Posted on 11/28/2008 5:46:01 AM PST by Caleb1411
Great article.
I was 37 and my husband 42 when our daughter was born. When it came time for the amnio I was scheduled to have (because of my age), we declined it much to the chagrin of the techs and doctors who had just done an ultrasound. We had just seen our baby, a very active one at that, and that was all we needed to know.
We kept being told about the risks and chances of birth defects, including DS, because of our ages. The risks of harm to the baby from the test were actually much higher than any risk because of my age at conception. My OB never gave me any grief over not having the tests done, and was absolutely thrilled we did not want to know if we were having a boy or girl.
God blessed us with a wonderful child, but our child is no more wonderful than the child in this article. Others may not agree, but our own children are always perfect to us, and to God.
I turned down the amnio for the same reason you did.
When I told them that abortion wasn’t an option, they said that they wished more people felt that way.
Totally with you.
You obviously read into the article what you wanted to read into it. The problem is yours, not hers.
bttt
God knew better than to give me a special angel like this one. I’d be 10x more fierce than I already am, and the good Lord needs a break. ;)
I read here on FR that Pope Benedict had a relative with Down's Syndrome. The Nazi's hauled him away and he was never seen again.
I get the dead tree edition of First Things, so I saw this a while back. There’s a lot of food for thought in the article.
I was reflecting last night, as I was lying awake holding Vlad so he could breathe instead of coughing, that it’s taken eight children and almost 18 years to make even a dent in the selfishness I started out with. I expect if my first baby had had Down’s Syndrome, I’d have been perfectly useless.
Another nice thing about kids is that soon after you’ve all managed to live through ‘The Teenage Years’ with them, they leave, LOL!
Sometimes I wish there were still three underfoot, but I’m looking forward to GrandBabies...in another ten years or so. :)
(Freepmail me when you can and give me a Christmas Wish List, would ya? Thanks!)
You have a very shallow view of your own propensity to rebel against God's "different" gifts if you react like that. Let God give you something that slams you in your own solar plexus and you will be like this woman..., like me...., and like the rest of fallen humanity. Your reaction will be that of self-pity, anger, and rejection. Not because you are disgusting filth and somehow a lower moral order person, but because you are a normal person, which means you are fallen.
This woman simply talks about her fallen emotional responses, and how embracing God's good gifts brings an unexpected joy.
Your response is very Pharisaical. Here is to the hypocrite in all of us, and the hope of the new world where that nature will be gone!
This was one of the better ones but I have read far to many articles about parents whose heart was set on that perfect token child. Would I be disappointed in that situation? Maybe. The difference between me and her is not that I am less fallen or anything like that. The difference is I have not built up a huge imaginary construct of what my perfect child must be such that I will be crushed if that is not so. That and I expect to have a lot more than just one child so in aggregate I am sure my petty wants will get met somewhere. But I also know them to be just that, petty. Most of the articles I have read like this are SUPPOSE to be uplifting tales of overcoming negative reactions. But to me they just look like exposes on how selfish some expectant parents can be and how sadly little tolerance for imperfection your society has. I feel no sympathy for her. I am glad she found that joy I am just revolted that it too some huge spiritual journey to do it. I have been blessed to know my brother-in-law who has Down and is a wonderful little boy. There and in other places in my life I have had a chance to confront the real possibilities. This is not a holier than that rant. I am no less fallen than anyone else. Some of us just chose to consider the possibilities and not build up fairy tales in their head about their perfect children. Will I have a lot of negative emotions if I get a ‘less than perfect’ child. Sure. It just will not throw me in the the pit of self pity and I will be ashamed of those emotions enough to reject them and not write articles about them.
Still, I am all for articles like this if they get other people to wake up and stop the tragedy of 9 out of 10 Down children getting aborted. What is truly revolting is that most DON’T go through this cycle of pity and anger and then love. They just murder the child that does not meet their standards and move on.
Furthermore, I have several children. I love them all, and in many ways I love my disabled child more. At least, it's a very strong, protective love. KWIM?
However, here at FR there is so much romanticizing over parenting a seriously disabled child that I often truly laugh out loud. There is nothing in my life that I could imagine would have changed our whole family's life more than having a child with disabilities, and it's certainly not all for the better. and I am sure that just the stress alone will take a good ten years off of my life.
