Officially Official Part 2: Finding Ok

I am. I am a mother. I am a mother of a child. I am a mother of a child in a wheelchair.  I recall a mother whom just a few hours ago was afraid of the changes that were brewing along the path ahead…. A path with no exits, no u-turns, and no stops at ‘Lets stay  and rest for a while’.   A mother for whom two years now has tread water, sometimes sinking, sometimes swimming but a mother who climbed out of the pool today and jumped into a big black hole of despair and landed in the soft hands of ‘ok’.  

I am ok….today, I was ok.  Whatever that is and whatever that means.  Sometimes being ok is a choice, sometimes it is not.   There are people who are always ok, or so they seem.  There are people who are ok because they don’t allow themselves not to be ok.  There are people who are never ok because they don’t admit they aren’t ok.  Then there is me.  Me who spills her guts and lays everything out there no matter the consequences.  Me whom ok is hard to find at times. But today, I found it in the most unlikely of places….a black hole.

I am not ok with any of this ever.  It will never be ok with me that my little girl will never get the opportunities she deserves.  It will never be ok with me that God allowed her to live this way.  None of that will ever be ok with me.  But sometimes you have to find your ok in other things.  The big picture is not ok but this particular page of my Not OK Novel was an easy read.  A piece of cake.  A walk in the park.  Kind of.   I held back sobs and swallowed what felt like pinecones in my throat all afternoon but shed a tear I did not. 

Instead, I did what sometimes is hard for me.  I listened.  I sat back and I listened.  I listened to the straps that locked in place, I listened to the levers that opened and closed, I listened to the allen wrench against the screws that held this lime green piece of machinery together that will put my daughter in motion.  I listened to the sounds that are now a part of my life.  The sounds that will allow me to feed my little girl with a spoon…. The sounds that will allow her to sit up…. The sounds that will give my back a break. The sounds that might just make my life easier or so they say.   The sounds that will, as a dear friend told me today, allow her to see the world from a different perspective, the world she will have to experience through my eyes.

I didn’t choose to be ok today.  I didn’t jump into that black hole telling myself it would be ok.  I jumped not knowing what I would find at the bottom. I don’t know why and I don’t know how but what I found was ok.