Happy Mother's Day

A few years ago I attended a National Day of Prayer service in Mattoon. There were several people there from various area churches attended and when the opportunity arose to share an experience of answered prayer, I did.

10 years ago we believed our oldest daughter was hearing impaired. A smoke detector could be tested just a few feet from her and she wouldn’t flinch, startle or even look at it. You could call her name and she wouldn’t respond.  Potential hearing loss didn’t really throw me. We just get hearing aids, right? Or maybe cochlear implants? Or learn sign language—I could do that. We’ll just adapt. But testing at the hospital revealed that her hearing was fine.

My baby was always different from other babies. She never put the rattle in her mouth or sucked on her hand. She never wanted snuggled, did not have interest in me and probably would have been perfectly happy if a complete stranger would have kidnapped her from my cart at the grocery store and she never saw me again. She was quiet and rarely cried. In fact, when giving her a bottle, I easily could remove it from her mouth, lay her down on a blanket in order to go get a burp cloth and expect that she would not even fuss.

When she was almost three years old, we traveled to Springfield to see a neurologist, who finally gave her a diagnosis of MR with autistic tendencies; we were devastated. At the time, all I could hear was disturbing phrases from the doctor, such as: “will never reach a cognitive ability beyond a 6 year old, will never be able to live on her own, will never grasp abstract concepts, such as algebra.”

Greg asked at one point, should we have the elders pray over her? We looked at our toddler, sitting quietly on the floor, stroking the carpet. The question loomed, what would we be praying for? For her to look at us, for her to return affection, for a different personality? Somehow it felt similar to asking God to stop something as trivial as my father’s hair loss. What kind of an outcome were we looking for? We ultimately decided not to have her prayed over by the elders, but we started to pray for God to make us the parents she needed. We felt peace that our role was to accept, listen and learn.

When I shared this story, a woman approached me, with great animation. “You are her parents! It is your duty to have the elders pray for her! I wish my congregation was here—we could anoint her with oil and pray over her and she would be healed today.” I listened quietly and after a few minutes did my best to politely end the conversation and leave to go home.

What is my role as her mother supposed to be? I don’t want to wish for my children to be anyone else, but who God has determined them to be. I am to guide, help and groom, but the ultimate direction of their personalities and much of their ability has already been determined.

Psalm 139: 13-16, one of my favorite Psalms, reads:

For you formed my inward parts; you wove me in my mother’s womb.

I will give thanks to you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are your works, and my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; your eyes have seen my unformed substance, and in your book were all written the days that were ordained for me, when as yet there was not one of them.

God’s actions and creation of life is so purposeful. It isn’t random. A child with special needs is not a mistake or a part of nature gone awry. There are aspects of Brenna’s personality that would be forever missing if she were a typically developing child. Her uninhibited enthusiasm might not exist. Her love of animals and special way of looking deep into a horse’s eyes and truly understanding it, might not be. Her slower gait, her way of observing and taking things in would be lost in a rush to keep up with everyone else.

I believe that one of the largest misconceptions I encounter regularly comes from those who say that God only gives children with special needs to special people. He doesn’t. He gives them to normal people, below average people, impatient people, flawed people, people who weren’t sure they were ready to have a baby yet, people who lose their temper and sometimes yell. He gives these special children to people who feel completely inadequate.

Then he equips them.  He surrounds them with a community of support. He gives them friends who aren’t too tired to listen, or share some of the load. He gives them a church who won’t judge their parenting, who won’t frown or get angry when their child can’t sit through service quietly or drops the hymnal.

He gives them you.

Mother’s Day is about celebrating every woman who impacts the life of a child. It just isn’t about the mom who can bake the best, sew the best, keep the neatest house. It isn’t about the woman who has given birth without medication or even given birth at all. It is about the woman who is nurturing. The woman who is teaching Sunday School. The woman who lets her little neighbors come over to play, even when it is inconvenient. The woman who mentors. The woman who keeps going.

God bless you this Mother’s Day.