Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
When I was 26, my firstborn was born
and five hours after an emergency c-section
and he was in a transition nursery on
basically a feeding tube and a respirator
the doctor comes in at 1am and says we see signs of Down Syndrome in your baby
and I was so medicated
that I looked at Gabe and we kinda made eye contact
and then we just rolled back over and fell asleep. I hadn't held him or seen him at
that moment and
didn't even know how to process that. I actually had
a false negative saying everything was okay so
I had never even given it a second thought from early on
in my pregnancy, but the next day
I am in a wheelchair and wheel downstairs and
got to see him for the first time and he was hooked
to all these tubes and
they look to me and said he doesn't have a heart defect which is remarkable
because one,
like, fifty percent of kids with Down Syndrome do, and so I thought, well
maybe he does have Down Syndome, maybe he doesn't.
It takes several days to get the results of something like that so
six days later on my husband's birthday I got a call
and said it's positive and
in that moment, I had a hard
shower cry, like some people can relate to you where you just kind of go
life looks different now, and we quickly got dressed and got in the car and
I remember driving back to hospital 'cause Cade was still in the NICU. He was only four
and a half pounds at birth
and he had to stay there until he gained weight. I held him that day and he
looks at me with eyes that
says, "Are you gonna love me for me?"
"Or are you gonna love me for what I can accomplish and what I can do
and what milestones I can hit so that you can think you're a good mom?"
And I realized that that was the first glimpse I ever had of unconditional love
that
no matter what you do, you're loved because of who you
are
and growing up, I had done a lot of striving, I had done a lot of performing
to prove my worth and to feel loved and accepted and affirmed and
my son's life just shook that
and turned it upside down and all of the sudden it changed the way I saw the world
and the way I saw other people and Cade now is twelve
and he has completely rocked our world. We have two other kids that are ten
and eight
and they're growing up with a vantage point on life
that all people are worth much.
It's so beautiful.
I'm so grateful for it. I'm grateful that he was my first. I'm grateful that my other
two
get to grow up and be his siblings and
understand compassion in ways that took me years to really know.
And the beauty is Cade in New York City is showing,
is really confronting this in New York City because as you walk down streets,
people don't wanna' make
eye contact. People don't want to waive or say hi, but Cade,
Cade doesn't let that happen. He'll get in your face and be, like, "hi!"
on an elevator. "Hi", and if they don't respond, he won't stop.
He's relentless. He'll be, like, "hi," and finally they're, like,
"hi!" It's just creating this
awareness that these lives are important
and they bring something to this world that we desperately need, and I'm
grateful that I've had
a modeling of love, and Jesus to me
looks like one that wants to meet us
in wherever we are, meet us where we are
with our shame without judgment
with this embrace of love and all of the sudden, when we feel that, we want to respond to
it
we want to be free with that.