Sue pointed me to this from Red State.

I have watched it twice and have gone through the gamut of positive and hopeful emotions except at the end.

May God bless this couple with many more healthy children.

I have just finished reading two very touching stories on the refusal of parents to terminate a pregnancy.

One turns out to have a happy ending.

In “Fighting for Claire,” we read about two parents, already blessed with two children, whose third pregnancy - in which the baby was diagnosed with encephalocele (a portion of the brain being outside the skull - found them fighting the Tide of Termination which blows so fiercely from both the “well-meaning, compassionate” types and from the lawsuit-bitten within the medical community:

…they began to recognize that the more specialized and acclaimed the doctors were, the greater was the pressure to “terminate”…The diagnosis was confirmed, and a fear they heard over and over again was that, because the skull was open, “the brain will be spilling out of the head.” Throughout the pregnancy, doctors couldn’t find the baby’s cerebellum, the section of the brain which controls fine motor skills. Up to nine doctors and technicians couldn’t find the cerebellum.
[...]

As the medical saga proceeded, Mimi found herself going to Mass everyday, receiving the Eucharist and begging the Lord to touch her child and heal her with a miracle. While Mimi prayed with fervor and great faith, Tito (her husband) prepared for whatever the Lord would allow.
[…]
Mimi went into early labor and was rushed to her local hospital where, amidst the fear and stress of the unknowns contained in high-risk pregnancies she delivered by C-section a healthy baby girl, to everyone’s amazement. Every newborn is given and APGAR test, which measures the physical health, reflexes, etc., of the baby on a scale of one through ten. Little Claire, the “hopeless” case, scored a 9.9!

There was, at the base of Claire’s head, a small sac that was surgically removed two months after her birth. Whether Claire’s story is a miracle worked by God in the womb of her mother or whether the multitude of specialists simply got confused by the sight of the sac and offered a severe misdiagnosis, we may never know. But Mimi and Tito know that they chose the good in the face of trial - loving and accepting their child regardless of any medical condition -and that will have eternal rewards.

(more…)

We read in Proverbs 22:6 these words:

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

In Ephesians 6:4 Paul tells us:

And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

The Bible talks about children quite a few times. Jesus admonished His disciples for not allowing the little children to go to Him, because He said Heaven is made of such as these.

Being a grandmother has given me more pleasure than I could ever have imagined, although I loved and do love my own children. It’s just that I’m older now and more patient and appreciative of the children since I don’t have to worry about raising them full-time.

My big regret is our son lives in Texas and we get to see our two grandchildren from him only about once a year. We’ve missed a lot of pleasure with them.

Our youngest grandchild is now five and a half years old. I can remember taking him to the school to pick up his older sister and letting him get used to walking in the grass, as he was afraid to step on it.

I remember the joy of watching him discover “bufflies” (butterflies) and him chasing them. I remember his fascination with blowing the white off dandelions after I had taught him how to spread this weed.

I remember how interested he was in feeling the crunch of fallen leaves under his feet for the first time and him chasing them when the wind blew.

Watching birds and squirrels in the yard through the window on cold days was such a pleasure, and it’s all because I was seeing the world for the first time again as a child.

The sweet innocence of children. That’s what Jesus was talking about when He said to allow the children to come to Him because Heaven was made of these things. He meant the sweet innocence of faith and belief that we lose as we get older. He didn’t mean only children will go to Heaven, but that we have to have the faith and innocence of a child to believe, by faith, what God has done and continues to do for us daily.

Ryan is interested in Star Wars characters now. He’s not allowed to see the movie until he’s 8, he told me. He’s been begging my husband for some little Star Wars characters so he can play with them. My husband bought some but then told him he’d spent enough money on them and wasn’t going to buy anymore. Ryan offered to break into his piggy bank for the money but my husband told him he’d better discuss that with his Mommy and Daddy.

That night I got a telephone call from Ryan asking if Dah was here. Dah wasn’t at home at the time, and I told him he wasn’t. Then came, “Will you get Dah to buy me some more Star Wars characters, or do you want me to do it?”

Needless to say, my heart melted. We got Dah on the cell phone and discussed it with him and came up with the following solution:

Ryan would walk our cocker, and not let her loose, and he would clean the toilet bowls (don’t ask me why, but he loves to clean toilet bowls), in return for Dah buying the Star Wars characters.

We set up chores for his sister also so she could have some extra spending money on a Safety Patrol trip she’ll be taking right after school gets out.

We keep the kids every other week-end at night and this is our week-end to have them.

When they came over Friday night Ryan went right to work walking the cocker. We decided to have him do the toilet bowls on Saturday. In his five year old innocence he couldn’t understand the concept of us lending him the money and his working it off. He told me if he didn’t have money he couldn’t pay, so after trying to explain it we decided to have him finish up his chores, I’d pay him $7 and he’d give that $7 to Dah as a partial payment for his Star Wars characters. We’ll keep handing the same $7 back and forth until his debt is cleared and then he can put the money in his “money jar”.

The point I am trying hard to make is that Ryan’s and Ashley’s parents have paid them an allowance but they have to do chores to get it and if they want something they have to pay for it themselves or have the money loaned to them and they have to pay it back.

They are training up their children in the way they should go, and they realize the value of money.

Our grandchildren in Texas also work for their allowances, which we deposit into a checking account for which they have the ATM card.

In addition, they tithe their allowance, which brings up another promise from God:

Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings.

Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the LORD of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it. Malachi 3:8-10

May we all be as innocent as children.

Hat tip: Hootsbuddy’s Place.

While out for a walk with my grandchildren it occurred to me that the little things in which they marvel become commonplace all too soon.

As we strolled we talked of why the grass is not so green in winter, why most flowers begin blooming in the Spring and how many worms a robin must eat in a day to survive (that I must admit, was a tough question). Did I know how beautiful a dandelion is or that a buttercup must be the tiniest flower ever? Why do some trees have leaves and others needles? How do you know if a caterpillar is still living in his cocoon? I delighted in being asked if the sun was older than me.

It has never ceased to amaze me how children universally relish the simple things in life. Curling up with a good book or building sand castles just close enough to the waters edge for them to be washed away. Colored chalk drawings on a driveway which bring tears when the rain washes a masterpiece away. Squeals of delight when bubbles appear from a bubble wand and excitement when that duck at the park wants their piece of that almost stale bread. The wonderment when a rainbow appears is something to behold and the care taken to produce that piece of art which hangs on the refrigerator is second to none.

I am blessed to have been surrounded by children most of my adult life and could think of nothing more fulfilling than their first recitation of the alphabet or repeating that often told nursery rhyme, no wait, maybe it was when they learned their numbers or colors or perhaps it has been just the open, uncluttered minds they exhibit.

Tomorrow perhaps I will return for a while to the stories of politics, prejudice and pundits but for today I would prefer to admire that bouquet of dandelions still thriving in an old jelly glass which were gathered with love.