UPDATE: The item below was published in May 2012. I feel compelled to add to the story – a testament to God's faithfulness. That little girl who struggled throughout elementary school, who doubted her academic ability, who wasn't sure what the future held? Well, graduated cum laude from the University of West Georgia exactly 10 years later, in May 2022. And this past Wednesday (August 3, 2022) started her first job. Doing what? She's a first grade/special education teacher. I'm telling y'all, God is faithful.
MAY 2012 - The story goes something like this:
Feb. 2, 1999 – My baby girl enters the world.
March, 2003 – This same baby girl has back-to-back grand mal seizures that won’t stop. Doctors put her into heavy sedation to make the seizures end.
April, 2003 – My little girl is diagnosed with epilepsy. The experts at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University place her on Keppra to control her seizures. The drug is chosen because it has no known side effects.
2006 – The FDA warns of side-effects of Keppra: lethargy, depression, suicide, comprehension difficulty and learning difficulty, confirming our suspicions that the medicine was affecting our blue-eyed wonder’s ability to absorb information.
2007 - We take our baby girl, now a second grader, off Keppra and trust God for the rest.
2008 - The state changes the math curriculum, setting third graders back a year or more. She fails to meet expectations on the state-required CRCT exams.
2009 – God sends the amazing Brant Ammerman, to whom we will forever be grateful, into our lives. Mr. Ammerman tells us about the federal 504 Plan and how it can help our girl academically. This part of this story could be an entire book. I won’t ever forget meeting with the district director, whose response to our concerns about my girl not being able to spell was that computers now have spell check. God had to have been with me that day. I wanted to stand up and scream at her, asking how well her computer caught the difference between their and there, red and read, see and sea or any of the other myriad homonyms in the English language. Instead, I told her that while misspellings might be acceptable to the school system, it was not acceptable to me. My girl is granted a 504 Plan.
2010 – The state once again decides to play with curriculum to my daughter’s detriment. The fifth grade year is a constant struggle. My girl tries as hard as she possibly can. Every night there is 2 hours or more of homework. We both cry through it regularly. A light in that dark night, Lou Loveless, tells us not to worry. In the end, she said, my girl will be fine. We are surprised to discover that my girl meets expectations on her CRCT exams. At the beginning of her sixth grade year, my girl has progressed to the point that the teachers question whether she still needs a 504 Plan. We insist that the plan stays in place.
2011 – My daughter holds her own in sixth grade and ends the year exceeding expectations in reading and language arts, qualifying her for the Trilogy foreign language curriculum at Rome Middle School when she begins her 7th grade year.
2012 – That same God we said we would trust in 2007 once again proves He is faithful. My girl finishes her seventh grade year with all As. She earns the Most Outstanding Student in Science award. Just before starting the CRCT exams this year, my baby asked me to write Philippians 4:13 on her hand so that she would be reminded that she can do all things through Christ who gives her strength while she took the tests. One day after Mother’s Day, my wife received the most amazing, miraculous message from my daughter…
May 14, 2012 – My girl, the little girl diagnosed with epilepsy, the girl who failed to meet expectations in third grade, the girl who cried every night doing homework in fifth grade, the girl, who, every year, improved just a little more through God’s grace and her own determination, the girl who trusted God to take care of her through these tests, called with her 7th grade CRCT scores, those all-important state scores. The results: My baby girl EXCEEDED expectations in every test area on the CRCTs. Anything over 850 is exceeding. My girl's scores include a whopping 899 in Social Studies and a 929 in Science.
Heavenly Father, You are good. You are the healer and the miracle worker. We can do all things through You, when we depend on You for strength. You are faithful, even when my faith waivers. You have shown us mercy and grace, and You deserve the honor and glory for this. Thank You for putting the right teachers in our pathway. Thank You for healing my girl and confirming it with a test man uses to measure it. I am humbled. I am grateful. Thank You for the honor of taking care of one of Your cherished little ones. You did more than I deserve on Calvary. This? There are no appropriate words to adequately express my gratitude. Thank you.
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