When I Find a Picture I Didn't Know I Had....It Is Truly a Gift!

I was looking through pictures and found this one that Larry took the day we took Lynda to Millcreek in September, 1981.

I was 29 and Lynda was 10.  Mother had made her jumpsuit and I had appliqued it to match a short one that Kevin had.  We had a family picture made with them both wearing them a week or so earlier.  It was a precious picture with Lynda draping her arm around her Daddy's neck (and of course covering up the applique)  LOL

I wasn't happy to be leaving Lynda for respite but I had researched, visited and left books and videos about Lynda and really felt we were leaving her much like parents leave children for sleep over camp.  It was temporary.  They were qualified (or so I thought).  You can tell by the smile and expression on my face that I thought things were going to be good.  I don't hide my feelings well and I would have been much less relaxed if I had had any reservations about the quality of the program at Millcreek.

Lynda was healthy.  She had a perfect little body and beautiful, think blond hair.  It was the hardest thing we had ever done to leave her there when she had only slept away from us one night at this point  and that was when Kevin was born.  The normalcy of our family is what haunts me today and I suppose always will to some extent.  We looked like a typical family in the pictures. We had no way of knowing that the difficulties we were facing (the exhaustion, the concern about Kevin) that led us to respite would pale in comparison to what our lives would be like for the coming years after Lynda's stroke.  I look now at the pictures and as I've said in earlier blogs I want to demand a "redo".  I want to scream at the players in the movie and tell them "Don't do it!"  But, of course I can't so I have to dig deeper into my memory of what brought us to this place and time in our lives.  I have to keep writing it in blogs so that eventually my mind will absorb it and process it.  My brain knows that it is satan that continues to bring these feelings of guilt and sadness out when I remember this fork in our life's journey.  My heart knows that we made the right decision for the information we had been given and that it should not have happened. 

 When I look at these pictures I am reminded of one of the most horrible times in our lives that I believe was engineered and masterminded by satan because I had such trust in God to take care of Lynda and that He would protect her from any harm.  There was a time that I questioned why God had allowed satan to wreck such havoc in our lives and at the expense of a child with multiple disabilities already.  I questioned where God was when Lynda needed him.  I came to realize that God was always there just as He was there when His son was nailed to the cross for my sins. 

I guess the greatest thing for me as Lynda's mother is knowing that satan can no longer harm Lynda.  She is in heaven and never again will I have to worry that she will experience satan's plans to kill, steal and destroy.  John 10:10  He has done all of these things and Lynda still emerged victorious and perfect in Christ.  It is beyond my comprehension how an angel could live in heaven with God and be stupid enough to think he could be greater than God himself.  Yet we know that is just what satan did. 

Rejoice in the Lord and again I say REJOICE!  We serve a Mighty God!  King of Kings.  Lord of Lords!  Not because of anything we have done but because of all that He has done for us!