Throughout our journey with Kennady, we have made several key decisions.

I remember like it was yesterday sitting in the doctor’s office while he explained Kennady’s condition for the first time.  Erica was 30 weeks pregnant and we had so many wonderful aspirations for our first baby as we entered that appointment. Now, 45 minutes later our world was caving in.  We were shell shocked.  At this point, he only believed her to have a condition called hydrocephalus (fluid on the brain).  This condition  causes a lot of developmental issues because there is so much pressure on the brain.

He ran through the list of possible blindness, no hearing, mental retardation,  no mobility, and so on. This list was long and daunting.  At one point, I literally pinched myself thinking I was dreaming.  I wanted to simply go outside, reenter the building and start the appointment all over again.  Surely, they had something wrong.  In the middle of my wondering, I heard the doctor say, there is one other option.

He said, “You can terminate the pregnancy.  It is not available in Texas this far along in the term, but you can go to Kansas or few other states.  They offer later term abortions.”

We had a choice.  We could end this pregnancy and the life of another person because she didn’t fit our expectations.  She would be a huge inconvenience.  She would be a financial drain.  Our perception of how things should be had been trashed.

It is very interesting to me that Americans have such a strong idea of how things should be and will go so far as to eliminate other people that don’t fit that definition.  Aborting our child would have let us move on and try again.  It is like a redo.  It is like folding the hand you have been dealt, but the fold involves the death of another person.

Erica and I felt as though we no choice.  We were pregnant.  We were going to let life and God have their way.  It seems very valiant at this point, however, to be honest we were hoping that there would be a miracle in the womb and she would be born normal. We were hoping for God to show up and show us that everything was ok.  He did show up.  It was simply in a completely different way that we had imagined.

Meaning showed up in different clothes than the American dream.  Beauty showed up in different skin than Hollywood’s gloss.

We are so thankful that we choose to meet our daughter.  Wow! How life is so different, rich, deep.  We are finding that this story impacts every other part of our life.  Life with our boys, life with Erica’s midwifery, life with our church.

Just because something looks impossible doesn’t mean that you are taking the wrong path and that God doesn’t have something better planned.

Romans 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,t for those who are called according to his purpose.