Turning 19...

The Martindale daughters all have birthdays within two days of each other. Hope and McKenna were born on October 1st, just two years apart. Maisy was born on the 29th of September. McKenna began it all in many ways..on the day that we sat in a obstetricians office trying to comprehend the news that our daughter had not developed inutero the way most babies do...her skull was not formed correctly and the lining of her brain had pushed out of the opening in her skull. She will not survive, they said. And if she did, she would have no quality of life.

And, in the Martindale household, those are fighting words. No quality of life? Who gets to decide that? Who has the right to say that a child with a disability can not bring blessing to this world and be blesssed beyond what we could ever imagine? How arrogant it is to believe that only those who are born without a disability can find true meaning in life...We had a decision to make, they said. And we chose life.

And now she is 19 years old. No longer a child...but still so much a child. She is staying with me at the apartment with Elijah for a few days.  How ironic it has been to think that we are sorrounded in the college apartments with lots of 19 year olds. 19 year olds who were born the same year as McKenna...they started kindergarten with her and graduated from high school alongside of her..But they grew up. McKenna did not in so many ways. It hurts.  My heart aches as I see other kids her age moving on as they enter a new phase of life. It's hard to think of what might have been if God had decided to make her like the other girls. She would have been amazing that is for sure. I just know it. But, I will never know...I just know who she has become just the way she is...

She was born with a disability. Often, she is messy, awkward, and intense. She is completely dependent on her parents and is, in so many ways, more like a 5 year old than a 19 year old. She wears her heart on her sleeve...and is not inhibited when she says or does much of anything. She will tell you how she is feeling..without any attempt to make herself sound smart or better than God made her to be. She is kind and sensitive..and has a great sense of humor..

She is purely who God made her to be...

...and that is a refreshing trait to share with the world. She loves deeply...lives in the moment...

and has taught us so much about patience, priorities and about quality of life.

Quality of life is not measured by intelligence or productivity or about success. It is measured by the moments we spend living as God intended us to live. Quality of life is about who we live for, not who we are. And it does not depend on our IQ or ability to contribute to society...

...although I know that McKenna has so much to contribute to this world while she is here...she slows people down, forces them to listen and allows them to see the pure joy of living. She has quality of life. So, I will allow myself to grieve for a moment on her 19th birthday, and then I will look to the lessons that God has taught us through her disability...she opened up a world to us that we may never have known...our family has expanded to include a whole world of those effected by disability..and we have been blessed in ways we never would have expected on that day in the obsetrictions office 19 years ago...

..and we are forever grateful that we have been blessed to share our lives with her...