Elijah's First Year

A year has come and gone from when we first met our baby boy, Elijah Lee. Words just can’t contain the tremendous mixture of joy and pain since that first glimpse! Bliss to see his sweet newborn face, and know that he was ours. Anguish when we learned that he’d been deprived of oxygen, and his brain was severely damaged. As he grew, we found out more about Elijah’s injury; a condition called spastic quadriplegia (a form of cerebral palsy). Elijah’s doctors have told us that he will probably never walk or talk, that he will have vision impairment and that his cognitive abilities will be limited. Dreams that we held for our first baby have had to be released, to exchange for the dreams God has for our son. We don’t know what those dreams and plans are, but we know that God will enable Elijah to fulfill them in the capacity he needs to.

Our hearts still ache on a daily basis; his first birthday was difficult for us. How can we celebrate the little guy’s birthday, we wondered, if we don’t even know what he likes? What fun are balloons if he can’t see them, or presents if he can’t play with them? So the morning of Elijah’s birthday brought tears for us. It seems like the past year has had more than its share of very dark days. Days filled with sleep deprivation, holding an extremely irritable child who needed constant motion, who has struggled each day to eat enough to stay alive, whose little body is always filled with tension. If we knew that things would get better, we could probably muster up enough strength from inside to continue on. Instead, the place we’re in now is just trusting…trusting that though we can’t see our way clear, God knows what’s up ahead. Trusting that what seems so very ugly to us now (an “accident”) is really just the beginning stages of a beautiful plan.

We did have a wonderful little birthday party, and I think God gave us just the day we needed! Elijah was happy and alert. He even kept his arm around the teddy bear his Great-Grandma Warner sent him. Our friend Alina, who is from Romania, and the two Filipina ladies who work for us (Ate Minda and Veronica) helped make his party fun. (Thank you to our friends who have sent cards or messages for his birthday!) Elijah was an adorable one-year-old and he got lots of kisses from all the girls at his party!