Ups and Downs

My three year old, Little H, is stuck in the middle and with the barrage of appointments that his younger sister has and the excitment that JK has brought for his older brother, he may have drawn the short stick this year. Fortunately, he doesn't realize it and infact he is a really happy kid. To my husbands chagrin, I chose Little H to spend time with me helping me put on my make-up this morning. I thought it would give me a few minutes alone with him and spare the impending fight with his brother over Lego. He is really into painting and crafts these days, so I let him paint on my cover-up and then grab the blush brush and paint on my blush. I even wore eye shadow, which was not planned, just to give him another canvas. As this portioned finished, I asked him to tell his father that I was about 5 minutes away from departure. On his way out of the bathroom door, he stopped and asked me to pause for a minute so that he would not miss any of my face painting while he ran my errand.
It's easy to be full of joy in these moments.
It's was a little tougher later in the day. After 8 months of looking, I finally found a support group on facebook for Mosaic Trisomy 8. I was actually really excited to find a group. However, as I scrolled through pictures and came face to face with a similar looking child, I was flooded with an ill feeling. I want her to look like me or her brothers, I don't want to look into her beautiful face and have to think about a disorder that I do not understand. I want to claim back her nose as her unique and perfect nose, not another trait of this rare disease. This is when the choosing joy become a little more tricky. Joy doesn't bubble out naturally in this scenario, it is a choice to trust God and His will for Little M's life and my own. As I sit and type at 1 in the morning, I realize that I have not perfected this. My heart still wrestles with this choice, some days more than others. However, I know that when I surrender my fears and hurts, again, I will come back to the place of peace and joy and get a few hours of sleep.