Faces of Angels are Disappearing

A news item mentioned that probably 96 or 97 per cent of Down's Syndrome babies are aborted before they see the light of day.  This in response to Sarah Palin's book where she commented that for her, this was not an option when she learned her little son was Down's.

Regardless of whatever else you might think of her, this has got to be a check in her "plus" column.  Life matters.  

I once bought some calendars for various people who I knew would love them because they featured children with Down's Syndrome.  They were beautiful.  I don't remember the name of the company who printed them, it was something like "Angel Faces", "Beautiful Faces" or something like that but they were wonderful.

I am not living in a dreamworld.  I know Down's children are difficult.  I have five close friends who have them in their families.  But each of them, though their life's work has become that child almost exclusively, would do nothing  to change their lives.  I spoke with one of those friends, Bill Nicholson, the other night about this very subject.  He was incredulous about such shocking statistics and was heartbroken to think of life without his William, His beautiful namesake.  The world would be a much poorer place without William.

Every time I see William, he reminds me of how much he misses me and Carl at church.  He talks about how much he hopes we come to visit his ward.  I tell him how much I want to come and see him bear his testimony again and how often I think of him and how much I love him.  This is all so true.

One day when my son Brad was about twelve, he asked me if I thought it would be okay to pray for a Down's child.  That's the kind of sweet child Brad was.  I said that I thought that it was.  I still think that it would be something okay to pray for.  I would just be afraid to pray for it myself because I don't know if I'm that strong.

I also think that it is so sad that lives, in a desperate attempt to avoid trouble and difficulty, take such a horrifying step as abortion, without realizing that they are denying themselves the sweetest thing they could ever know.

Spiders and Guilt - They Can Relate

I must have been four years old because we were living at 938 Kensington Avenue in Salt Lake City when I remember being in the backyard looking at my mother's flowers.  She always had a great flower garden.  This particular day, there was a big spider web bridging two rows of tall zinnia's with a big, fat yellow and black spider squatting right in the middle.

Then the tension began when mother came out into the garden.  She approached the spider.  I felt I should warn her but something stopped me.  I think I really was afraid of how my voice would sound as I shouted the alarm.  What if I startled her so that she fell right into the spider?  I sat in fear watching.

She came to the spider, felt the web, and started back a little saying something like "whoops!"  I don't think she was even afraid of that spider.

But it was years before I didn't feel guilty when I thought of the incident.  I felt I had somehow let her down by not warning her.  Silly as it sounds, the feeling really seemed legitimate for years.  It might even now a little.

Because of that, I think even today that little kids feel the emotions like guilt, embarrassment, shame, inadequacy and the like just like adults even when they're very small.  Do you remember anything similar?