I sat there at the kitchen table in frustration with my head in my hands. I was stressed and under allot of pressure from every angle that day. The week had been unbelievably hard in every way. Abbey sat there beside me, watching me as my husband spoke trying to bring some reassurance and wisdom to the moment. Then when it was just too much for her to hold back her comments any longer, she interjected her question, “Are you screwing up?”. 

Apparently, she took my physical posture of head in hands as a statement of regret over something that I’d done. Her comment brought a little comic relief to the moment and when I answered back, “No baby, but good thinking, mom is just frustrated about something”. 

Her follow up came short and sweet, “I’m sorry, I’m praying for you.” Then she scooted out of her kitchen chair and off to grab her favorite new puzzle, a Christmas gift made by my parents from a picture of a trip we once took to Disneyland. As usual, her Autism, had allowed her to drop a bit of wisdom and love into the conversation without adding an exhaustive amount of thoughts and feelings to the situation at hand. What a beautiful gift. Simple, pure, and to the point.

While I didn’t do anything wrong to cause the current chain of events in our life, she was right in one respect, I had been screwing up in my attitude that week. Let’s face it, sometimes in life things just get so hard that we’re unable to maintain our patience and persevere, but that isn’t an excuse to be short and irritable with the ones we love. Thankfully the solution to this lapse in my attitude was simply to apologize to my family and all was forgiven. Life is hard enough, so we try to keep a short list and be quick to extend grace around our home.  

I was listening to a podcast with Tim Teabow this week and in it he talked about, “Failing Forward” a phrase I’ve heard my husband quote as a coach and teacher. It comes from the book with the same title name by John C Maxwell. In it Maxwell talks about “Turning mistakes into stepping stones for success”. When we fail that doesn’t have to be the end. It’s taking responsibility for our missteps and then continuing to press on and learn from it that counts.

As parents of children with special needs we are especially good at being hard on ourselves. It’s no wonder when so much of our child’s needs are seemingly placed in our hands. We often feel there is no room for error. But what if instead we give ourselves grace just as God gives us grace (Eph 2:4,5, Heb 4:16). So that the next time something doesn’t go as planned or maybe we lose our patience in the midst of hard circumstances we can look at it as an opportunity to fail forward, to learn, and to grow. Failing Forward after all is still moving forward.