Where There Is Hope

H - O - P - E.  How much that 4 letter word has meant to me. How much that four letter word still means to me. Where there is hope there is  light. Where there is light there is strength. Where there is strength there is triumph. Where there is triumph there is unfiltered joy.

I have been on this journey long enough to know that I will have some really dark days, but I know that I will also have some really beautiful successes. I know that each of these parts make a whole and that this whole will go round and round for the foreseeable future.

My parents and sister emailed me this morning kind of like group intervention. My sister had talked with her best friend whose father is blind and came away with an abundance of resources. My father contacted the school for the blind (in Cleveland) to see what information they could give him regarding resources out here. It meant the world to me that my family knows me well enough to know (even when I am too proud to ask)
that I needed help. Even 1700 miles away they saw that I was standing at the foot of a  precipice with Hope pouring out of me and heading for the hills too weak to begin the climb with me to get Sarah the help she needed.

And then just like the precipice threw down a ladder and allowed me up. A representative for the school for the blind called me today and is coming over next week with information and some supplies to get Sarah started on Braille and life skills. The superintendent of the school gave her special permission to help us out. (Because we homeschool and don't have the IEP necessary for them to help us out on a regular basis she is coming once to offer us the information she can. She is driving to our home to meet us which I think is awesome.) The National Federation of the Blind got back to me and offered our family information on a support group that meets monthly. I was also given information on a convention that is happening in April in Albuquerque all geared towards the blind. THEN I was given information on a group geared specifically for parents of blind children.

It was like the floodgates opened and all the help I feel like I have been begging for for months just fell in my lap. I have been overcome with emotion since I got all of this news. I feel such relief.

The wonderful gift that this journey has given me is the ability to appreciate the smallest of successes. To genuinely be grateful in a way that I never, ever would have known prior to Sarah's diagnosis. Each little victory makes me feel like I was to run up A mountain and scream at the top of my lungs, " I DID IT!!!!" I fought and fought and did not give up - not even in my darkest hours - I did it. I had Hope tucked into my heart even when I felt carrying it was just leading to a pipe dream of promises and successes that would never come.

What a relief. Oh, God - what a relief.

Thank you EVERYONE for walking this journey with me. Thank you for reading my (sometimes seemingly) unending doom and gloom. Thank you for sticking with me. Thank you, thank you, thank you. We did it! We are on the path to getting Sarah the help she needs. And even though I am in the trenches day in and day out - you, too, have helped get us here whether it is because you are a friend of Sarah's or a friend of mine or my beloved family. Everyone who loves Sarah has contributed to this success.

Where there is Hope there is always a way....