The Miracle That Already Is
"One can look at a child with almond shape eyes, small nose, different speech, and see only a syndrome. Maybe they see an opportunity for a miracle to happen. Another sees the child as a miracle that already has happened"
-Lisa Gungor
I remember feeling the pity in the NICU room. The beeping of heart monitors and alarms from medication finishing up their dispensing through tiny taped IV's filled the corners of the surprisingly peaceful rooms. I remember softened looks from nurses and listening (only half hearing) the blunt truth from doctors. shuffling through charts, one would say, "your baby has a high risk of leukemia, we're running the blood work for that today". And then a nurse would gently tell me every detail I wanted to know about my baby's day with, "Elijah finished 34 ounces today before he feel asleep! we tubed the rest but that's 4 more ounces than the 9am feed!" I remember feeling the tug and pull of how I was given information and how I learned to receive it. My little guy had Down Syndrome - but he was incredibly perfect, so what am I missing? What am I supposedly not understanding that the doctors think I should? Often times the kindness of determined nurses were a breath of fresh air - they were taking care of Elijah just like they would every other baby in that NICU department, and somehow, it gave me hope. Hope that, when we walked out those big hospital sliding glass doors, Elijah would be given a chance in life to be treated like everyone else, someone different, but also the same.
Valley children's Hostpital
I think we often see different and think "fix it". We see unique and we say "change it". But what if different isn't always bad? What if being different is just as uniting as being the same?
When Joe told me that the Dr.'s confirmed Elijah's diagnosis of Down Syndrome, I was rocking Elijah next to his little incubator. He had all the little wires sticking out from the swaddled blanket (let me tell ya, its quite a skill to completely swaddle a baby and somehow let all the wires still come out and still connect where they're supposed to....)I remember the words hitting my ears while I looked into Elijah's sweet unassuming eyes, and feeling absolutely no change. Elijah was completely the same. His red fuzzy hair still stood straight up no matter what the nurses tried to do to get it to lay down. he still had the cutest little coo when we talked to him. He still fell asleep every time I tried to feed him. He LOVED to be held and still loved to stare at me and I back at him. He still had the most perfect hands and feet. His skin was still the softest I'd ever felt. And he still smelled of the most addicting baby smell EVER. NONE of those things needed fixing. Elijah didn't need to be changed or transformed, he was just right the way he was.
Elijah and Elijah's extra chromosome are miracles. Sometimes we try to fix things before we ask the question, "is it even broken?" Elijah's extra chromosome is not a broken piece of him - it is the little extra that is the spark, the thing that challenges the rest of us to see life from a slightly different perspective, and to embrace that life wholeheartedly.
Lij is not the miracle to happen, Lij IS the miracle.
