The gift of speech

Be grateful like blogger Kellie Dolin for your children's gift of speech, it truly is a gift. She shares on Faith & Family Live:

Sometimes I struggle with volume. “I’m standing right next to you,” I repeatedly tell one of my kids who seems to have one volume and that would be jarringly loud.
Sometimes it’s the sheer number of words. One of my kids is going to be a rapper one day. The words pour forth without pause.
But then I sit in church behind a woman whose son clearly struggles to have a voice, any voice.
Although I don’t always appreciate the message, I am so very blessed that he has a voice.

 I might be that mother in front of her in church. My ten year old daughter Christina has Down syndrome and hardly speaks. If she does, its in a whisper, or in her own particular sign language which I struggle to understand. We are doing all kinds of therapy, using Ipads and sign language, but her speech has diminished when most kids are adding to their vocabulary. It hurts me to the core.

 Recently I viewed a home video from when she was five, answering questions from daddy, with much more speech than she has now. This happens with Down syndrome, and though we have hope in many of the clinical studies being conducted now to improve cognition in those with Down syndrome to give her the connections she needs in her brain to process speech, until then,  each day is a struggle to communicate.

My constant prayer to Jesus is for Him to tell her "Ephphatha!"(be opened)
If that comes when we are both in His presence, so be it. It will be worth the wait.