When I was in high school, I was really into science fiction and fantasy literature. I guess I still am, but I don’t usually get the time to immerse myself in a good novel these days.

Anyway, there was this one fantasy series I read in high school called The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. The author, Stephen R. Donaldson, imagined the books to be a kind of dark inversion of Tolkien’s classic The Lord of the Rings.

Each book in the series opens with the (anti)hero Thomas Covenant experiencing some kind of crisis that mars him physically just before he is transported to a realm known as The Land. While in The Land, Covenant is quickly healed of his wounds and ends up reluctantly accepting a perilous quest. Lots of action, tension, magic and romance ensue—often quite gripping.

Then, as Covenant to the climax of his quest, something happens to him. He is caught in a battle, perhaps, or a curse is uttered against him. Whatever it is, it leaves him with wounds exactly like the ones he had just before he entered the Land. It’s at this critical juncture that he finds himself back in our world in the exact same condition he was at the start: haggard, numb, bloodied, and exhausted.

A Magical Christmas.

Well, that’s what I felt like the week after Christmas. We had had a rough few days leading up to the holiday, and I was feeling pretty beat up. Nothing seemed to be going right. A few of the kids’ anxieties had gone through the roof, issues at school mushroomed, and a few tight deadlines at work led to late nights at the computer.

But something strange happened on Christmas Day, and it lasted a few days afterward. There were no melt downs. No tantrums. No OCD or anxiety or disrupted sleep. It was absolutely delightful! My own anxiety diminished. I was sleeping better. We even took most of the kids to my brother-in-law’s for a Christmas gathering, and I had a blast because it was completely uneventful. I was sailing along, enjoying life in ways I had forgotten about in the previous weeks.

So far, so good. But then by December 30, things began sliding downhill again. First one kid went south. Then another. And another. Slowly over the next three days, we re-entered our “normal” zone with the melt downs, the perseveration, the communication glitches, the anxiety—the whole nine yards. Even work issues flared up again!

By lunchtime on New Years Day, I was back to my usual self: weary, furtively looking back and forth to see who was going to erupt next, steeling myself for the inevitable, even feeling that familiar lump in my throat after helping one of the kids through a tough time.

So Sunday had come, and I was ready to start back at work as if nothing magical had happened at all. Just like Thomas Covenant.

Go Easy.

Now, before you go feeling sorry for me—or telling me to suck it up, Buttercup—let me say this: I suspect that many parents of special-needs kids can relate to this cycle. On one level, every parent appreciates the fun times, the easy times, the magical times. But there’s a poignancy when it happens for special-needs parents because for those few short days, they know what the rest of the parenting world feels like on an average day. They get a glimpse of the “normal” that most parents experience most of the time, and it feels good. But then they return to their own special “normal,” and they have to put on their big-boy pants again.

I’m not going to sugarcoat it. It’s hard. It’s draining. It’s isolating. It takes so much more time and energy and stamina to stay on top of your kids’ needs and challenges. Sometimes you can want to curl up in a corner and not come out for a few days.

But we can’t.

Let me make one other thing clear: Katie and I know that it’s not the kids’ fault. We don’t resent them for who they are or for their needs. Much, in fact, of what can weigh on us is watching our kids go all this turmoil. We wonder what their future will look like. We worry if they will be able to live on their own after we’re gone. We ache for them to be rid of their painful challenges. And we feel helpless.

So when you see a special-needs parent looking unusually rested and refreshed, know that a lot is going on underneath the surface. Know that sooner or later they’re going to go through a Thomas Covenant-like transformation. So go easy on them. Maybe even offer to help them when the need arises.