You Can Do This

Last weekend, we spent Saturday trying to wrap up some garden tasks in order to leave it in other capable hands while I’m gone. It was a beautiful day, but very hot! Also – a couple of my helpers were missing.

Helena loves going to the farm, but has to stay inside and away from mosquitos, chiggers, ants, and other biting and stinging pests so that she will have no bites, rashes, or marks on her legs when she gets her casts (today). Until recently, her time spent there has been on pallets set up under the pecan tree canopies. A couple of months ago, Stuart got an idea about getting her a 4-wheeler.

At first, I absolutely hated the idea. I have known too many kids who have been injured riding on atv’s and didn’t want to risk it. Stuart, however, insisted that I keep an open mind. He soon found one with a governor that would keep the speed slow enough for her to control the 4-wheeler in order to explore the farm independently. So I gave in and told Stuart he could get her that one.

When it arrived, Stuart spent a little time figuring out how to use it himself, then trained Helena to drive it. I remember shaking my head as I left the farm to run errands as she was stuttering all around with quirky movement. Start, stop…start, stop… and the turning was so difficult. It seemed like the 4-wheeler was going to be a little too heavy for her to control, and I wondered if we had made a mistake.

Helena, on the contrary, persisted. She practiced and practiced, and when it was hard, she kept going. Stuart overheard her talking to herself. She said, “Helena, you can do this!” and she kept practicing. . By the time I got back from my errands a couple of hours later, this was what I saw:

As she rode, she was telling us, “You can’t stop me now!” I don’t think anyone ever will stop her. She is stubbornly persistent.

One thing that many people don’t realize is that children born with a disability don’t have an awareness that they are different until someone points it out. The disability is their personal norm and something they have never lived without. So they figure out how to compensate through trial and error. We all have those types of things, don’t we? And yet so often, we stop just short of our goals because they seem unattainable. Persistence is not easy — but when we stick with a challenge (and rely on God’s strength), there is literally nothing we can’t do.