Star of the month!

In April I'm going to be Star of the Month at the Baby Therapy Centre! They asked Mom to write something for their website; here it is:

Cameron, and why I have hope

Our baby boy turns one this April. When I consider how this one year of his life has revolutionized our home, changed forever our priorities, driven us to our knees, challenged our thinking, and captured our hearts, I can’t begin to imagine what unspeakable richness the rest of his life will bring.

Cameron is severely visually impaired, and we live beneath the ominous cloud of chance that he may one day go completely blind. A few months ago I wrote that he moves ‘in shadow world of mingled blurs’, and in a sense, we as his parents have been trudging blind through a blur of our own, trying to understand, trying to find a place for the hurt, trying to live.

I have realised, however, that much of what blinds me is the world’s branding. Cameron is ‘disabled’, ‘special needs’, ‘not normal’, and he triggers the unasked for ‘Ag shame’ in so many supermarket queues. And so the pity and the stigma and the clichés usher in the debilitating fear.

But then I remember that what people think of Cameron doesn’t change who he is in God’s eyes. I remind myself of how I see him: not sidelined by society, but immeasurably blessed; not cursed, but favoured. I recall why it is that I have hope.

I have hope for Cameron because he is brave. I have hope for him because his laugh is contagious, and because he is handsome and smart. I have hope for him because he compensates for his vision in astounding ways and because he finds beauty and excitement all around him. I have hope for him because he lights up a room and because he draws people to himself, even the most cynical and unfeeling. I have hope for him because he is surrounded by those who will be his champions: grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and friends. I have hope for him because he lives in an age of opportunity and possibility, of technology and resources. I have hope for him because our home is a place of peace where Christ is King. Most of all, I have hope for him because he is a unique creation of God, and because he will know the magnificence of walking in the plans and purposes of a loving Creator.

I know that there are difficulties ahead, possibly many more than we can imagine. But with our God, the best is yet to be. Big things await. And so I do not fear for my son.