Making Wishes Become Dreams

As I was watching “A Christmas Carol” over the holidays, I thought about our family’s Christmases past, present and future. I remember so clearly the year when my wish was for our daughter, Carly, to learn to walk. She had just turned two that October, and transitioned from her NG tube feedings to regular food. My wish came true, as Carly began walking Christmas Eve! The year previous to that, I had been wishing for a little more time to pass before she needed to have her 2^nd heart surgery, and that wish also came true! However, the year before that, when Carly was just a few months old, I was still struggling with the changes and strangeness of having a child with a disability, and it was too hard to wish for anything! At the time, I couldn’t imagine anything to even hope for! It would have been great to have the “Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come” to whisk me away and show me how things might be! At the time, I could not have imagined, let alone wished for, the kind of life that Carly leads now! Like many families, the first few years of Carly’s life was consumed with health issues and trying to sort out the whole disability thing and how it might affect all of our futures. However, we were determined not to let it be the defining factor in who we were. It took time and a lot of thought and prayer to get things into a proper balance for us all! The most important lessons learned? That Carly is whole and wonderful “as is”. She didn’t need to be fixed. And it was life changing when we stopped seeing her in terms of what she lacked–we all need help and support in different areas of our lives, but do not let it determine who we are! We concentrated on what she needed to lead a life of quality and meaning –as we did with all our children.  And that quality and meaning of life is different for everyone on this planet. Given the opportunity to dream and grow, Carly would decide what that meant to her–we just had to make sure that we, and others, wouldn’t hold her back! Keeping those things in mind surely changed the shadows of the past into the1 present framework of every day opportunities and a jumping off point for future possibilities. Along the way we have been joined and encouraged by many other families on the same journey. There are educators and professionals who challenged us and celebrated with us and opened our eyes to what could be. And Carly has been a blessing and a catalyst for change to many others who know her, but most significantly, for her own family, as together we have defined and redefined the meaning of things like “love” “sacrifice” “quality of life” “disabled” and “normal” (“Normal” really is just a setting on washing machines) Today, Carly has an active life, living with girlfriends in a very nice home, assisted by staff from Genesis Development. She is active in church, takes piano lessons, tears up the gym on Zumba nights, and loves her time at The Dance Place through VSA. She has a job through Genesis that she is proud of, and considers her work very satisfying. She is saving her money because she has a dream to marry her long time sweetheart and for them to have a place of their own. She was excited to be a part of the “i have a voice” gallery that opened this last fall, and this spring, she is going to be a participant in the “Miss Amazing” Pageant. And my daughter is amazing-living so fully and so independently–it was a wish she had long before I ever did! And she is making her own wishes come true!