I belong to a christian group of moms of kids with moderate to severe disabilities (about 20 of us), and it is there that we can be free with our emotions. The worry about who will care for our child when we die. Will taking in a 35 year old disabled man prove to be too much on his sister's marriage? Getting a mandatory job transfer, and leaving family. Trying to provide as normal a life as possible for our child without creating unrealistic expectations for her. Avoiding trouble with the law - one of the scariest of our fears. (No, not all disabled children are sweet, meek, and mild at all times.) The agony of seeing your child unable to make friends. Unable to fit in. Knowing that his or her happiness is pretty much dependent on you.
At a time when extended families lived close together, most disabled children were left to rot in asylums. Now, our children living with us, but we often have little, if any, extended family to help. My child is usually a joy to be around, but there is not a day goes by that very heavy worries are not present. And, frankly, my life is so much easier than some others I know, but they put smiles on their faces, and tell everyone how blessed they are, because to say anything less would be.... selfish and unchristian.
I have no romantic views about raising a child with disabilities. If I could make my child "perfect" (read "normal") tomorrow, I would do so in a heartbeat, because it is human nature to want to live a free and independent life, but that is the one thing that I really can't give my child. Children like mine will always depend on others, and yet they are aware of what they are missing, and that's the hardest part of all.
She was our second, and the discovery that she had an IQ of 68 (70 is the "line" for mental retardation) was a slow and tortuous process of corrective surgeries, disappointments in her development, and lots of sorrow. Maybe....., no, DEFINITELY, I and my wife should have been done with our vision of a happy family with two (or more!!)bright, well adjusted excelling children in our clean and prosperous home..... but we weren't. Dying to that dream was hard for us. It was especially hard for my wife, who grieved in many ways as though we had lost a child. Yes, we ROBBED ourselves of many of the joys we could have had because of our focus on ourselves.
Anne is an adult (still lives with us..., and I still disobey God and worry about what will happen to her when we are gone), but I have learned the following wonderful things:
1) The lesson so poignantly posted by this author, and by Sarah Palin re: Trig. "Normal" in this world is still horridly deformed. If I grieve, I should grieve for myself and all of humanity.
2) I started to begin to understand all the talk about God favoring the lowly.
The thought came to me, the bright (I graduated in chemistry in 3 years with a 3.7 GPA and at the top of my class in grad school), aggressive, articulate blah blah blah person who was determined to "make it" that Anne would never "make it." Hell, she could not even COMPETE in that world! The world views her largely as detritus, flotsam, and something to be tolerated. I considered, "does she not have VALUE, BEAUTY, and REAL WORTH?" But, to really embrace this, I had to reject the value system of the world I had baptized and adopted as "Christian" triumphalism. I have just a brief glimpse of the value God places on the "lowly." The beauty of God deliberately taking the role of the lowly and using the base things of the world to redeem it.....that humility takes my breath away.
3)I was theologically a Calvinist before, but I understand better the doctrine of depravity. I see it in myself. Our selfishness is deep, deeply rooted, and extremely difficult to purge.
4) I understand better God's grace. His patience with me and my wife as we cursed and rebelled is astounding to me!
So yes, I thank God for Anne. But I also thank God for what he taught ME about grace, lowliness, beauty, and the great value of the image of himself in His creatures. I still have leagues and leagues to go in that regard, but I can at least catch a glimpse at times of the goal, and the thought of it fills me with a joy I would never have known before.
My earlier response is that I believe that the struggle to embrace humility is NOT natural or easy to wicked men and women, even to those of us who have the Holy Spirit. I myself hate it, even when I profess to love the end result.
I just think that process is universal to sinful men. I am not being sanctimonious when I say that I am happy if you have never known rebellion and the failure to accept the path of loss but have eagerly embraced His plan, which appears horrible but really leads to joy.
My child is adopted, and if you asked me whether or not I would do it again, I would say "Yes!" in a heartbeat.
Yet, not one word in my post above is untrue. The grieving, wretched, confusing, hand wringing of emotions take their toll. KWIM?
They asked if I wanted to know about DS, and I said no. Abortion wouldn't have been an option at that stage anyway, nor at any stage for me.
She was born with an APGAR of 9. Is a beautiful woman now.
I hav e a Down Syndrome grandson. He is so wonderful and loveable.
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