I have two children. William is 3 1/2 and Lora is 2. Will is obsessed with trains, especially Thomas the Tank Engine. He has a train table in his room and he is a true collector at 3...As soon as one of his grandparents buys him a train, he is looking for the next one that he wants. I don't know that he's just greedy, but a collector. Last night, Mark was trying to get him to go to bed and was singing to him in operetic form (we saw Les Miserables last week) telling him to go to bed, so Will started answering back in the same singing voice, it was hilarious.
Will does everything with this great sense of abandon...He jumps in with two feet in every area of his life. When he hugs me, he runs towards me full speed and slams into me with his arms flung open wide, sort of a tackle hug. When he kisses me, it is full on the lips or all over my face. I love that about him, as long as he's not mad...then he can be a little scary. But he is funny, smart and so cute.
Lora is 2, she is also amazing. She is funny, smart and adorable also. She happens to be blind. Well, visually impaired, I guess. According to the doctors, she should be blind, but functionally she is not. I don't really know how to explain it, maybe there is no explanation that is easily understood, she is a miracle. That was actually hard for me to say for awhile, I'm not sure why...we found out about her "condition" pretty early in her little life. It was pretty devastating at first. I struggled through the whole thing, questioning God's role in her life....I struggled with the whole idea of God causing/allowing these situations, how that all works together. I questioned whether He is involved in our lives at all. Its funny, I was talking to a friend about all of this last night, people would say to my husband and I the whole time how wonderfully we were doing, how we just handled the whole "thing so well". I guess we did. I'm sure it was God. Because most of the time I felt like I was just holding on by a thread, but really I wasn't... anyway, I did a lot of questioning...I still do. There are so many things about God that I don't understand.
I couldn't accept that God had any part in her blindness, and I still don't know that I believe that He did. BUT, now that she is two and is this brilliant, beautiful little girl who is defying everything that any doctor that we see says she should be able to do...I don't know how to explain it. She sees color...she doesn't have the part of her eye that should enable her to see color...she recognizes pictures in books...she has almost no optic nerve or retina...her doctor is baffled her teacher is amazed. So, I want to give God glory for that - and rightly so, I think. But, my theological dilema is that I removed God from her creation, at least for creating her imperfections, but then I want to add Him back in when things are better than we expected? Can I do that? I mean, I guess I can, but should I? I believe that He has interviened in her life, maybe that is just a good place to leave things.
But to add to the confusion, sometimes I wonder if she were fully sighted, would she be a different little girl? I wonder if she were fully sighted, would her personality be different...if things came easier to her, would she have the determination that I see in her...I know that I am probably overthinking this, but I do think about it. Anyone have any thoughts?
