There are so many little things that mark God's faithfulness with Jack's arrival in our lives. He is about 2 months old now. Galen and I are enjoying him so much. He is starting to smile at us and respond to tickles. I wish I had more opportunity to blog and pile up the stones, and capture all the little things.
Our friends and family have been so very sweet and
supportive. People I know and don’t know
have written encouraging emails and letters, and our friends are constantly
setting us up with connections of parents of children with special needs. Galen and I have been seriously loved through
this so far.
I feel that God has been getting us ready for him for a
while, too, even giving me the words to think through things as they would
happen. I remember years ago (perhaps 10?) being in a Sunday school
class, and the speaker was talking about the birth of his beloved daughter with
Downs. He described the fear they felt
when pre-natal screenings revealed she might have Downs, and talked about
looking into her “sweet, almond-shaped eyes” when she was born, and loving her. This man had first, the courage to talk to
our group about her, and second , the honesty to show his grief and love present
together in his story. It was
beautiful. Fast-forward to this
December, and this same baby’s mother, who knows my family in small-ish town
Jackson, MS, wrote me after Jack was born*.
She always thinks of her daughter Caroline when they sing the line from
the hymn “Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace. Beneath a frowning providence, He hids a
smiling face”.
Then I read Kelle Hampton’s honest and lovely story about
Nella’s birth ( http://www.kellehampton.com/2010/01/nella-cordelia-birth-story.html
) this summer while I was pregnant with Jack. What she felt was so similar to my own
feelings when he was born - how they had rather specific expectations, and what it felt like when she was so different. She was "not what you expected, but oh, please love me!"
Finally, I only have one friend my age who has a baby with
Downs, just born in September. You
would think I was making this up – but I am not. Victoria is a talented Special Ed teacher who worked
with me at an elementary school in Nashville for two years. My third year there, she had taken a job in
another county, and we had met for dinner one night before I moved away to Boston. She had just found out she was pregnant, and
we had talked that night about screenings for things like Downs and Cystic
Fibrosis. I remember talking about the precious kids we worked with who had Downs, as well as my sister Sarah who had CF, and how thankful our family was that she
was in our lives. Victoria, of course, was one of the first people I wanted to talk to when Jack was born. It has been a comfort knowing that she and her sweet family is going down the same path we are on.
There are so many more little stones that I could talk about. Major things, like the fact that I went into speech therapy (never even heard of that growing up), and so many minor things, like sitting next to the right family today in church, who were such a sweet encouragment. And really, it has been like this throughout my life. God is a faithful God. Amen!
