finished another one

I just finished reading Expecting Adam by Martha Beck. What a book! There's a lot in the book that is absolutely maddening (all the pro-choice philosophy and the Harvard "intellect and education are the most important things" philosophy) and some things that make me wonder about the author's spiritual well-being (she received a lot of supernatural help while she was expecting Adam -- angels or demons? I don't know. I want to believe that God and His angels were helping her and drawing her to Him, but I'm not sure.) I also got a little frown every time she called Adam her "retarded child." I don't like that word at all, even though people with Down syndrome are mentally retarded. That word has just always been used as a put-down, and now it's just a VERY offensive word to me! But there is more in the book that is so familiar to me (the fear for my sweet child, the anger at the world's meanness at times, the unbelievably intense love for someone that many people would have killed without even a twinge of guilt). I think this woman had a harder time than I've had dealing with other people. She seems to have implied that people did not accept her child with Down syndrome and that she felt many people's negative responses to him. I've never once encountered that since I had Seth. Not one time has anyone made me think that they looked down on Seth or me or that they had any kind of negative feeling toward him. Everyone that has ever seen Seth seems to have been drawn to him and to have loved him.












Here are my two favorite quotes from this book, sentences that really sum up the meaning of the book and the lesson that surely all parents of children like Seth learn quickly:
1. "I have discovered that many of the things I thought were priceless are as cheap as costume jewelry, and much of what I labeled worthless was, all the time, filled with the kind of beauty that directly nourishes my soul."
2. "He [Adam, her son with Down syndrome] has taught me to look at things in themselves, not at the value a brutal and often senseless world assigns to them."