My Little Mariposa

I cried when I read the article below. So many challenges in life call forth our capacity to love. What a wise mother to know that the few days and months she is given to love little pre-born Clara are a grace and a blessing. How many parents are out there who have come to this realization and love their little ones as long as God entrusts them to their loving arms? How many in fear run from the opportunity and rush their sick babies to an early grave?

See 99 Balloons for a photo-story about Elliot (who had trisomy 18) by his proud daddy. Eliot and Clara are a testimony to God's perfection even when it comes in a package the world doesn't recognize. Pray for families challenged by painful situations at the beginning, the middle, and the end of life, which is ultimately all of us. Suffering is a gift from God that is, sadly, often rejected.

Give us wisdom, Lord, to see You in our sufferings and see our sufferings as a gift. As Eliot's dad said, "An undervelopoed lung, a heart with a hole in it, and DNA that placed faulty information into each and every cell in your body could not stop God from revealing himself through a child who never uttered a word. Not a pulpit, not a slick presentation, not a best-selling book, but a six pound boy with trisomy 18. God found great pleasure to take a lowly thing in the eyes of the world and show truth." Amen Clara too will be a light to a dark world. Thank you, Christy, for sharing your little mariposa with the world.


Tuesday, January 27 2009 @ 08:34 PM PST

Mariposa is our home, but it also means little butterfly and that is what she is. A sweet butterfly that is in her cocoon, will come forth in brilliant color, bestow a butterfly kiss and then fly away as the spring time air calls her forth.

My Little Mariposa
By Christy Wall ('89)

The technician’s hand is poised over my swollen belly like a child standing with a net, waiting to catch the butterfly. The baby flutters and turns in the warm water, I can almost see her pretty face laughing. There is a wild trail of goo on my skin marking the dance of my daughter as she cavorts within my womb. I am breathless with her beauty.

My daughter. My daughter, Clara. It is music to my ears to say her name. She pauses for a moment and the technician starts measuring with clicks and whirls of the machine. I am so enamored with her pretty little round head that I do not see the horrendous cysts taking up the space where her brain ought to be. Her arms wave in front of the camera like a sweet greeting and my heart swells with love, but I do not see that the other one lies floating in sea, for it has no bones. The misty floaty thing, the technician says to me, as I admire her curved spine, is her bowels. I can not even process this information, for she has taken off again in a flight of fancy, swirling and leaping in joy. And finally, the technician mentions the heart that is doing nothing because it is broken. I look at the technician with wide eyes "But my heart is all she needs." (Read the rest...)