Amazing Grace

My sister-in-law Tami gave me some lotion a couple of years ago, Amazing Grace by philosophy, it smells SO good, and this quote is on the side of it...

"how you climb up the mountain is just as important as how you get down the mountain. and, so it is with life, which for many of us, becomes one gigantic test, followed by one gigantic lesson. in the end, it all comes down to one word, grace. it's how you accept winning and losing, good luck and bad luck, the darkness and the light. "

I received this gift shortly after Ella was born. I really liked the quote, of course because of the name Amazing Grace (ya know since Grace is Ella's middle name, which we picked out the name right after we found out she was a girl, of course we did not know how significant her middle name would be to us,) but also the words... life is one gigantic test followed by one gigantic lesson. I don't want to say that Ella is my test, but she has taught me several GIGANTIC lessons.

I always think back to when she was born, I can remember every smell, the metallic taste in my mouth, things people said, wishing I could just die because after all if I died someone far more qualified then me could raise Ella, wanting my old life back, saying things like "this is not what I wanted," how everywhere I went there just felt like there was a very dense fog around me that I could not see through. I would see families with several kids and think why don't they have a child with Down syndrome, WHY ME???? I am not special, I have no clue what I am doing, I am just not equipped to handle this.

Day by day the fog got a little thinner, and I guess it all just started to sink in, this is my life now. And then came the Grace. I learned to accept Ella's diagnosis. I learned that I am able to handle all of this, that I am good enough to raise Ella, after all what she really needs is unconditional love and someone to fight for her. I look at Ella and the first thing I see is no longer Down syndrome, I simply see my baby, my beautiful baby. Ella has given me so much, much more than I can ever give her. Is it all easy? Absolutely not. But as the quote says "... it's how you accept winning and losing, good luck and bad luck, the darkness and the light," and I would hope that I will be able to handle it all with grace.