Ordinary Time

The church has a season called “Ordinary Time.” It’s not Lent or Easter, not Advent or Christmas, and much of the year is spent here.

I’m in this kind of season with my son right now. We had 5 years of crisis mode: unsafe situations, navigating suspensions (for a 2nd/3rd grader, mind you), and just plain surviving.

Then, at the end of 2020, we found relief.

His second inpatient visit offered the life-giving diagnosis of Bipolar I, and he transferred to a specialized school that has support for him. He now has meds that help him. Family members who didn’t believe in mental illness in children now see the actual results of proper treatment and are supportive in new ways.

At the end of 2020, when others were enduring a new crisis mode of their own with the pandemic, our “ordinary time” began.

My therapist, on one of our telehealth calls, noted that I had spent so long in crisis mode, I needed to re-learn how to exist in a different season; one where you didn’t get daily calls from the school to pick up your son, and where he didn’t share suicidal ideations on a weekly basis.

It’s a year and a half later, and I think I’m still learning. I’m still terrified that we will be thrown into an unsafe situation once again. We have different struggles than other families– like how missing one evening dose could through him into a tailspin that lasts for two weeks. But, our baseline is so much lower. Despite how painful it is to reflect on our times of crisis, I try to do that so I can remember how far we’ve come. How far he’s come. My ordinary time might look different than someone else’s, but I’m grateful for it.