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I don't know why I do it. Why I cannot turn away from the news that breaks my heart. The sight of a beautiful babe gone in the blink of an eye, never to feel his mother's caress again. A mother left shaken and battered by the loss of her beloved child. The breast that aches for a nursling, the momma's heart shredded by a disease, a failed surgery, the one final attempt to save her beloved child only to learn the child would be taken from her. The heart of a mother truly left bleeding from an open hole that will never be completely filled.
Never in my life have ever been so completely aware how fragile life truly is. How absolutely blessed I am to have healthy children. My children are not medically fragile and for that I am eternally grateful. So why do people feel pity for me and my family? Oh, yeah, wait.........I remember now.
Down syndrome.
Who cares? So what! My son has 47 chromosomes. Yes, he is delayed. And yes, he does not walk (yet). But my son is here! On Earth with ME. Society, don't pity me. The shoes I wear are not ugly and they do not hurt my feet. So, society, don't pity me. Save your "I'm sorry's" for a mother who has so very unnecessarily earned your condolences. Society, don't pity me. Send your "Are you allright's" to a mother who cannot sleep at night because all she dreams of are the last moments she spent with her child before saying "Goodbye, my love." Society, don't pity me. When you see me out and about with my boys and wonder what is "wrong" with the little one, don't pity me. You see, society, I have the pleasure of taking my children with me wherever I go. I have the pleasure of knowing what it is like to hear "Momma" from a boy many women never choose to give birth too. Society, don't pity me. Save your pity for those women who fought with the prenatal diagnosis of an extra chromosome and believed they were doing the "right thing" by not birthing that angel. Society, don't pity me.
Abortion, cancer, heart defects, surgeries, MPS, SMA, fatal trisomy's and the list goes on and on. These are the takers of babes, the robbers of families that leave behind devastation in their wake. Society, don't pity me. By God's good grace, I have not experienced the heartaches out there. I have simply enjoyed the blessings of my boys, even the one with 47 chromosomes.
Society, don't pity me.
