God is Faithful

My friend Pam Benton keeps a copy of the newspaper with headlines that mark the apex of the housing market bust - on the same day their home sold in St. Louis.  She does it as a way to save something physical, to remember God's faithfulness to them in their lives, like the Israelites in Joshua 4 who took stones and piled them up on the other side of the Jordan, after they passed through on dry land. 

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!