1) Kolo: since you speak from such personal experience, I can fully understand your reaction. God bless your son and the 25 years you have been his loving father. Only someone who has parented a child with Down's Syndrome knows the extraordinary amount of time and effort and frustration and exhaustion and elation that comes with such a God-given task.
I think you're right, Kolo. Neither Sarah Palin nor her husband understands yet how their lives have been "profoundly changed by this baby." If they did, perhaps her choice to run would have been different.
2) Kosta, as my mother always told me, we do not have children when we decide; we have children when God decides to give them to us. At 44, I really would doubt this was a planned pregnancy. So it would be difficult to fault Palin for either the pregnancy, or for the brave choice to continue the pregnancy.
My two cents as a conservative is that Palin is a wonderful, energetic, intelligent personality for the Republican ticket.
My reaction as a wife and mother, however, is a little different. She's taking on an enormous work load (what could be greater in all the world?) while she still has small children at home, a son leaving for war, a pregnant, teen-aged daughter and a newborn who requires tremendous time and care.
The women's movement has been around long enough for a lot of us to know we can't "do it all." It's almost as if McCain saw the many fine attributes of Palin and didn't realize that some of those attributes might actually work against her because they rightly should come first in her life.
Whatever happens next, the election comes down to voting for a socialist or someone else. And I'll never vote for a socialist.
That means God "makes" us have children. I don't buy that, and you know that. That may be what you believe, and I am fine with that, but that is by not necessarily the way it is.
At 44, I really would doubt this was a planned pregnancy. So it would be difficult to fault Palin for either the pregnancy, or for the brave choice to continue the pregnancy
I salute her choice for continuing the pregnancy. But if she thought the pregnancy was something God decided she shold not have been saddened, confused and shocked, words she used to describe her reaction when she found out (at 16 weeks) that the child has Down's Syndrome.
She would have accepted it as a real possibility, given her age, and as God's will. If you put everyting in God's hands, then nothing should shock, sadden or confuse you.
Dr. E, thanks for the kind words. I very much appreciate them.
“Only someone who has parented a child with Down’s Syndrome knows the extraordinary amount of time and effort and frustration and exhaustion and elation that comes with such a God-given task.”
When our son was born, I asked God why we had been cursed. I thought, at 32, that I would never be able to retire, that life as “I” had planned it was all over. And indeed life as I had planned it was all over. My career took a different turn, the lives of my wife, myself and our oldest son headed off in a direction we never could have imagined...no acceptance of judicial appointments, no big trial practice, no acceptance of corporate board positions in exchange for dealing with hospitals and medical specialists and special ed systems and the state legislature for 25 years and spending the past 21 years on the board of the largest provider of homes and work for people with mental retardation and autism and schooling for children with autism in the state. Our boy’s birth was and is the greatest blessing we as a family and indeed our parish community have ever received. Everything has been different and everything has turned out blessed, if not easy.
My Christian Orthodoxy teaches me that we need to die to the self in order to become Christ-like and advance in theosis. Some of us, like me, fail miserably at that but God does give us opportunities to straighten out...or a good slug with a metaphorical 2X4. Our son was that 2X4 and I thank God for him every day.