More Thoughts on Special Needs Children and the God Who Creates Them

This thought-provoking comment comes from The Cottage Child, copied from the comment thread in part 1 of “Children With Disabilities.“  She made two extremely valid points of which we need to be reminded.  Thank you, Rachael.

“Another difficulty with this line of thinking, everything riding on physical perfection, is also why it’s become so incredibly expensive to have a baby period. (I realize lots of families have chosen home-birth, and I’m just going to tell you right now you’re better women than I am. )

But for those of us who are the standard ob/hospital delivery kind of gals, the pressure for endless testing (read: $$$$) begins from the minute you make the first appointment. If you are so brazen as to have children in your old age – say 37 – you’re pushed to have genetic testing sequences, amnio, multiple ultra sound screenings, and on and on and on. Politely decline most if not all, and watch the wave of contempt (I actually had a nurse roll her eyes at me) coming at you from every member of the staff. Hear the confused silence of the insurance company when you call to say “don’t pay that, they didn’t perform those tests” because many practices will attempt to bill them as a “package” for mid life pregnancies whether the tests are done or not.

Anyway, sorry for the mini-rant, but medicine itself is complicit in the obsession with “perfectly” healthy babies, with little regard for the deleterious effects much of the testing they do has on the baby (up to and including potential miscarriage), not to mention increasing the anxiety level of the mother. All presented as “so you can make the best decision for your family”. It’s more than a little creepy. I think a lot of it is dollar driven, but there’s an element to it that is trying to unravel the miracle – studied closely, the amazing part is that so many babies are born as we expect them to be.

I find it interesting that our current culture is CRAVING the hand-crafted stamp on everything right now – the imprint of the person who made an object is dear to us, it makes it special, unique,not cookie cutter or predictable. Everything, that is, except people. We can’t accept physical differences or disabilities as anything but less than the preferred standard. There’s no consideration that these differences are valuable or complimentary to us, forget beautiful, intentional even, in the sight of God. For a world bent on worshiping diversity, we don’t leave room, ultimately, for much but the superficial differences.”

Children With Disabilities: Perfect for Us: Part 1

“It doesn’t matter if it’s a girl or a boy, just as long as it’s healthy.”

Do you have any idea how loaded, how presumptuous that statement is?  And we hear it all the time.  I’ve said it myself.

Translation?  “Only healthy children are a blessing”. And that’s not what God’s Word says.

Do you want to see the slippery slope of a seemingly minor, yet glaring ethical error?

Countless babies with disabilities are being aborted every year. Worse than that, women are encouraged, counseled and made to believe “it’s the best thing”!  And that slope keeps getting steeper.

Because now we have to answer, “what’s a disability?”  Statistics show that parents abort children with an extra finger, a club foot, a facial abnormality, etc.

This is not a new idea, though.  Margaret Sanger unashamedly campaigned to eradicate, through birth control, “the defective and diseased elements of humanity”.

The logical results are upon us as we put to death millions of “the least of these”.  And following that we find ourselves on the brink of genetic engineering (“I already have a brown-eyed boy, I want a blue-eyed girl.”)  Once we started playing God, there’s no stopping.

At The Baby Conference, R.C. Sproul, Jr. shared a raw and heartfelt message about his little girl who has “smooth brain”.  She is 13, wears diapers, must be fed and needs help walking.  She also has violent seizures.

Paraphrasing his story:

“Her nickname is ‘Princess Happy’, because her smile is so big when I go to her bed each morning, that her eyes are nearly shut.  I reach down and scoop that baby up in my arms.  “Daddy made you pancakes, Shannon.“  I remember Jesus’ words…”I was hungry and you fed me…inasmuch as you did it unto the least of these, you did it unto Me.”

I look at Shannon again and I can’t believe the God of the universe would give me this opportunity to minister to Him…every day.  That he would tell us ‘Unless you become like little children, you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven’, and here, Shannon is so innocent–she is my spiritual better, constantly showing me so much about the Kingdom.  I beg the Lord, “Please, please don’t take her.”

We don’t just break the heart of God when we kill these little babies who are less than perfect, but we rob ourselves of perhaps the greatest means God would use to show us His Kingdom, to keep us tender, to give us opportunity to minister to Him through the least of these, to allow us to embrace the cross of suffering and show the world the very picture of His mercy on us.  God’s perfect plan for us involves imperfection.  He has always delighted to use the weakest among us to demonstrate the greatness of Himself.

