Going on a Bear Hunt

Happy weekend, friends! Hope you have time to tune in because today’s post is inspired by Hudson, been wanting to share it with you for some time now. We continue learning so much about life through Hudson’s eyes.

Happy weekend, friends! Hope you have time to tune in because today’s post is inspired by Hudson, been wanting to share it with you for some time now. We continue learning so much about life through Hudson’s eyes.

Going On a Bear Hunt by allie taylor

Most of you know Hudson, our just turned five year old w/Down syndrome. Hudson’s a big boy now, not doing a lot of talking yet, but that doesn’t mean we’re not all working on it. He also goes to speech therapy weekly. And just because he’s not verbalizing doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand a good deal of what we’re saying.

We’re starting to hear a lot of the tail ends of words these days. For some reason he skips the beginning. Could be hearing issues, we’re still waiting on conclusive hearing test results which are difficult to get from Hudson, who has delayed processing.

He’s had two hearing tests in the past few months and is scheduled for more. Thankful to be working with a great audiology team. So the speech delay could be hearing loss, could be processing delays, or a combination.

Anyway, Jon walked by Hudson’s room the other day, saw a sweet little scene. Hudson intent, busily flipping through the pages of his favorite book, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt. Do you know that wonderful children’s book by Michael Rosen?

It’s got to be one of my favorites too. It recounts the afternoon adventures of a dad and his three children who go on an imaginary bear hunt. They encounter many obstacles in the wild: long wavy grass, a deep cold river, thick oozy mud, a dark forest, a swirling, whirling snowstorm and so on.

Hudson loves this book so much, he’s giddy with excitement each night before bed, runs and gets it from the shelf. Jon or Jacob reads it to him every single night without fail. That, and Guess How Much I Love You. And a Bible story.

So Hudson’s flipping through the pages on his own, making approximations of words and consonants. Not the full words, but he’s got the cadence, animation and rhythm going, and the tail end of a lot of words.

Here’s a sample page:

“We’re going on a bear hunt.

We’re going to catch a big one.

What a beautiful day.

We’re not scared.

Oh-oh! Grass!

Long, wavy grass.

We can’t go over it.

We can’t go under it.

Oh no!

We’ve go to go through it.

Swishy, swashy! Swishy washy! SWISHY SWASHY!”

So Jon hears Hudson… “ishy awshy! Ishy awshy! ISHY AWSHY!” He’s practically yelling, so excited. Super encouraging for us to see him tracking pages on his own, following the sequence of the story. We’re Going On a Bear Hunt is one of Hudson’s all time favorite books. It’s been a favorite of mine for years, ever since Jonathan was a toddler. And I’ll tell you why: because I love the refrain on every other page:

We can’t go over it,

We can’t go under it,

We have to go through it.

Doesn’t that just encompass all of life in three short lines?

We run into these road blocks down here on earth. Hard things. Things we wish we could change in our situation, but often have no control over. I’m thinking cancer, car accidents, difficult marriage, bad genetics, miscarriage, aging, broken families, drug addiction, alcoholism, paralysis, grief in the loss of loved ones. And the list goes on and on.

Sometimes we just can’t see through to the other side of that long wavy grass, the deep cold river, the thick oozy mud, the dark forest, the swirling, whirling snowstorm, etc. We want to go over it or under it. Even around it. Avoid it. Often we just want it to end.

But avoidance of the situation, even pretending it doesn’t exist really just prolongs the journey, numbs us. And if we block it out, avoid it, numb ourselves to the pain on the journey, we also won’t feel and fully experience the joy on the other side of the mountain. When we get there, that is. We have to go through these heartbreaking circumstance to get to the other side. 

I’ve had a number of tough circumstances to navigate in life. And if you’ve got red blood in your veins, you probably have too. Or you will.

We can’t necessarily see through to the other side yet on many fronts. But we can choose to go forward, one step at a time with joy and courage each day, by God’s grace.

We can’t go over it,

We can’t go under it,

We have to go through it.

Best wishes for joy, strength and courage on your bear hunt called life. Wherever it may lead you.

“The encouraging thing is that every time you meet a situation, though you may think at the time it is an impossibility and you go through the tortures of the damned, once you have met it and lived through it you find that forever after you are freer than you ever were before. If you can live through that you can live through anything. You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, `I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ The danger lies in refusing to face the fear, in not daring to come to grips with it. If you fail anywhere along the line, it will take away your confidence. You must make yourself succeed every time. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”                               — Eleanor Roosevelt

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