Brown and Pink Polka Dots : That was refreshing

Tonight we were at dinner at a local restaurant with Brent's parents when an older gentleman came up to the table. He said he had noticed the girls medical equipment and wanted to know what was going on.

I don't mind questions in public but at the same time we have had so many weird, strange or hurtful conversations over the years while in public that I am a bit guarded. I need to feel out the conversation a bit because there are times where I need to step in before someone says something hurtful. I wish it wasn't this way but it is (I mean I seriously have had a person in public ask me if I knew before Jillian was born so I could choose if I was going to continue the pregnancy and people ask me if I knew how much she would cost tax payers/insurance and people ask me what I did wrong for the girls to have medical needs... if you had all of those conversations you would likely feel cautious too but I always try to be respectful until I can feel how this conversation might be going)

So he asked what is going on with the girls and I said that they are undiagnosed. We chatted a little bit and then he asked if he could pray for the girls and here is where I felt uneasy again...

not because I don't believe in prayer... I do
not because I don't want people praying from my kids... tons of people do
not because I am afraid of praying in public... I have done it tons of times

But I spent at least a year really struggling about how people pray for my kids and worrying about it lining up with what we are praying. I learned a lot over that year and do not have that fear anymore, however after past prayers some people have offered with my kids there (that I needed to asked questions from my kids about later) I was nervous but I said ok.

Honestly it was the kindest prayer. He prayed for comfort for us and for God to show us His love every step of our journey and for clarity. These are many of our same prayers for our kids. Our prayer for our girls since we knew we were pregnant with Jillian was that God would use them to show the world His love. When that is your focus you can see how God is using so many things. I do not believe that God causes bad things to happen.. I do believe we live in a fallen world that the devil is very involved in... but I believe in a God who redeems. I also right now am really wrestling with feeling about what medical things need fixing... today is world Down Syndrome day and I am very lucky to get to know several kiddos with Down Syndrome but when I look at these kids I see all the amazing things about them... but I also see how the world only sees things that need to be "fixed" and often people see that with my kids too... but what needs to be fixed... what just makes us uncomfortable because it is not "normal"... what really is a problem... where do we need to make medical advancements... but where do we need to become a more inclusive world... I think maybe we need to be having these conversations more instead I feel like the only conversation that happens is about making everyone look the same... these are really complex conversation and I bet you that each person with a different medical need is going to have different opinions and guess what... that is ok. We need to be asking individuals how we can love them... there is no uniform answer here and there is beauty in that.

When we were at Disney at Christmas time we were waiting someplace and a little girl noticed Jilli. He asked his mom what was wrong with Jilli and she answered that Jilli is sick... Jilli overheard this conversation an piped in that she is not sick, she feels fine. After Jilli was really confused why that mommy would say she is sick when she is not sick... she was not in the hospital, her pulse ox was fine, and she didn't have a runny nose or cough. In her mind there is nothing sick about her at that moment. She will tell you that she has a muscle disorder that makes her body feel tired sometimes but she sure does not see herself as broken or sick most of the time... she does when she has a cold or a stomach bug just like any other kid but to her she is not sick most of the time.

And sometimes I worry when people stop and pray for us out in public that they do not understand that and then in that misunderstanding they use words that make my child very confused so I feel like I live at the tension of being ok with people praying for us in public and worried about their words being harmful for my child to hear. Its a hard tension to live in.

I do not have a perfect social fix for this...
And other families might feel differently then we do about this...

But here are my things to ponder for you...

Before you ask to pray for a family talk to them first and get a feel for their heart
Praying for God to show His love in a situation is always a good thing
Be kind with your words
Remember these are real people with a real journey and you might be the only person connected to Jesus that they say yes to praying with... however don't use that as a reason to skimp on love... Jesus did so much with love but often we get hung up like the pharisees and try to get more complicated and showy then love.

I am a Christian and I carry a lot of baggage around about this... think of someone who doesn't have a relationship with Jesus and how much more baggage they might have in this situation... do not add to the baggage!!!

I am not telling you to never pray with people in public... that is not it at all... what I am asking you to ponder is how sometimes Christains make these prayers all about them (I am not saying that their heart is in a bad place) but that it is all about the evangelical mindset of winning people that we often forget to be with people and instead see people as check boxes and praying with people in public like earning stickers for your good job chart... and sometimes that show does a lot of harm.

I honestly was starting to wonder if you could authentically pray for someone in public without it leaving some yuckness... tonight gives me hope that there really is a way... we might just need to learn some new things