..."treasure..."

Happy birthday to my baby.... 7-years can pass you by in a flash.

Our youngest son turned 7 this weekend.  What fun it was to see the smile on his face...the joy in his heart.

It seems as though the circumstances of his life have robbed it of that joy lately.  He has been filled with frustration, a scowl on his face a large part of his days.  I can see it as body language defense.  He has to spend 7-hours of the school day "trying to hold it together." The tone and inflection in how others say his name. His body needing to bump or touch another object to "calculate" it's place is space. Bumping into something to hard and tipping it over, flipping a chair, rolling off the bouncy ball & body slamming into the table....
So many things triggering this negative body language.

Our son has been diagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder. I need to interject that he is WICKEDLY intelligent, contemplating scientific theories and dillemas of history. The nuero-transmitters of his brain do not always send and receive the "messages" correctly. It has been described as a traffic jam in the brain. Like a puzzle with chunks of pieces missing.

His body feels like being an old Buick with no bells and whistles. Bumping into the guardrail to find it's position on the road... hitting a patch of black ice & skidding out of control, having inoperable speedometer & gages.  The rest of us are like Cadillacs.  We have all the fancy sensors in our brains, like a backup video camera, sensors to tell us if the road is slick, tailgates that can automatically open and shut...

His birthday however was filled with complete joy.  We ate piles of pancakes for breakfast and headed to the Lego Store, his two birthday requests.  When we fist entered the store, it was overwhelming for him.  Focusing in on building a mini figure meant too many decisions to make.  Eventually he thought through the process, selected one mini figure body part at a time & began to relax and enjoy.... to create.

One of the mini figures he received as a birthday gift came with a treasure chest.  He asked the Hubs if he would help his snap the lid on.

Our son then went into an oration about treasure,
"Some people would want gold or jewels in their treasure box. Me, I know the best treasure of all is Jesus, and you can't box him up.  You've got to share Him with everybody... showing His love and kindness to all the people you meet."

WOW!

Peter talks of treasure in the New Testament of the Bible.....
1 Peter 1:7

New Living Translation (NLT)

^"7 These trials will show that your faith is genuine. It is being tested as fire tests and purifies gold—though your faith is far more precious than mere gold. So when your faith remains strong through many trials..."

Demostrating rafting safety before
heading onto the Yellow Stone River.

So this weekend, I am thankful for my treasure.  The son the Lord blessed me with 7 years ago.  I pray that God will use me to show my son Christ's love and kindness.  To fill him with joy, rather than nag & be his "joy robber."  I am thankful that God is using my son to remind me of my faith... and the treasure that it holds.  When it is locked up in the treasure chest, you forget about it, do see it... you've got to let it out... to see, share and enjoy!