Amazing Grace

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want and don’t want from life. And how to get it and simultaneously escape from my soul-crushing debt. I have a “sorta” plan that might involve some Dave Ramsey techniques. Or maybe I just like to say “debt snowball.” Hard to tell, sometimes. In the meantime, I have a good job with a great boss. I can pay my bills. And buy presents for my future niece.

And my cousin’s baby Ashlyn.

I am thrilled for all these people having babies. I really am. I would someday love to be a mother, but it’s not my time right now. And the older I get, the more I realize just how much more there is to having a baby than just floating on clouds of happiness and gumdrops.

Some women believe they were born to be mothers. But their bodies betray them. Some women have bodies that can conceive, but not carry a baby to full term. And some women can get pregnant at the drop of a hat. And some women become mothers to the motherless. And some babies are born with a will to survive that defies all odds. Some babies are born sick, but grow strong. Some babies can’t make it outside their mother’s womb. Some babies live and grow, but have genetic defects—physical, mental, psychological—that make them different from most people. And some babies, they go through life unscathed.

My cousin and her sweet baby Ashlyn Grace are in the middle of their story right now. Nobody knows how it’s going to end. But already, Ashlyn’s grandpa has named her “Amazing Grace.” My cousin is due with Ashlyn sometime in early January. But doctors are going to induce her at 39 weeks. She’ll be induced at Boston Children’s hospital, so that a team of specialists – some of the best in the world – can be on hand to greet her at her birth. Ashlyn, though she hasn’t yet been born, has already been diagnosed with the heart disease HLHS. It’s rare. I read that only two babies born this year will have it. And this diagnosis guarantees her at least three heart surgeries, two in her first year of life.

I can’t imagine. To have a husband, to find out that you and he are going to be parents for the first time. What joy. Then that first ultrasound. That one where they don’t tell you a whole lot, they just get really quiet and concerned and refer you to someone else. What terror. Then you talk to someone else, and they start talking percentages. What crap. What devastation. The world stops. Except it doesn’t. Elsewhere, people are laughing, living, maybe even thriving. In your corner of the world, everything has gone silent. You’re holding the hand of your spouse, and you’re both drowning. Why not just let it drown you?

Sure, there’s God. And you’re clinging to Him. Except that it feels like you can’t quite grasp Him. And the thought of that stupid Footprints poem is untenable. Afraid to hope. Afraid to dream. Begging for the miracle ending. You’d give anything. Anything.

Right now, this is their story. They’re in the waiting, clinging, and begging stage. I think about them every day and I pray for them. If you think about them, please pray for them, too. They live very far away from any family. Clearly, it’s allowed them to be close to the best medical care possible for their daughter, but that loneliness, that need for a person with the title “family,” it’s strong. Pray that they find hope and joy and a modicum of peace.

Pray for baby Amazing Ashlyn Grace.