Thankful

At our church's Thanksgiving service, they showed a video clip of a couple who were especially thankful. The woman on the clip started talking about how when she was pregnant the doctors told her that there was a chance that her baby would be born with Down Syndrome, and about how she prayed and prayed that the doctors were wrong.

At that moment, I knew we had the same story.

God did not answer those prayers. Her son was born with Down Syndrome. There were times she thought she wouldn't be able to handle it. But 11 years later, she couldn't imagine her life without him.

And then she said something that I think only mothers like she and I can understand. She said that if she could, she wouldn't take it back. Because all the trials and triumphs that her son goes through, make him who he is.



I think about that a lot. Well, really I only think about one thing. And that is that if Nate didn't have spina bifida, if he could walk and run and do all of those typical things that he can't do right now, he simply would not be Nate. He would be somebody else. When that image of him as a "typical" kid enters my mind, the one where he is walking and running around our house doing all the typical things that two year olds do, it's as if I am seeing someone else's child in my home and not mine.



That may be difficult for some to understand or believe. They may think, "what mother wouldn't want to take away something that keeps their child from walking or running or living a "typical" life?" And my answer to that would be that I wouldn't want to take something away from him that makes him who he is. Spina bifida does not define him-but all that he has been through and continues to endure will shape him into the person he is supposed to be. The person God intended him to be.



Of course, that is not to say that I don't worry constantly, have my doubts about whether I am making the right decisions, wonder if I am doing enough and wish that I could take all the pain and the surgeries on myself. But God has a plan. And worrying only steals time away.

It's so easy to get lost inside
a problem that seems so big at the time
it's like a river thats so wide
it swallows you whole
While you sit around thinking about what you can't change
and worrying about all the wrong things
time's flying by
moving so fast
you better make it count 'cause you can't get it back



Sometimes that mountain you've been climbing is just a grain of sand
What you've been up there searching for
forever is in your hands
When you figure out love is all that matters after all
It sure makes everything else
seem so small

~Carrie Underwood

There is no fear in love,
but perfect love casts out fear.

1 John 4:18



Our blessings, they are many. And we just try to take it one blessed day at a time.