REJOICE IN WHO YOU ARE

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalm 139:14

Stop despising the things that make you unique. You were born at just the right time, in just the right place, with just the right gifts, to fulfill a plan that nobody but you can fulfill. Open your Bible and see what God thinks of you. After all, His opinion is the only one that really matters. Listen to the Psalmist: “You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your Book! How precious it is, Lord, to realize that You are thinking about me constantly” (Ps 139:16-17 TLB).

If you want to work on your self-image, here’s a prayer to help you today: Lord, it’s taken me a long time to figure out that I’m different by divine design; that You’ve made me with abilities, traits, and a genetic combination that nobody else has. Nobody in all the ages of time has ever been me – and nobody ever will be. Deliver me, Father, from feeling weird; from wishing I were someone else. Deliver me from envy and jealousy toward others. Help me to discover the unique person You created me to be; to enjoy the little things that make me so special, so “one-of-a-kind”. Help me to realize that I can give the world something that no one else can give. Thank you, Lord, for the awesome creative work You’ve done and continue to do in making me who I am. Amen.

We are praying for all of you.
Amy

I happened upon your website through Ann & Jon’s site—I am so impressed with your family and the candor, honesty & determination with which you are approaching everything that you guys have been through. I hope it’s okay if I pray and follow along as well (and your children are gorgeous, by the way)!

I wanted to comment on this post as I’m an adopted child too. I don’t have much to add to the discussion, except to second Rob’s post. I think you’re doing a great job, from what I’ve read on here.

Kindra Morelock

I just wanted to let you both know that you, Ramona, and Simon are never far from our thoughts and prayers… even all the way out here in California.

If we can do anything for you, you always know you can call on us.

In Him,

Heather Featherston

I don’t think I have any special insights here. I want to chime in just because I find it really hard to believe that this kind of openness and honesty could ever be a bad thing. It has enabled your community to feel connected to you and the kids in a way that isn’t really possible without all of us breathing our spring-time cold-season germs all over Ramona. If anyone in your lives later finds these pages and judges you or, more absurdly, Ramona, then that’s their bag. The education of what not to say (for those of us who don’t take the time to think how a simple semantic choice could really make all the difference in how our words are heard by you alone) has made this blog so valuable for me, and I’ll bet for many others, even lurkers, out here. I think that, if it were all couched in a sort of vagueness about what is going on with Ramona’s health and your feelings about the whole package, it wouldn’t inspire the same level of devotion you have experienced.

For what it’s worth, with love and affection,
Dina

I will chime in with this: I was adopted. and thank God that I was. from early on my mom and dad told me so, so that I grew up not only thinking it was OK, but at times – in my early years – I saw it as a privelege and something to brag about (“na na…my mom and dad picked me. your mom and dad were stuck with you…” pride showed itself early!).

the cool thing is that now, it’s a great picture of what God has done with me – ie, adopted me into his family. when I’m tempted to grovel before him like a slave, or when I want to run from what I imagine is a brutal master, I remember that I’m his son – HIS SON. that he doesn’t see me as adopted…merely, as his boy. family. just like my mom and dad do with me, only better.

that said, I never had a problem being adopted. I think, in part, due to the fact that my mom and dad were honest/open upfront. I never felt labelled. I never felt excluded. I simply felt like their son – and that my adoption was just part of the story on how I became that.

perhaps that will resonate…

-rt

When friends meet my mom for the first time I see through their eyes in that moment “oh whats wrong with her”. I forget to warn people that she is “different”. I forget because she isn’t different. Often after meeting my mom these same friends seem to not understand my mom-issues any longer. How can I be disappointed and have these hurts, after all she is “different”, handicapped, disabled, maimed (and all those other labels). I still have these hurts and continue to work through and reach forgiveness on because she isn’t different.

I bet you didn’t know my mom had polio…that because she isn’t different.

Jane, I bet time will show you that your family isn’t different either.

love,
J.

Of course there are other cultures in which different abilities are not seen as deviations from normal, just rarer forms of normal. I am thinking of a place I lived in INdonesia where some people who had actual mental illness (in a Western paradigm) were seen as dreamers who needed help with day-to-day functions but were included fully in village life. Similarly, people would go to work fishing or farming with big tumors on their bodies and not be treated as “sick” or limited. Then they would die, suddenly, and yet their death was treated as an event separate to their disease.

I think the Not Knowing the Inside of Things from a Western Medical Framework has lots going for it. It means we face each behaviour with total openess rather than holding the diagnosis as a frame of reference against which we adjust our expectations.

But, I don’t think that its easy for us – having grown up being taught to Know and Find Out More. Knowing and doing all that you can about your health is almost equated with adulthood and responsibility.

So, I guess what I am saying is that I would try and do what you do. Share the diagnosis and then speak the truth of what Ramona is into the relationship that you and others have with her. When you differentiate the diagnosis from her being you are making a kind of third path – not hiding or defining – just letting it be there as what you know.

The thing is, he is different from a lot of kids, and I think that a label can be quite liberating and comforting when it helps to normalize a painful sort of difference. But then, it can obviously be limiting, too.

I personally do think my son fits a high-funtioning Aspberger’s profile. But I keep that to myself. At this point, it seems that my son has to choose for himself whether or not he accepts either the diagnosis or the un-diagnosis, and I trust he’ll do whichever is ultimately most healthy for him.

In the meantime, I guess I think all of us should hold lightly to our labels and keep doing our best to make the most of what we’re entrusted with.

Rock-n-Roll-Mama-now-Farmer-in-Boondocks,

K