children of God

Most parents hope that their unborn children will be born healthy. They voice it: "as long as s/he's healthy!" I've been thinking about that. What if their children aren't healthy? By whose definition do we deem a child healthy anyway? If the child is less than our definition of perfect, is he or she less worthy to live? When you think about it, we have some nerve, trying to order a "perfect" child. Our openness to God's will should include embracing whatever children He lends us in this world, in whatever shape they come to us.

I get very upset when I hear of someone who is considering abortion when it is found that there is something "wrong" with her unborn child. Oh, she can rationalize it by saying she wouldn't want the child to suffer but I don't believe that is the true reason. She doesn't want to be bothered or put out in any way. She wants to live the way she wants to live, even at the cost of her child's life. How inconvenient it would be to have to deal with a child with infirmities! It makes me sick to my stomach if I think about it long enough. We're killing our children, in part, because our world sees them as worthless if they have any sort of problem.

Do you know there are fewer and fewer people with Down Syndrome because over 90% of them, when diagnosed in utero, are aborted? Do people not understand what a gift this child can be to his or her whole family, indeed to everyone who encounters him or her?

I heard a story recently of a young man who bags groceries at a supermarket. He has Down Syndrome. Everyone queues up in his line to get their groceries bagged because, in one of each customer's bags, he places a little handwritten note of encouragement, a thought or prayer for the day, something to uplift the reader's spirits. Can you imagine how different life would be for those people without him?

In my life, my cousin David taught me the value of a life that, from a superficial perspective, could be judged worthless. He is 5 years older than I. He is profoundly mentally disabled. I remember his mother feeding him baby food when he was 16 because he didn't know how to chew. (He may have lost all his teeth by then...I can't just remember this detail.) He was toilet-trained but I don't think he could do much else for himself. He did not talk and did not understand a lot of what was said to him. At times, he made his desires known by grunting and squealing.

My most vivid memory is of David getting out of the car when his family would arrive at our cabin and making a beeline for the lake. He'd stand in shin deep water for a very long time. When he got out, his feet and legs would be covered with leeches. His mother would be there with a salt shaker to get them off. He LOVED the water.

His parents' and his older brother's devotion to him are how I learned to be compassionate and kind to people who are different than I. His family protected him from harm (leeches, notwithstanding!). They loved him. I could see how much they loved him. The difficulty of caring for him was never an issue for them. I never, never heard one word of complaint. Joyful suffering is how I would describe it. David gave them an opportunity to be less self-centered and closer to God in the process of his life and they took it, gladly. How very blessed they were, when I think about it.

When his parents got too old to take care of him, they found a wonderful group home, about an hour away, for him to live. He's happy there. He has a routine. He has wonderful caregivers.

His mother, my aunt (who, by the way, is going to be 90 this year!), told me not long ago that, when she visits him, he knows her. He smiles and laughs. David's brother has been asking her to move where he lives down South but she told me she won't do that as long as David is alive because their visits are important to him. (I have no doubt they're important to her, too.) This is motherly devotion at its finest.

You might want to say it was a heartache for his parents for him to be the way he was born. On the other hand, he taught our entire family many, many life lessons just by being alive. And, I bet, if you were to ask his parents, they'd tell you they'd willingly do it all again. Abortion would never have crossed their minds.

As I've said before, every single one of us comes to this world with something to share. Playing God by aborting His people changes that forever.