a Father who has been nothing but faithful since the day I first gave Him my heart.  My load was lightened.

I could tell you all about the two sessions a day of sitting in a room with an absolutely charming counselor who I was completely cold to for the first two days and with whom I became a blubbering mess of emotions with later.  About hours of Landon drawing pictures and meltdowns and then breakthroughs and things we had no idea about before our time there.  And how, by the absolute grace of God, Emi sat patiently and quietly for hours on end playing with Barbies and legos, all the while almost oblivious to the hurt and the fear and the tension melting away right in front of her.

It was nothing short of a miracle.

Our favorite little gazebo, Landon thought it was "so awesome"

We listened to our son talk about how when he gets upset about something it makes him feel "really hot" and then it makes him even more mad.  How he's scared to be alone in a room because "the devil wants him to be on his team and he's too little to fight him on his own."  How he feels so "out of control and wants to be nice" but he just can't.

I can't tell you how hard it is to hear your little boy say things that most forty year old men can't even express but the fact that he had the words to describe how he was feeling was, like I said, nothing short of a miracle.



We had nothing but time to spend with our kids putting puzzles together and going on "nature hunts" and playing Simon Says.  We were greeted with rabbits, deer and elk.  I've never had more of a desire to wake up early to see a sunrise in my life.  Every day we spent out in the wilderness I could feel my boy coming back to life.  And maybe I was coming back to life too.

This little blondie blended in with the background, it's a good thing we packed bright-colored clothes!

Not every moment was perfect and there were plenty of tough moments to account for but one thing that continuously rang on every thorny thistle and every mountain peak, was hope.  Hope for a future yet unwritten.  Hope for a boy who felt trapped in his overstimulated body.  Hope in a God that does nothing but mesmerize those who take a second to see His awesome power...even in the deepest valleys.



After only five days on The Ranch, we were equipped with a diagnosis, a list of activities to help Landon cope with his sensory issues and a plan to follow if we came upon any of the difficult scenarios we had been in over the past year.

After only five days, Landon improved drastically...and when I say drastically, I mean drastically.

Probably my favorite shot out of the 300 I took

God showed up.  Not in the way I thought He would and not even in the way I wanted Him to but in the way He knew would be best.  I've met countless people who have lost their faith or wavered in their faith when they couldn't see how God could allow something so awful to happen to them, if they were His so-called children.  What we have endured in the past year has been so excruciatingly painful that it wouldn't do it justice to put into words.  And it wouldn't do Landon justice to tell you either.  But what I can say is that God found a way to bring me to my knees every day.  To intervene for my son through prayer like I had never before.  To trust the steps He was asking me to take when I couldn't even see one foot in front of the other.  To bring me to a place of intimacy with Him that may have never been possible any other way.

The sunrise on our last morning.  The kids woke up early too and couldn't believe how amazing it was.

My son is not like your son and he will never be.  But he is beautiful and eccentric and artistic and loving and passionately sensitive and fiercely aware of a God who is taking him on his own journey, unique to him.  And I am learning more and more everyday since the trip to Colorado that God is doing the exact same thing with me.

This picture was taken a half an hour after the sunrise picture above...we literally watched the wall of snow hit us

"We too often forget that people will also follow our grief to get to Jesus. They will watch us on the day our spouse walks out the door or the business goes bankrupt or the child runs away or we receive an ominous diagnosis. They will watch...and they will look to see if the God we preached on our best day can sustain us on the hardest one." 

-Beautiful Battlefields, Bo Stern



***Landon was diagnosed on the spectrum of three things:  1) Hyperactivity 2) Sensory Dysfunction Disorder with an oversensitivity to movement 3) Spiritual Warfare...since our visit to The Ranch, Landon has had only two meltdowns in two months (and they were comparatively small).  He used to have at least two meltdowns a day.  We have restructured our days at home, implemented a lot more schedules and stick to a stricter diet for him (a lot less sugar).  It is incredible the changes we have seen.