When I was pregnant with Lucia I had a prenatal test done that told us that there was a 99.1% chance that she was going to have Down syndrome.
All the emotions, the challenges, the humongous struggles during pregnancy, the doctor visits...all of those things are for a later post, a different post, some other time. This one is about holding on to the teeniest tiniest hope even when your gut is telling you that the majority is going to rule and that you actually really do know the outcome.
Sometimes we hold on to that .9% for our sanity. To just get us through the day so that we can take the next step forward and so that we can deal with the day to day things that we HAVE to do to survive. We hold on to that .9% so that we don't lose our minds completely. So that we have hope that just maybe it wasn't / isn't what they say its going to be, or what "all signs point to".
I don't think that theres anything wrong with that. But at some point, you get the full 100% and then what do you do.
Just before I was given my precious baby girl I prayed that if it was true, that if she really was going to have Down syndrome, that I wouldn't care at all. That it wouldn't matter to me in the least and that she would change my life. My prayers were answered so much above and beyond my wildest dreams that if I hadn't already been a huge believer in Jesus' love and power I would have became a card carrying Christian right then and there. The gift that we were given in that tiny little body is something that I will shout from the roof tops for the rest of my life and will do my best to help everyone else in the world see.
But.
Sometimes you are holding on to that .9% hope because you don't want to accept the truth and then when you DO get your results, its just another shot to the heart. So then what. Well, while I do not have all the answers on that, my thought is this. You just accept it and close that door. You use that closure to help someone else live. You do what you can with your experience and hope that you can use your story to help those on their journey as well as working through your own grief. You surround yourself with people who are walking the same path and you figure out how to get through it. And you eventually turn it in to something good.
You learn to accept the truth, the good, the path and your new story.
Today I watched my crazy little almost 8 year old randomly go up to an older guy in the parking lot, say hi and proceed to give him a huge hug before I could stop her. He looked at me as I was just about to apologize and pick her up and drag her away mortified...and he said "I needed that. She just made my day". And then I cried. Thank goodness I was wearing sunglasses.
You don't know where you life is going to take you. You don't know if that .9% thing that you are hoping won't happen or won't be true turns out to be so but then was GIVEN to YOU, EXACTLY YOU to help someone else. Its a matter of what you are going to do with the situation. Are you going to wallow in it or are you going to embrace it. Mess and all. Hard stuff and all. Peoples judgements and ALL.
I would encourage you to embrace it all. I would not trade exactly my child for anything in the entire world. She is a true gift from God. While your situation might not seem like its a gift from God, I bet it is. If you choose to let it be. Its what you do once you get the 100% that counts. Make it count.
