Mom's Story - Part Four

Click here to read Part One
Click here to read Part Two
Click here to read Part Three

Part Four:

Months passed, and our family limped along the best we could. Medical bills mounted, and my husband still had no job. Friends and relatives urged us to file for bankruptcy. It seemed we had no other choice, yet the thought repelled us. We kept putting it off.

Questions plagued me. Why was this happening to us? Was this a punishment for bad things we had done? Or was this simply an unfortunate accident of nature? As followers of the Lord Jesus Christ, my husband and I believe that God is in control of all things. So then, was this a mistake that God allowed, or was it possible that He had actually planned it?

These questions drove me to the Bible. Heavy on my heart was the need to know if my husband or I had “caused” Vicki’s disabilities because of things we had done or not done. I found my answer in John 9:1: “As He [Jesus] went along, He saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ ‘Nether this man nor his parents sinned,’ said Jesus, ‘but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.’”

When I read that verse, it was like a refreshing shower on parched ground. This wasn’t a punishment! And more than that, this verse suggested that God could display Himself through little Vicki’s life. This sobering thought led me to my next question.

Was this a mistake, an unfortunate accident of nature that God simply allowed, or had He actually planned for Vicki to be born with disabilities? Again, I searched the Bible for answers, and again I was not disappointed. Psalm 139:13-16 declares, “For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from You when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in Your book before one of them came to be.”

These verses told me that Vicki’s condition was no accident. It was planned by God. It was God who knit her together in my womb, and His “works are wonderful,” even when they don’t appear so wonderful in our eyes.

But still the question nagged, “Why ME?” Why did this happen to MY baby? Again, the Bible gave me the answer in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18: “For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

Wow. Suddenly I saw that Vicki’s disabilities were perhaps not the tragedy I had first thought. In fact, according to these verses, our family’s problems could actually aid us in achieving “an eternal glory!” That knowledge exploded with an entirely new vista of what God was doing in our family. It also dramatically altered my attitude toward Vicki.

I began to look at her differently. Rather than seeing her misshapen mouth, her barely-recognizable nose, her widely-spaced eyes, I began to see Vicki as a uniquely-created little girl with every potential to become the person that God formed her to be.

With that new revelation, I tenderly lifted her out of her crib. She cried, as she nearly always did. I held her and deliberately focused on each misplaced feature of her face. As I did so, something wonderful occurred. Her physical features began to blur in my eyes, and I felt I was looking instead at what was inside of her, in her heart and in her soul. It was there that I saw beauty and potential. But, like a seedling freshly planted, this potential needed to be nurtured and cultivated and loved.

And who would do this nurturing? If this tiny life in my arms, this life that God had entrusted into my care, was not beautiful and cherished by me, her own mother, what hope could there be for her?