Grateful

My Grandmother had the greatest influence in my life. She had a way of making the bad seem so far removed from our life. As long as I could see her I knew I was safe. She had a way of making people feel loved and valued. No matter what walks of life they came from, no matter their circumstances she always treated everyone like they were important and worthy of her time and attention.

Her last words were “Thank you.” Those words define her life. She was grateful when Chemo made her knee length hair fall out. “Sissy as heavy as my hair was I wouldn’t be able to lift my head if I hadn’t lost it” Her hair was “her glory” Papaw use to joke no body fingered him as a United Pentecostal Preacher after Granny lost her hair. It meant way more than vanity to Grandma, but she chose to be grateful instead of bitter.

I couldn’t understand the things she use to tell me. “Life has a way of balancing itself out Sissy”
“You got to know hungry to appreciate full”
She would speak with such conviction about God’s perfect will. When I was angry for her. When I cried the tears she didn’t. She’d comfort me. “Sissy there is peace when you just trust him to lead you where he wants you to go even the bad, You have to trust his heart”

I use to ask her, when that big lightning bolt of wisdom would hit me? I really struggled to understand how anything good could come from so much suffering.

The last days of her life a constant stream of people came in and out of her hospital room every life she touched every saint she’d mothered even those that had moved away or even backslid come to say Goodbye to her.

When she died I felt lost. I had lost the only person that understood me exactly like I was and loved me anyways. It wouldn’t be for a few years until I realized that everything she was, every bit of wisdom she had ever shared with me was stored inside me waiting for my mind to be ready to understand them. She had left me a legacy more precious than gold.



When I went through three miscarriages and the stillbirth of my son William, I felt her so strong inside me. “The things you do not understand place them in the masters hand”
When Evan was born and they placed him in my arms I realized what “God’s perfect will” truly meant. The events of my life had all led to this moment. I held a child that I fully understood the value of. How that love born of such pain was “tried by fire” the way the most beautiful vessels sometimes are. The lesson’s Grandma lived and died teaching me and finally taken root inside me and started to grow.

I know what it is like to wake up and feel the most overwhelming feeling of Gratitude. I look at Kaden and see the ways that being his mother has changed me and at Jonathan and see my capacity to love and Evan and see the answers to the question “WHY.” I know that my life has come full circle to where that I can look back and see that the struggle and the pain enhances the love.

To really understand the lesson I learned you have to know where that I started. At 18 years old I was told 16 weeks into my first pregnancy that my son had a chromosome abnormality, Down syndrome was the best case scenario, the others were incompatible with life. I was informed of my options. Something termed Eugenic abortion. I was horrified by the thought. Love isn’t conditional I thought.


Fast Forward two years and I was 20 weeks into my 7th pregnancy. The ultrasound showed that Evan had cleft lip, hypoplastic left heart syndrome, fused fingers and most likely Trisomy 18 a chromosome abnormality that was incompatible with life. I had 11 days to wait before I got to Vanderbilt to have Maury Regional’s diagnosis confirmed. 11 days that every time I felt him move caused my heart to break thinking I would never have the chance to watch him grow up. In that time I had to make some choices. No one has ever realized the full impact of the choice they were making more that I did. I was making the most informed decision possible. What was most amazing was it the exact same one that I had made 10 years ago completely by heart. I felt a peace come over me that day that even had Vanderbilt confirmed that diagnosis I had found answers. Their life was not my choice. Everything my children was had been designed by God according to his purpose. Then I understood my Grandma completely. “Life has a way of giving you answers Sissy. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will open, ask and it shall be given”
Since the day Evan was born my life has changed completely because I really begin to understand that everything works together for the good of them that love the lord and are called according to his purpose in a way that I had never made sense of it before.

The spiritual part of me that had been shut up for so long as I raged against a God that wanted all of the credit and none of the blame. Until I was finally able to understand I had let people define God for me.
When I first got pregnant with William. I was told my pregnancy was a blighted ovum. A pregnancy that just didn’t develop. The HCG blood count was suppose to rise, mine wasn’t. They didn’t see a baby on ultrasound. So I waited and waited and waited. From August to October I thought that he was dead. It was October 19th I was sent for another ultrasound and there he was his little heart beating away at 150bpm. A MIRACLE my Mom proclaimed and her entire church started taking credit for the life coming back to my baby. Well of course I will have this baby. It’s a miracle after all. When I went to Centennial Medical Center for an Ultrasound to find out the sex of the baby and to have the screening for congenital abnormalities, I thought the still form on the screen meant that he was paralyzed somehow. Does he have spina bifita? I asked. Is he anecephalic?? What is wrong with my baby!? I demanded and finally I asked “Does he have a heartbeat?
The Doctor looked at me and said “No”
Miracle’s don’t die! That had to be wrong. I asked him if he was sure. He gave me a look of exasperation. “Yes I’m sure” he said just as matter of fact as you can be.
The first thing my Mom told me was...........”Don’t blame God”
Didn’t make any sense to me. Just a few days ago I was suppose to never forget the miracle he performed in my life but now I wasn’t suppose to blame him??????? How did that work exactly??
That was the hardest misconception that I have ever worked through.
To forever tie God to that pain I was dying a spiritual death until having Evan set me free. Part of the love I was able to give to my new little baby was formed in that sorrow and through that pain. When I felt more alone than I ever did in my life when I felt forsaken and abandoned God seen this moment with this precious little baby. He is the author and the finisher after all.

Once life returned to normal as normal as mine can get at least. That feeling of being grateful has never left me. It has opened my eyes to so many things that I missed. How Kaden’s purpose is so much about what he brings out in others. How lucky I am to have my three little boys. I am not so scared of what comes my way because I know that it will all one day make sense.

It is those things in my life that defines me as a person. I never wanted anything else but to be a Mother and to give my kids what my grandma gave to me. I always wanted 12 kids. I wrote reports about it in school. What is funny is that in every story I ever wrote I had a child with Down syndrome. When I took Sociology in high school and they made us carry around egg babies. I made mine to have Down syndrome. I am living the life that I was meant to live. I do not question that. It is this feeling of wanting more. To know more to be more and to do more that is the main motivator in my life. To know that somewhere up in heaven that my Grandma is looking down and is proud of me.