Me and the folks, July 1958
"From birth I have relied on You;You brought me forth from my mother's womb.I will ever praise You."
I know this scripture to be true. It's central to my faith. It's the reason that every day for me on this earth is good, exceptional, worth celebrating. Because for me, each new day I awake and live all day long in the knowledge that day is a blessing. In Vegas parlance, I always have the good feeling I'm playing with someone else's money.
People have often wondered about where my complete confidence comes from. It comes from one thing: I know that I am loved. And I have known this from as long ago as I can remember...maybe from birth. Let me tell you a story. My story.
Actually, it's a story about me I didn't know until I was getting ready to go off to college. I'm not certain why my mother waited until then to tell me. Maybe a it was her response to a mother's natural trepidation at having a child leave home. Or to leave certain things unsaid as I left to be on my own was taking a risk she wasn't willing to take. Or this was her acknowledgement that now I was an adult, someone she could talk to about intimate things, matters of the heart and of private family history. Or this was simply her way of saying one more time how much she loved me.
I don't know why that particular moment was picked, but it's a moment I will never forget.
I was sitting out on one of the big rocks that still sit in our front yard. We were out in the yard together on a sunny day. It was my last summer at home before going to Lipscomb. Was this the place she picked? The day she picked? Or did it just come up? I'm not sure how she began...but I remember what she said and how she looked at me when she said it.
She told me about about when she was pregnant with me and how much she and my dad looked forward to there first child. They were young and not yet a year into their marriage when they learned they were pregnant. And then she told me she contracted rubella (German measles) early in her pregnancy. She wasn't sure what all that might mean to the baby until her next visit with the doctor. He sat her and my father down and advised them there was a very high chance that there first child would be born with birth defects. To give you an idea, the March of Dimes website reports that a mother being infected with rubella in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy results in birth defects in up to 85 percent of the time. Before the rubella vaccine became available in 1969, there was an outbreak of German measles from 1964 to 1965 that resulted in more than 20,000 babies in the United States born with birth defects and another 10,000 miscarriages and stillbirths.
The doctor told my parents there were ways to take care of things. He set a date for them to come back and things would be arranged to avoid bringing the baby to term. This was in the days before abortion was legal, but there were doctors that would even back then who were prepared to help people in cases where the woman's health was threatened by a pregnancy or, in this case, where an extremely high probability existed a baby would be born with serious defects. One website reports that "babies infected with rubella during the first 20 weeks of pregnancy develop congenital rubella syndrome (CRS), in which they end up with a variety of problems, including deafness, blindness, heart defects, mental retardation, growth deficits, and a host of other disorders." That "host of other disorders" includes behavioral changes, Schizophrenia, diabetes, glaucoma, metabolic disorders, both hypo- and hyperthyroidism and certain physical birth defects.
Is living with any of that, all of that or some of that better than being dead? But then, you don't get to chose which of those things in the list you'll settle for and what degree of severity is acceptable.
I don't know how much of the details about all of the potential defects were given to my parents by the doctor then, or what details they allowed themselves to remember, but they knew their first born was in danger and the remedy the doctor was prescribing was termination of the pregnancy. My parents were young, just 18 and 19. They'd just finished high school. They didn't know what to do or even who they could talk to about abortion. Our traditional fundamental church family has never been known for a listening ear. I think, I pray, that's changing though. But back then in the 1950s, this was the sort of thing you didn't talk about. They were secrets you kept. So they kept it to themselves, worrying about the appointment day, dreading the decision they would have to make. How much did they really consider the doctor's remedy? Mom never said. I didn't ask.
When the day to see the doctor finally arrived, they were afraid. They were afraid that if they kept the appointment the doctor would influence them to do the unthinkable. They didn't want to have an abortion but they weren't so certain of their conviction that they were confident they could say no in the face of a wiser man's counsel. So what did they do? They left town on the day of the appointment, avoided having to make a decision. And never went back to that doctor again.
And now they waited. Waited and worried and were afraid and prayed. My mother worried so much that she actually weighted less at the time she was ready to deliver than she did before she was pregnant. And she wasn't very big before she got pregnant. They were far away from home on the day there first child's delivery. They were in Massachusetts. My father had joined the army and so they were stationed near Shirley, Mass. Dad says he had a hard time getting to the hospital when he learned on base that my mother was in labor and headed there. There'd been a train wreck in town that day. A number of roads were shut down and getting across town was tough going. I wonder what was in my young father's mind when he raced to get to the hospital? It was the Fourth of July and people were celebrating. There was a parade. But I imagine him somber...his joy subdued...this young soldier racing to get to the hospital to be with my mother. To be with her, no matter what happened.
I can't imagine what that day was like for these two kids having a kid. The worry, the fear, the dread magnified by the fact that this should be a moment of such hope and wonder and joy. Imagine how they felt with so many happy new parents in the maternity ward and them not knowing if they would be celebrating or coping that day.
My father says when I finally arrived that he must have counted my finger and toes a dozen times. A fact I played in my mind with the birth of each of my three children and on seeing them for the first time, finding myself focused on toes and fingers.
Dad says simply of my birth, "We checked you over real good." And to their relief, they couldn't find anything wrong. But imagined that relief was short lived. There was still plenty to worry about. I looked fine, physically. But things could develop or make themselves known later - heart problems, learning disabilities, severe mental difficulties.
I wonder what they thought about how undersized I was for most of my childhood? My extreme difficulty learning to read? Funny now that I write for a living and live to read. And why was it as a child when a truck drove by I fell down on the sidewalk and cried? Then they learned why my behavior was sometimes strange in the way I responded to loud noises. Howtheir hearts must have fell the day they learned I was totally deaf in my left ear...the first real tangible result of my prenatal infection with rubella. It was manageable. Nothing really. But would there be other things? Deeper difficulties still to be faced? Some future mental manifestation?
They didn't know then. I still don't know now. But what I do know is how good it is to be alive on this earth and how much I am loved. By parents who have poured so much into me. And a God who has blessed me with 50 years of a wonderful life and three wonderful children of my own.
"From birth I have relied on You; You brought me forth from my mother's womb. I will ever praise You."
So let me warn you. Don't ask me my opinion of abortion. I'm biased. And if you're one of my doctors, I apologize in advance that I might not have complete faith in what you tell me or what you advise.
But there is One in whom I do have faith. Lord knows.
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