Resilience

Resilience:
 – noun
1.   the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched; elasticity.
2.   ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.

My word of the day is resilience. As I was sitting here thinking about that word, I remembered taking this picture above.  It was taken a few weeks ago when Brandon was home from school yet again, and we had spent the day on my bed watching Country Music Video's and Barney.  When he has seizures that knock him out, or render him drowsy where we need to keep him from walking, he will stay still on the bed as long as someone is laying there with him.  He had that groggy post-seizure look most of the day - then suddenly he just turned to me and started giggling with that smile as big as Texas.

I'll always cherish this memory because it reminds me of his resilience in everything.  His autism, his not being able to communicate well, his GI disorder, and with his seizures. No matter what the issue has been, no matter how great the pain he's been in, no matter how frustrated or confused he must have felt at times -- he has always bounced back.  No matter how far he's been stretched, he somehow returns to his 'normal'.

I marvel at that.

So many things in our lives, in my life, we think we will never recover from. Sometimes we don't allow ourselves to recover from.  And here is this sweet boy, my son, who no matter what he's had to endure, he's recovered as if it never happened, and laughed again.

Whenever I think I can't handle autism one more day, can't endure watching another seizure, I think of that picture, of his resilience.

Whenever I think of all that Brandon must go through each and every day yet still manages to smile, and laugh...

I will too.