Saturday, April 18, 2009

Happy Birthday

Today is my precious daughter's 27th birthday. She is truly a gift from God. I would love to tell you about this special lady. (It seems so weird that she is old enough to be a lady.)
Rebekah Elizabeth which means "bound to the promise of God" was the only child we would be blessed to have. At the age of three the doctor began to finally notice that there was something different about Bekah. (We had some idea, but didn't want to admit it.) She went through a lot of testing and it was determined that she had minimal organic brain disfunction. (Fancy words for "we don't want to label your child".) We were lead to believe that with the correct schooling and training our child would be "normal" by the age of 12. We worked and waited and worked and waited, but instead God used our daughter to teach us to love unconditionally and to accept our daughter for the special person that she was.
When Rebekah turned 16 we knew that things would never be "normal" and that our child was developing a mental illness. That was the saddest and scariest year of our lives. Finally she was put on medication that got things under control. And after much more testing, it was confirmed that our daughter was autistic. It was actually wonderful to know for sure what was causing Bekah to be the different, but wonderful person that she was.
These last few years have been the most enlightening of all. Rebekah is able to communicate more effectively who she is. She is intelligent, faithful, patriotic, godly, loyal, commited, athletic, inquisitive, thoughtful, serious and silly, strong, determined, focused and so much more.
The Lord has used this special person to teach me so many truths and blessings. I know that I would not be the person I am today, if it wasn't for the birth of my daughter 27 years ago.

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