I Can Read!

Before I started first grade, I was a happy, confident little girl who was completely free to be herself and speak her mind without a care in the world what the other people around her thought. I played in the mud with earthworms and talked to complete strangers, which probably wasn’t the best idea, but I didn’t understand that at five years old. The world was like an all you can eat buffet. Every new person, place, or idea seemed so fun and exciting. Then, I started first grade.

On the first day of school, I woke up with the same anticipation I had felt so many times in my little six-year-old life every time I got to go to a new place. As I walked through the big front doors of Muddy Creek Elementary School, I had no idea what the next few years of my life would hold.

It only took a month or two for my learning difficulties to become prevalent in struggling to learn how to read, write, and do math. My teacher was starting to notice that I was making little progress and I was soon hopelessly behind my other classmates. I was testing for ADHD and put in special ed (I later found out that I also have dyslexia). I was even getting one-on-one reading intervention everyday.

It didn’t take long for me to see how far I was behind the other children, and it began to have a great impact on my self-confidence. In only a few months, I went from being the most out-going and spirited child you’ve ever met to a shy and insecure one. I didn’t think I was good at anything.

I continued to struggle and make little to no progress in school for the rest of first and second grade. At the beginning of my third grade year, my dad got a job in Newberg and so we ended up moving to a new town so we could be closer to where he worked. We moved into our new house over Thanksgiving break so that we would have a whole week to get settled in before my brother and I had to start our new school.

One morning, when I was talking to my mom while she was straightening her hair a few days before I started my new school, she told me her and my dad were thinking that it might be a good idea for me to redo second grade to give me an extra year to get things figured out. She asked me what I wanted to do and I told her she could choose. I had reached the point where I didn’t trust myself making big decisions. My parents decided to have me redo second grade. At first I was ashamed of having to redo a grade and wasn’t planning on telling my classmates. However, when I was in a conversation with some other kids in my class one day, one kid ended up asking me how old I was. I told them that I was nine and explained that I had redone a grade. They thought it was cool how I was the oldest in our whole grade and after that I was less ashamed of telling people that I had redone a grade.

I was still in special ed for reading and math. I began to make a little progress with my math skills, but my reading was still hopelessly below grade level. My mom had begun to pray for me everyday.

One night when my brother and I were hanging out in our bedroom, I was pretending to read a book to my stuffed bunny. He asked me what book I was reading, and I told him that I was just pretending to read it. He asked me why I didn’t just read it, and I explained that I couldn’t, not sure why he was acting like he didn’t know that I couldn’t read. He continued to protest, telling me that I should try to read the book and I finally gave in. I opened it to the first page. It was a short novel called Junie B. Jones Smells Something Fishy and about a first grade reading level. I focused on the first word on the page and tried to sound it out; not expecting it to work. To my complete amazement it did. I moved on to the next word and then the next. Soon I had finished a whole sentence and then a paragraph until I had read the whole page.

I half lept, half climbed down my bunk-bed later and rushed out of the bedroom and down the hall to my parent’s room shouting “I can read!” God has enabled me to learn how to read. I was still below grade level and it wouldn’t be until seventh grade when I was able to leave special ed and skip a grade to be back with my original graduating class. However, it was the first time I saw God work a miracle in my life and definitely not the last. I thank him for giving me ADHD and dyslexia because he has used it to draw me closer to him and helped me learn to rely on his strength instead of my own.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about The C.A.N Sisters’ Ministry, leave a comment below, check out our website, or email us at cansistersminisrty@gmail.com.