something more

This article was posted on Cafe Mom, and I wanted to share it with you all, because if you are a mother you have worried at some point (or will in the future) about your child's progress, be it physically, socially etc. Lewis has missed several milestones so far, and in talking with other moms, it seems like we all have fears and struggles, and many will find that their child needs help in one area or another. Some will need a lot of help. It reminds me of a sweet note someone sent after Lewis was born that said, "You are God's perfect provision for this child." Some days it just doesn't feel that way. It feels like someone else might do a much better job. But I know deep down that God specifically gifted us with Lewis and vice-versa. He is what we need as much as we are what he needs. The same is true for you and your children. I hope you find this encouraging, and depending on your emotional state you may need a tissue!

Written by: Lori Borgman Columnist and Speaker

My friend is expecting her first child. People keep asking what she
wants. She smiles demurely, shakes her head and gives the answer
mothers have given throughout the ages of time. She says it doesn't
matter whether it's a boy or a girl. She just wants it to have ten
fingers and ten toes. Of course, that's what she says. That's what
mothers have always said. Mothers lie.

Truth be told, every mother wants a whole lot more. Every mother
wants a perfectly healthy baby with a round head, rosebud lips,
button nose, beautiful eyes and satin skin. Every mother wants a baby
so gorgeous that people will pity the Gerber baby for being flat-out
ugly. Every mother wants a baby that will roll over, sit up and take
those first steps right on schedule (according to the baby
development chart on page 57, column two). Every mother wants a baby
that can see, hear, run, jump and fire neurons by the billions. She
wants a kid that can smack the ball out of the park and do toe points
that are the envy of the entire ballet class. Call it greed if you
want, but we mothers want what we want.

Some mothers get babies with something more. Some mothers get babies
with conditions they can't pronounce, a spine that didn't fuse, a
missing chromosome or a palette that didn't close. Most of those
mothers can remember the time, the place, the shoes they were wearing
and the color of the walls in the small,suffocating room where the
doctor uttered the words that took their breath away. It felt like
recess in the fourth grade when you didn't see the kick ball coming
and it knocked the wind clean out of you.

Some mothers leave the hospital with a healthy bundle, then, months,
even years later, take him in for a routine visit, or schedule her
for a well check, and crash head first into a brick wall as they bear
the brunt of devastating news. It can't be possible! That doesn't run
in our family. Can this really be happening in our lifetime? I am a
woman who watches the Olympics for the sheer thrill of seeing finely
sculpted bodies. It's not a lust thing; it's a wondrous thing. The
athletes appear as specimens without flaw - rippling muscles with
nary an ounce of flab or fat, virtual powerhouses of strength with
lungs and limbs working in perfect harmony. Then the athlete walks
over to a tote bag, rustles through the contents and pulls out an
inhaler.

As I've told my own kids, be it on the way to physical therapy after
a third knee surgery, or on a trip home from an echo cardiogram,
there's no such thing as a perfect body. Everybody will bear
something at some time or another. Maybe the affliction will be
apparent to curious eyes, or maybe it will be unseen, quietly treated
with trips to the doctor, medication or surgery. The health problems
our children have experienced have been minimal and manageable, so I
watch with keen interest and great admiration the mothers of children
with serious disabilities, and wonder how they do it. Frankly,
sometimes you mothers scare me. How you lift that child in and out of
a wheelchair 20 times a day. How you monitor tests, track
medications, regulate diet and serve as the gatekeeper to a hundred
specialists yammering in your ear. I wonder how you endure the
clichés and the platitudes, well-intentioned souls explaining how God
is at work when you've occasionally questioned if God is on strike. I
even wonder how you endure schmaltzy pieces like this one — saluting
you, painting you as hero and saint, when you know you're ordinary.
You snap, you bark, you bite. You didn't volunteer for this. You
didn't jump up and down in the motherhood line yelling, "Choose me,
God! Choose me! I've got what it takes."

You're a woman who doesn't have time to step back and put things in
perspective, so, please, let me do it for you. From where I sit,
you're way ahead of the pack. You've developed the strength of a
draft horse while holding onto the delicacy of a daffodil. You have a
heart that melts like chocolate in a glove box in July, carefully
counter-balanced against the stubbornness of an Ozark mule. You can
be warm and tender one minute, and when circumstances require intense
and aggressive the next. You are the mother, advocate and protector
of a child with a disability. You're a neighbor, a friend, a stranger
I pass at the mall. You're the woman I sit next to at church, my
cousin and my sister-in-law. You're a woman who wanted ten fingers
and ten toes, and got something more.

You're a wonder.