Fearfully and Wonderfully Made? Or a Really Random Mix of Cells?

When my oldest son was born almost 20 years ago, we were shocked and grieved to learn that he had a chromosomal abnormality - Down syndrome.  After spending a few hours weeping and mourning, I was reminded of Psalm 139 and clung to the hope that my son was not a genetic accident as the geneticist had stated, but rather that he was lovingly designed by God with every piece of genetic material in his body, including that extra 21st chromosome.  That faith has brought me far in my acceptance of my son. 

For years, I imagined my son being the poster-child for the pro-life movement. I just knew that people would meet him and be moved to keep that baby they were considering aborting.  My son and our family and our faith were going to overcome and turn around that statistic that 90% of all pre-natal diagnoses of Down syndrome are aborted!  We had a purpose and a calling!  My son is articulate, outgoing, and he has a way of making people, who would otherwise shy away from the special needs population, find themselves feeling at ease and totally comfortable in a conversation with him. He is a whole lot more typical than he is different, and people recognize that and really gravitate toward his strengths as a person when they meet him.

And yet, he is different.  And life does not come easily to him.  I like to show the positive side of him, just like any mother, but let me also honestly assess life with an extra chromosome.  My son struggled to learn to walk and only mastered the skill at age 3.  He still cannot ride a 2-wheeled bike and probably never will, due to the instability in his core and in his hips.  He hears people use the term "retard" and "retarded" and knows that they are referring to people like him.  His speech, although usually understandable, is not totally clear, and he often has to repeat himself, even to me.  Sometimes he eventually gets frustrated and gives up, saying, "Nevermind," and stomping off.  He is smart enough to understand that when his friends graduated from high school, they went off to college, but he is still at home.  He knows that while he has lots of buddies at school, they don't think to naturally include him when they "hang out" after school or on weekends.  As a child, he was never spontaneously invited over for a play date.  He has watched one brother learn to drive, and knows that his next brother will learn soon, but knows that we do not believe that he is ready to learn that skill - and he may never be ready.  He might be able to live independently some day, but he will probably always require some supportive services or a kind of "house parent" to check on him and be sure he hasn't left a burner on or forgotten to lock his door.  So YES he is an encouragement to others, and YES I am thankful to be his mother, and YES I think he has amazing potential!!  But has life been easy for him??  No.

So as I am re-questioning everything I have believed in my adult life, I am rethinking my son and his extra chromosome.  What started as a question about the role of women in the Bible and therefore in church and home life has snowballed into questions about the Bible as a whole, and therefore about religion and even the origins of man.  Was my son created lovingly or is he a chance meeting of a certain sperm and a certain egg, one of which had sticky 21st chromosomes?  Is it loving to create a person who will always struggle physically and emotionally, knowing that there are so many things others can do that he cannot?  Is it loving to give him the limitations he has?  Or is there a higher power who set everything in motion, but then our bodies and the environment take over, and sometimes chromosomes just get sticky and produce a baby with extras, but nobody knows why?

For once in my adult life, I am not asking rhetorical questions, secretly knowing the answer.  I really don't know right now!  It doesn't make my son any less precious to me, and it doesn't make me love him any less.  Perhaps deep down it makes me respect God a bit more when I can look at my son and be sorry for the things he is not and cannot be, without having to sugar coat it as something Someone did to him on purpose.  Maybe it lets me appreciate my son as a fighter who has shown a strength that few people possess in overcoming obstacles and prejudices, when I can attribute his strengths to him and not refer them back to stuff God has done for him (after giving him the extra chromosome to make it harder in the first place).  And maybe I will come back around, full circle, and once again be saying thanks to a loving God for intentionally creating my son with an extra chromosome for His (God's) glory.  It could happen.....But for now, I am openly questioning the reasons behind extra chromosomes and messed-up genetic material and childbirths gone wrong, without any secret motive or hidden agenda or smug answers up my sleeve or in chapter 32 of book XYZ of the Bible.