{"id":376,"date":"2010-09-23T08:51:43","date_gmt":"2010-09-23T08:51:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/thinplaces\/2010\/09\/when-the-world-comments-on-your-life.html"},"modified":"2010-09-23T08:51:43","modified_gmt":"2010-09-23T08:51:43","slug":"when-the-world-comments-on-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/09\/when-the-world-comments-on-your-life.html","title":{"rendered":"When the World Comments on Your Life…"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n\"IMG_3408.JPG\"<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve found myself in the
\ncenter of a squall this past week. A squall of my own making. When I wrote
\nabout my choice not to screen<\/a> the baby in my womb for Down syndrome, I didn’t
\nexpect it to draw any attention other than readers of this blog. But Lisa Belkin,
\nof the New York Times’ Motherlode, was willing to post it, and just a few more
\npeople read her blog than mine. So far, there are 180 comments and counting. And
\nthen there was the second post, “Is it Harder to Have a Child With Down
\nSyndrome?<\/a>“, published Tuesday, which has brought with it a comment stream of
\nits own.<\/span><\/p>\n

While many of the comments
\nhave been incredibly encouraging, supportive, wonderful testimonies to life
\nwith disabilities or life in general, I’m focusing for the purposes of this
\npost on the other side. Here’s a sampling<\/span> from
\nthe first post:<\/span><\/p>\n

“I’m tired of people painting
\ncrippling disabilities in a rosy light, claiming that it’s all the same and
\n“just another way of being. Choosing to bring a child into the world,
\nknowing that s\/he will be doomed for
\nlife <\/b>with such a condition, isn’t something that every woman is ready to
\ndo, or should be obliged to do.” (#11)<\/span><\/p>\n

“But I think deliberately choosing to bring a child into the
\nworld knowing that they will never live
\na full, independent, healthy life<\/b> is strange and selfish in a way.” (#52)<\/span><\/p>\n

“The bottom line is that Down’s
\nSyndrome children are also a burden to society.” <\/b>(#73)<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/span><\/p>\n

“It’s bizarre to me to see statements that these children enrich
\ntheir parents lives or bring joy<\/span><\/b>, but
\nluckily we all get to choose.” (#78)<\/span><\/p>\n

“The ones who
\nsuffer? The SMART kids<\/span><\/b>. Only a deeply
\nself-destructive society dumps all of its resources into a population that,
\nfrankly, isn’t going to show a return on the investment.” (#96)<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

From the second post: <\/span><\/p>\n

“Yes, some disabled kids live in
\nblissful ignorance and enjoy the dance classes of life. But others suffer<\/b> with
\nthe knowledge and the despair. Which kind you’re gonna get, nobody knows, but
\nI’m not willing to take the risk.” (#3)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“Unfortunately, the real challenge
\nmay come when the child grows up. Raising a Down’s child is nothing compared to
\nmanaging a Down’s adult<\/b>.” (#24)<\/span><\/p>\n

“What we have a difficult time
\nunderstanding is when a person has FORESIGHT into a situation, particularly
\nconcerning disability and prenatal screening, why someone would CHOOSE to have
\na child that has a disability like Down Syndrome, when we KNOW the hardships
\n(for everyone) that are involved<\/b>.” (#85)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

And these are just the
\nones that lend themselves to quick quotations. <\/span><\/p>\n

A number of you have asked
\nme how I feel<\/i> about all this. Not
\njust how I think<\/i> about it, but how I
\nfeel about it. <\/span><\/p>\n

I wasn’t feeling very
\nemotionally engaged until Sunday morning. But then I found myself sitting in
\nchurch next to Penny. She had taken a Bible from the chair in front of her and
\nopened it on her lap. Her fingers were tracing the words and she was “reading”
\n(which means she was narrating the page as if she knew what the words said).
\nAnd as I saw her there–with her soft brown hair cradling her face, her glasses
\nslipping to the end of her nose, her long eyelashes–absorbing some sense of God’s
\nlove for her, all I could think was, There
\nare people in this world who think you shouldn’t exist.<\/i> Like an arrow to my
\nheart.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, the comments sting.
\nThe ignorant ones provoke anger. The stories of family members of people with
\ndisabilities who say they think their sibling\/child\/mother\/etc. should never
\nhave existed provoke sorrow and confusion and compassion. The mean ones make me
\nwant to protect my daughter and never write a word about her again. But my
\noverriding sense in the midst of it all is of gratitude. When I write on this
\nblog, or at Bloom<\/a> (a blog specifically for parents of kids with disabilities), I’m writing to a pretty sympathetic audience. So the
\nopportunity to write for people who think my life makes no sense whatsoever,
\nwell, really, it’s a privilege. <\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve shed some tears this
\nweek. I’ve endured some sleepless nights. I’ve hugged Penny tight and kissed
\nher head and wished that everyone in the world had a chance to meet her. And I
\nplan to keep telling her story, in spite of the hurt and the anger and the
\nsadness, in hopes that hers might be a narrative of love and hope and embracing
\nthe fragility, complexity, and beauty that every human life has to offer.  <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve found myself in the center of a squall this past week. A squall of my own making. When I wrote about my choice not to screen the baby in my womb for Down syndrome, I didn’t expect it to draw any attention other than readers of this blog. But Lisa Belkin, of the New…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,1,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disability","category-down-syndrome","category-family"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen the World Comments on Your Life... - Thin Places<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/2010\/09\/when-the-world-comments-on-your-life.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When the World Comments on Your Life... - Thin Places\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’ve found myself in the center of a squall this past week. 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Two major life experiences have shaped her writing and her faith\u00e2\u20ac\u201dcaring for her mother-in-law as she battled cancer and welcoming her daughter Penny into the world after she was diagnosed at birth with Down syndrome. Both experiences expanded and enriched her understanding of what it means to be human and to receive each and every person as a gift.\u00c2\u00a0 A graduate of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary, she is the author of Penelope Ayers: A Memoir, and the forthcoming A Good and Perfect Gift (Bethany House). Her essays have appeared in First Things, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Century, ChristianityToday.com, and Bloom, among other online venues.","sameAs":["http:\/\/amyjuliabecker.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/author\/amyjuliabecker"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/thinplaces\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}