On Special Needs, Human Dignity, & Grace Unending

May 2025

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Hi! I’m Mandy - Catholic wife, homeschool mom, writer, and speaker. Here, we seek God in the ordinary: the scribbled lesson plans, therapy room waits, whispered prayers, and holy messes of family life.

In this space, I share reflections to steady your heart and stir your faith. I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s walk this sacred, everyday road together.

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We’ve been sick in the house for the past two weeks. Completely unlike us. Add in a broken finger for my youngest, his First Holy Communion this weekend, and family coming into town, and I haven’t had a whole lot of down time to think about writing. The muse has been quieter than I’d like, and the stress louder.

In an effort to distract from the crazier moments, I hopped on Instagram to see what people have been up to (I know… I’m trying to cut back, I promise).

I came across this trend, or at least I think it’s a trend, of “She doesn’t know it yet but…” where the writer goes into how they overcame challenges in their lives and it got me thinking about the early days of motherhood, becoming a special needs parent, and the graces that flowed through it all. Though this story began in the early days of motherhood, what it reveals touches every one of us who has ever carried something heavy, unexpected, or holy. I went to bed that night, reflecting, and the thoughts just started flowing.

She doesn’t know it yet but…

She’s going to be a young mom at 24 years old, and it will be the hardest thing she has ever done, yet she will be covered in graces unfathomable. Only she won’t know it until years later…

It wasn’t until months after our son was born that I realized something was wrong. We went through all the steps to determine what was going on and with one curt phone call from the doctor our child would be diagnosed with a chronic and somewhat progressive condition.

Becoming a special needs parent is exactly how it sounds — a becoming.

You start out knowing nothing, and more often than not it’s a two-fold process. You grieve and fall apart. Then, somehow, slowly, you learn to rebuild. And that rebuilding isn’t anything that you could have imagined, but it is more beautiful than you could have ever conceived. This paradox is a mystery of our faith - the cross and the empty tomb.

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Is 55:8-9

I’ve been walking this road for 13+ years now and with each passing year new challenges and graces arise. That’s a two-fold process too by the way: being pushed beyond what you feel you can handle and the graces that rush in to sustain you.

I see that 24 year old version of myself rocking her child in a tiny house, the sun streaming in through the window, wondering if she has made the biggest mistake of her life, an irrevocable one. She was rocking a sleeping babe, crying because this new reality was more than she thought she could handle. She is holding her cross, and a promise, but she doesn’t know it yet.

And in many ways it was too much to handle, but there was grace unseen, helping her along. In the form of faith, and friendships, experts and parents online sharing their hard won wisdom. It came in the moments of surrender and bursts of unbridled joy.

Still, in that rocking chair was a quiet invitation, barely perceptible. A whispered invitation to grow, to sacrifice, and to become.

Becoming

That young mom was still a baby in the faith herself, newly Catholic, not even two years in. There was so much I didn’t know, but I was about to get a crash course in dignity, love, and beauty in the most ordinary of places.