I was twenty-two when Mom and Dad announced they were expecting my eighth sibling.  It was a bit of a surprise because they were in their late forties and there hadn't been a new baby for several years - quite a long gap after the fairly regular two-year spacing between the rest of us.  We were all thrilled.  The idea of having one more new baby around to cuddle and enjoy was exciting, especially given we'd started to think there might not be anymore and none of us appeared to have any marriage prospects on the horizon.

Then, to up the excitement another notch, at Mom's 20-week checkup she measured quite large and the nurse picked up two heartbeats in distinctly separate places.  I suspect most big families have a secret hope of gaining a set of twins somewhere along the way and we were no exception. 

Mom had always skipped having ultrasounds with the other babies because my third sister was born with such serious genetic complications that she died three months after birth.  Mom's greatest fear had always been of an ultrasound revealing her baby to be most likely to die at birth: because then she'd have to wake up every morning knowing today the baby was alive and moving, but once he or she was born we wouldn't have them anymore.  With the double heartbeats, though, she was so excited she and Dad decided to go for an ultrasound just to see if she really was carrying more than one baby.

It was immediately apparent there was only one baby.  It was also immediately apparent to the ultrasound tech that something was seriously wrong.  The baby's ventricles (normally small kidney-shaped dark spaces in the center of the brain on a baby that size) were so enlarged they were taking up his whole skull.  In fact, there was no evidence that most of his brain was even there because the swollen entricles were obscuring everything.  Something also appeared wrong with his heart and right kidney, suggesting an overall genetic malfunction - most likely Down's Syndrome but possible something else even more serious.  The doctor called in to consult with my parents about the results said he had no idea what the findings were going to mean in the long term, but from what he could see things looked very bad.  If the 20-week-old baby survived to birth, it was quite possible he would be born seriously affected by the pressure on his developing brain even if he had no other syndromes to account for the anomalies.

We all knew then why finding out something was wrong had always been Mom's biggest concern.  It was beyond sobering to wait for the new baby not knowing if we'd be able to keep him or not.

This is always the case, of course, but most times we don't have this much time to think about it.  We prayed for the baby to be born whole and healthy, but I was shocked at my own response and at how little I actually trusted God to make things all right.  Sure, he could fix everything, I reasoned.  But he can always fix everything and there are lots of babies born all the time with terrible things wrong with them.  He might decide not to fix this baby...and how could that be good?

From the standpoint of a sibling, the hardest thing about waiting the remaining six months was the thought that the baby might be born and we'd never get to hold him (I was never able to hold my sister because her bones were so fragile it was too easy for me to break them).  The other hardest thing was to trust that no matter what happened, God was still good.  He'd always been good and he always would be good no matter what happened.  We all had to trust that.

When Jonathan was born, we saw immediately - before the doctors even came to carefully inform my parents - that he was a Down's baby.  But he was born with a normal-sized head and a working brain and was breathing on his own, his little heart beating away just like it was supposed to.  He had some trouble - his intestines had a section that wasn't working right and had to be worked on surgically right away - but the great fear of never being able to bring him home was taken away.  We brought this baby home.  I was so relieved that when I was spending the first day in the ICU with him (Mom was still pretty well knocked out by the C-section) the nurse was trying her best to bring home to me the seriousness of the fact he had Down's.  She thought we were all in denial because we were so happy about him.  The truth was we were practically giddy because he wasn't going to die!  God had given us such a great gift!

God was good to us.  The truth is, he was good to us whether Jonathan lived or died.  But God let us bring him home and anything else we had to deal with was just fine, because we knew we'd been given a great gift.

People call babies like Jonathan "special", which always bugged me even before we had someone like him in our family.  All babies are special and my impression was people said things like that because they were really thinking, "Well, we don't want to be insensitive and say we're really glad OUR baby is just fine!"  The truth is, they don't know what to say and don't want to be hurtful - in the same way they'll say a somewhat homely girl has beautiful hands or a nice personality.  We didn't know what to expect either, but we knew whatever happened we'd tackle it as it came.  You know what?  Life is just as good now as it was before Jonathan was born - in fact, it's better.  Every child born in our family has made it better and he's no exception.  All of us were special in our way and Jonathan's the same way.

And all the serious predictions about how badly he was going to be affected from that water on his brain?  Well, he IS four years old and not really talking yet.  But he's learned to walk, he runs around busily every day doling out hugs, begging people to read to him, helping unload the dishwasher, standing at the bottom of the stairs hollering "LEAH!" to get her up in the morning, rubbing people's heads if he thinks they're sad, and generally being another sweetheart of a kid providing endless joy and amusement  to the rest of us.   Our life doesn't revolve around his "problems": it revolves around the same old wonderful mundane things it always has. So all in all, the dire predictions were wrong: - predictions upon which, we've since learned, a staggering percentage of parents in the same situation base their decision to "terminate" the life of their baby in the expectation that neither they nor their child will have a life worth living if he's born.  Every time I hear those statistics I'm very sad because so many people have lost the chance to get to know and love their own Jonathan.

We've heard stories where people were told their baby had a terrible problem and the baby was born with nothing at all wrong, proving the power of God and his faithfulness.  Our story isn't the same...but it is.  Our baby was born with a problem, but God is still just as good as he is when the baby is born with nothing at all wrong.  Not only that, a great fear I might have inherited has gone away.  Because I've learned  in the most solid way possible that you can go a long time knowing the baby has a problem and then have the baby with a problem...and life will still be wonderful.  Because God is always good.  And I love Jonathan possibly even more fiercely and deeply than I love any of my other brothers and sisters.  His life and the circumstances surrounding his birth catapulted me personally into a belief and trust in God that was truly mine: and what can give a life more significance than that?

Which is perhaps why it's fitting to have named him Jonathan Trust.  "God has given Trust".