Becoming Special

When I was around 28 or 29 weeks pregnant, I was driving to work one day and doing my typical Tevye-type praying (conversing with God while doing daily things).  Heavy on my mind was how on earth I was going to be able to be a special needs mom, that is, actually do the amazing things special needs moms do.

I remember thinking that my current quandary was not very different from the beginning of my mission when I wondered how on earth it was that one becomes a missionary - that is, suddenly gains the ability to do what was required and do it well.

So, I prayed.  I prayed basically for the sun, moon, and sky: specifically for the sum characteristics that make special needs moms "special" - that make them able to endure what they do, advocate the way they do, know what they do, and be what they need to be, all on behalf of their special child.

And then, I laughed at myself as the thought bounced back that I was asking the impossible.  This voice went on to school me on how exactly this special thing works.  Those special needs moms I was envisioning in my head did not get that way over night!  The sum of those characteristics that I, in my angst to be what I will need to be for my daughter, wanted immediately - those are cumulative.  They are hard-won badges of courage, earned in the trenches, day by day and year by year.

How silly of me to presume to want them before I had even begun!

And now that I have begun - and not even truly in earnest, because it's not until next week that I add four additional weekly appointments to attend - I feel a little differently about becoming special.

What I had an inkling of at 29 weeks, I am just beginning to understand more fully now.  There is nothing "special" about a special needs mom, except that she is the mother of her child(ren).  I do not feel "special" for what I do.  I feel like any other reasonably good mother (or father) would do for their child what I do for mine.

If there is anything exceptional or special about me, it's solely that I get to be the mother of my children.  They are what makes me "special".  They are not the lucky ones, I am.  And how very very lucky indeed. 

~Nichole