I know the right answer. I know what I should feel. This was the plan. His plan. I had nothing to do with it. I couldn’t have prevented it, and I couldn’t have changed it.
She was born this way, and she is beautiful just as she is. She is fearfully and wonderfully made.
This I know full well.
Yet there are days, nights, when the enemy sneaks in and whispers, “It’s your fault.” Most days, my armor is strong and I deflect the lies with Truth, in my soul and if necessary, out loud.
But there are days, nights, when my humanness takes over and I wonder if he is right. If there is something I could have done had I known. Or, worse, if this had to happen for me to trust my Savior fully.
My daughter is four and amazing and fighting the obstacles life has given her with an inspiring mix of innocence and drive that only He could have placed in her. She takes this life and runs with it, even if she needs a little help to get there. Her spirit has changed me forever. I have grown, surrendered, and embraced this new life – this life of a special needs mom – and I am better for it. In ways I never expected, I am better for it.
For this, I am grateful, but a mama is never really thinking of herself. So in the midst of all of the blessings, there is a small voice that reminds me that my gain is her loss. That some of the greatest victories of my soul came with a price paid by my own daughter.
Right now, she is joyful and content, but I have seen her noticing the differences. I can see the questions stirring around in her head, not quite able to find their way out. With a cracked voice and heart, I sing His promises into her soul, reminding her that she is loved and that her worth is found in God and His special design for her. That she is whole in Him. I believe it and she does too, for now. But she is only four, and I know this journey –- one that has more to do with her heart than her body — has only just begun.
So in those moments when dark murmurs sneak in and my flesh fails, I enter a space I know He is desperately trying to cover. I crack open the door, and I give in to the question that is always lurking.
What if?
What if I had known I was pregnant…acted like I was pregnant. What if I took the prenatals they said could have prevented it all? What if I had more faith and didn’t need brain surgeries, physical disabilities, and a life of unknowns to fully rely on a God I always knew was there?
Could the blessings of a mother have been found without the sacrifices of her daughter?
The heaviness of it all forces me to my knees, and like always, I find the answer –- the mystery of the answer — at the foot of the cross, and I wonder if He asks Himself the same question.
Could the blessings of a Father have been found without the sacrifice of his Son?
The mystery of the answer, it has become our connection; a connection that is deeper than it ever was, leaving me with an emotion somewhere between utter humility and eternal clarity. It feels both wrong and right to compare our stories, but then I remember that He intended it to be all of our stories.
Not the pain, but the victory. It is His. It is mine. It is hers.
It is all of ours.
So I push out the murmurs with the powerful, deafening Truth, and I slam the door, hoping that one of these days it will stay shut, locking out the lies and forcing the whispers into silence.
Or that one of these days, they will finally fall on deaf ears.
