It has been a while since we shared our stories about James...Eddie had been sharing current stories and I was going back to remember the early days. We do this to remember our journey but also to be an encouragement to others who walk this journey as well...
So, back to the early days...We were missionaries in Manila, Philippines when James was born. We received our diagnosis...we went through what everyone else feels when they hear that their child has Down Syndrome. We began processing and dealing with the new reality and our grief over what James could not be. It just killed me to see the Formula or baby powder commercials on TV... it kind of pierced my heart that our little baby was not like them... and he was not healthy or well... he could not suck so he lost weight and went down to 4.8 pounds when he was 6 weeks old. We took him from doctor to doctor to find out what was wrong. They really didn’t know what to do to help him. The director of our Mission Agency was keeping in touch with us as well as our home pastor. They both urged us to come back to the States for help. We carried James back on a pillow because he had lost all strength and was close to death. We almost lost him several times. We begged God to keep him alive... We arrived in Springfield, MO where my mother lived and we took him straight to the hospital. It was amazing what they could do for him. They were so sweet to him and they organized just what he needed. A speech therapist taught him how to eat! They worked with him for days and taught me how to feed our James...He still would have times of not being able to breathe and get choked so easily. I begged God so many times to save our baby’s life. When he started to gain a little weight and to perk up a little... his diagnosis was no longer in the forefront... he was our “Sweet Baby James” and we were so in love with him. I wanted to learn as much as I could to know how to help him be his best.
We learned about “early intervention” and how it can help all special needs children and their development. We spoke with a developmental specialist and she spent a lot of time with us just educating us and letting us know what we needed to look for when we got back to Manila. We bought books and started on that journey of learning more about this thing we had been afraid of for so long. I never had met anyone with D.S. before we met our baby...so everything was new....We went back to Manila just hoping and praying for what we needed for James.
When I look back to that time, I am still in awe of the way that God supplied exactly what James needed when it was time. We learned about a new Developmental Specialist who had come back to Manila after her training in London. She was great! She helped us find therapists and would evaluate him every 6 months. Our physical therapist was great, but she could only see him once a month. Our occupational therapist was very good too, but she could only see us every three months, and back then, there was no speech therapist. We asked God to help us with what we needed for James...to our surprise,the people who built the very next house in our subdivision had an adult daughter who was a physical therapist and could see him every Saturday...was this a coincidence? Then when we needed him to see an occupational therapist more often, I got word that there was a new missionary couple coming from Australia... and guess what she was! An occupational therapist! She came to our home every week and James just loved her! Well, we needed a speech therapist (and remember there was none to be found...) and Eddie came home from church one day telling me “Cindy, there is a therapy center going in across from our church... you ought to go check it out” Well, yes... they had a speech therapist!
It goes on... When James turned 2 and 1/2, our developmental specialist told us that this was a wonderful window for James to go to school. She told me that there was a little school that would be just perfect for him but it was just so far away. I asked her where is was... and to our surprise, it was in the adjoining subdivision... 3 minutes away! In a city of 17 million people, where there are not a lot of resources for special needs kids, God was providing for our little guy! I will never forget the day I interviewed the teacher “Teacher Pow” (short for Paula). She told me that all her students came to her as non-verbal. She said that she teaches them with everything she had, but she also believed in God’s power and she would lay hands on their heads and pray for God to help them speak...She said all her students were able to speak when they left her. I could barely hold back the tears...of joy...of how God was so supernaturally providing what James needed... Can you imagine...God cared about our little one who almost didn’t make it. He rescued him, brought along doctors, therapists and a whole new set of people in the Philippines to take care of him...I am still in awe over that... This opened up a whole new world for us...a world where many families did not know what to do for their children. We got connected to the Down Syndrome Association in the Philippines and found out that they needed leaders for support groups. So we started a support group for the eastern side of Manila. We loved getting to know these families. We brought in therapists to speak, shared resources and tried to encourage and inspire them. It was so rewarding to see families that seemed so hopeless start to dream for their children again. They all loved their children... they just were stuck in their grief. I love how God helps us with our journey of grief.... I look at it this way. We all have to go through this valley of grief... we visit several stations like shock, anger, being overwhelmed, sadness, disappointment as well as other feelings you feel when you face your new reality. It felt a bit familiar... it reminded me of when I had lost a dear loved one... and yet I got to keep James... my initial dreams for him had died... but his life was certainly worth living... he became such a joy...so precious... I realized as I got to each station in that valley of grief... I would experience it... process it with God ... feel the emotion, but I chose to not camp out at one of them... because I knew that if I authentically went through each one... asking for God’s grace, HE would lead me to a NEW HOPE and a NEW VISION for James.... yes he still had D.S., but he was also a darling little baby that would develop into such a great young man. The grief would be turned into joy. We looked into book of James in the Bible where is says in James 1:3, “Consider it all joy when you ....
God was asking me to accept this baby by faith because only He knew what joy James would bring us... we had to believe (and not see) that God had this in His hands... He still could be trusted... He loved this baby and us... He wasn’t punishing us. He was blessing us with this baby... We had no idea... what joy our James would bring...
