My gym buddy- Stacy and I talked about Christmas and family this morning while I exercised,.. well, she did most of the talking , I simply tried to breath as she told me about how much she loves her nephews and how exciting it will be to fly to Arizona to see them after the holidays. She told me all about the boys and that apparently one of them goes to speech class because he's artistic.
I love Stacy because every time I visit with her, she acts like shes' glad to see me and she makes me feel special , little does she know.... it's actually the other way around.
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Please consider saying a prayer and or offering something up for our mentally disabled population. They suffer a great deal from the real world and in ways which you can't understand until you live with a person who has some of these issues. These kids know they don't fit and that the real world doesn't appreciate them for who they are and we parents can't take their pain away. They stand with Christ on the front line, in this battle for our salvation - simply by their existence, as I have come to understand that your fate is decided then and there by the way you treat these people- the least of Gods children.
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Medical ethicist Ronald Green argues that parents have an obligation to avoid 'genetic harm' to their offspring, and Claire Rayner, then a patron of the Downs Syndrome Association, defended testing and abortion saying "The hard facts are that it is costly in terms of human effort, compassion, energy, and finite resources such as money, to care for individuals with handicaps... People who are not yet parents should ask themselves if they have the right to inflict such burdens on others, however willing they are themselves to take their share of the burden in the beginning."
7 comments:
In my parish we have two young boys with Down's Syndrome..they are indeed angels but I'm sure they are a handful for their parents..
One of my best friends growing up had cystic fibrosis...back in the late 70's there wasn't much that could be done for it..she really started going downhill at 12 and died just before she turned 14..I was mad at God for a long time as to why He would allow her to be sick and suffer and take my friend away. I know better now.
With all the genetic testing now I'm sure it's hard on folks, espeically if they find out that they test positive for CF.
One of the guys I work with..all three of his youngsters have severe autism...thay are under 6 years..they have decided not to have any more children until the doctors can figure out what is going wrong. They have to hire two people to help them care for these children and the house is continually a wreck..they destroy everything they touch. Just last week he was saying the oldest got a pair of scizzors and stabbed and cut up the upholstry on the couch. Health insurance doesn't cover much either. That is usually a big decision for most folks.
God Bless these families...they definitely need extra prayers.
I very much look forward each spring when a special ed bus from the inner city visits our little farm.
Invariably, the children rush past our large exotic llamas and focus on the pygmy goats or baby chicks.
Last year a sweet-faced girl with Downs knelt in front of a brood of tiny chicks I had ordered from the hatchery out West. She finally turned to me and with great concern asked,"But Miss Julie, where are their mothers?"
Julie, I would also look forward to going to your farm in the spring. Who wouldn't wanna see a goat faint? Although I have seen a opossum play dead before.
:)
Sara, I don't know how some people are able to carry such huge crosses and especially if they're not christians.
:(
I'm not sure the "real world" is the right phrase. These children are real, and part of the world.
It's jut the rest of the world treats them like they are not real.
Sanabit, I agree! The words I chose were incorrect.
My mother-in-law had a brother who was mentally retarded because of an injury at birth. She said that some of her classmates were not allowed to come to her house. It was like people thought it was catching or something. Of course this was the 1920's; but even now we are sometimes not very enlightened in the way we treat those with mental disabilities.
"Dode" Dyer was a contemporary of my Mother. He had downs. Basically, he was our village idiot. (I'm from a place that would be called a village anywhere but the US--here it's an "unincorporated community". he was great. I knew hem from when i was too young for kindergarten to when I left home. People there accepted and knew Dode. When they built the Subdivisions in our area(subdivisions are bastions of evil!)the new people were freaked out by him. They wondered why he wasn't in an institution or something, instead of the third generation of his family caring for him. Dode would do anything to keep kids out of trouble. He would wade into a dog fight that threatened kids, stand i the road to keep cars from hitting us as we left school.
my Parish has quite a few downs kids in it--some adopted. I look at them and marvel that they survived the pressure to murder them before birth.
i used to volunteer in a community kitchen that had special needs kids-teens--come in once a week to help out. it was a lot of trouble to watch over them, but the joy they brought was worth the effort.
Downs kids are first and foremost kids--a treasure and wealth. Downs adults are first and foremost people--a treasure.
God bless the parents who didn't murder their kids.
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