Our culture says “avoid hardship, eliminate suffering“.  We buy it, banish all sympathy for the child that will die to make a mother’s life easier, then use sympathy for ourselves to justify our heinous act.

Jesus Christ says, “Rejoice in your sufferings…”

God have mercy on us for our cruelty and ignorance.

God help us to say, “It doesn’t matter.  God is sending us the perfect child.”

Abortionists Forced to Deal With Reality

Because they can’t speak for themselves, I will continue to try…

Excerpts from Mugged by Ultrasound reveal many abortionists, unable to deal with the horrors of their job, not only leaving the industry, but becoming staunch, pro-life advocates.

“In general, abortion providers have censored their own emotional trauma out of concern to protect abortion rights. In 2008, however, abortionist Lisa Harris endeavored to begin “breaking the silence” in the pages of the journal Reproductive Health Matters. When she herself was 18 weeks pregnant, Dr. Harris performed a D&E abortion on an 18-week-old fetus. Harris felt her own child kick precisely at the moment that she ripped a fetal leg off with her forceps:

‘Instantly, tears were streaming from my eyes—without me—meaning my conscious brain—even being aware of what was going on. I felt as if my response had come entirely from my body, bypassing my usual cognitive processing completely. A message seemed to travel from my hand and my uterus to my tear ducts. It was an overwhelming feeling—a brutally visceral response—heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics. It was one of the more raw moments in my life.’ …

‘As I brought out the rib cage, I looked and saw a tiny, beating heart,’ he would recall. ‘And when I found the head of the baby, I looked squarely in the face of another human being—a human being that I just killed.’ “

Full article:  Mugged by Ultrasound

A Wanted Child

“You were such a wanted child.”

Gathered around by a few, soft lights with some of our closest friends, we wished little Cooper a happy 8th birthday by speaking a short blessing over his upcoming year. It was a sweet time, and I left with his mother’s words echoing in my heart….

“You were such a wanted child.”

Cooper is the third born, and the first child Robin and Scott had after their vasectomy reversal.

A wanted child.

The words keep ringing. Have I spoken this to all my children? Do they know they are wanted? Do I live with them like they are wanted? Do those who spend any time with our family see that my children are wanted?

In an age where birth control makes it so simple, no, mandatory that we “control” the children born to us, is it any wonder why it’s so easy to arrive unwanted? In a controlled environment, any variable that changes unexpectedly is deemed “unwanted”. It’s a mistake, a plan gone awry.

We don’t even know we do this to our own children. How many times I’ve heard a child described as “an accident”. An immortal soul–a living miracle of God–an accident?

We should shudder at our evolved thinking toward life. We should read the Bible again as little children…

“It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves.” Psalm 100:3

And now, I look at my children…“you are such wanted children”. Let me say it with my life.

A few snuggles before we go….

Abortion Brings Deeper Hurt to Women

I wanted to post this video for one reason…while pro-choice advocates love to rake the pro-life advocates over the coals for “not caring about women”, it is so important that the truth continues to be told–abortion–the “quick fix for hurting women”, (not to mention the undeniable murder of life)  leaves women in a much worse state than they were before.  Why is this fact shoved under the rug?  If they really care about women, why are they so quick to suggest abortion while denying the longer-term, more harmful effects it will have?

Pro-life advocates care VERY much about women–we are not “pro-fetus” as one commenter recently accused (I deleted several comments accusing the pro-life readers here of being “non-educated idiots” who she absolutely believed would be “shunned by God”).

No, we’re pro-every life, even attesting that Dr. Tiller’s murder was NOT justified.   We care deeply about hurting women who find themselves in difficult situations (we ARE some of those women).  But we’re wise enough to know that killing babies within their wombs is not going to solve their problems but make them bigger.

(Brief Interruption) Dr. Tiller–Abortion Doctor Killed

I just heard that Dr. George Tiller–a doctor known for performing late-term abortions–was shot and killed in his church.  The news comes as a terrible tragedy, and I am appalled at such an act of violence.  

And then there’s the irony…

President Obama said:

“he was ’shocked and outraged’ by the murder. ‘However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence,’ he said.”

Agreed, Mr. President.  We are shocked by heinous acts of violence like these.  And we’re just as shocked about the heinous act of babies being killed in the womb as we are over this crime committed against Dr. Tiller.

I am grateful we are still ”shocked and dismayed” over the taking of a life…I just wish it were every life.