Unexpected tears

I hesitated to write too much about the details of my personal life until I’ve had a chance to digest it. But I’ve been wanting to write about a new baby in my family for a few weeks now. The new baby is not mine, nor is she my grandchild. She happens to be my niece’s new baby girl. Her name is “Harper” after Harper Lee, the author of “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Her older sister’s middle name is “Scout”. I’m seeing a pattern here. . .only readers of “To Kill a Mockingbird” will recognize it.
Anyway, this is the same super-talented niece that does the sewing/craft blog called Madmim that I am linked to on the side bar. All the years growing up, her family said she was the niece that looked most like me. Her father is my brother, but her mother and I were look-alike friends since we were teenagers. I think she looks more like her Mom, but I’ll take the compliment anyway.
The point is that my mother called me one Saturday recently and told me that Miriam had her baby but the baby has a cleft palate. I laughed a little, but then I choked up and couldn’t speak for a few minutes.
I’ve been there. My first child and only daughter was born with both a cleft lip and palate. Why the tears? The tears were a strange mix of joy and pain and remembering some of the most powerful moments of my life. Little Harper will not remember the surgery. Cleft palate speech is mostly a thing of the past with soft palate lengthening surgery that is done when the palate is repaired.
She’ll get ear infections. She’ll be hard to feed for the first 6 months and maybe beyond. But babies have issues all the time and we just deal with them. Harper’s lip and gum ridge are not cleft, so her appearance will be normal. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
 I was shocked and surprised at first. But I had been to a lecture at BYU where a renowned plastic surgeon had shown before and after pictures of many surgeries, but most memorable were the cleft lip repair. They went from seeming mutilated to being sweet, normal looking little tykes in a few hours. So I knew in that first revealing moment after her birth that she would eventually look fine.
Once they wrapped her up and checked her heart carefully, (there are sometimes associated heart defects), they laid her in my arms. She was as alert as a four-year-old in a candy store. In that moment, I was filled with a powerful sense of who she was. “Trailing clouds of glory do they come, from heaven which is their home,” Wordsworth wrote and I was nearly overwhelmed to sense her great spirit and the wide-reaching mission our Heavenly Father had in store for her. I glimpsed His wisdom in giving her this defect to protect her from some temptations and pride. I felt a sense of warning, that I had better raise her to be full of faith and love and strength and confidence so that she could reach her potential. I would be held accountable. I’ve won a few awards in my life, but I’ve never come close to feeling the honor of being a mother, and in that moment, specifically her mother. My husband stood by, worried and tender and proud all at once too. I couldn’t explain what I felt but I hoped he had the same sensation that I did.
But I was a new mom, not quite 20 years old, with a huge unexpected challenge. I had just been through about 34 hours of labor, 15 of it hard. They left her in my arms as they wheeled me out. The nurse that had helped me through labor had tears in her eyes as she gave me a slight embrace and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
I started to cry. The moment of feeling the honor and the pain that nobody else would see her the way I did for quite a while, allowed me to glimpse a bit of the pain that she would suffer for this problem.
  Now, Trish is has become everything I hoped and saw she would. She has achieved honors, confidence, multiple talents, wit, etc. She is currently starting an ingenious Internet business that will be ideally suited to her degrees and interests.
So when “Mim’s” baby had a cleft palate, I relived the moment of Tricia’s birth, the sensation of seeing who she is, the pain and inconvenience of dealing with her condition. The mother-pain of seeing a beloved child suffer from teasing and ridicule and the joy of her triumphs. It’s all before Miriam and her family at least to some degree. I don’t know if Mim and Alan feel the honor yet. I don’t know if they anticipate the way the Lord will mold them and refine them through this issue. But I do know that our Heavenly Father expresses his love and trust by giving us challenges that will help us to be better. And He will bear them up and teach them what to do. He is faithful. I know they will listen.