If you are highly religious, this might offend you but it’s not meant to.  I don’t judge your beliefs, please don’t judge mine!

………

I believe, in something or someone…..

I believe that when I need a kick in the ass , I can close my eyes and ask whomever is listening to help me.

I believe that Adrien, Fred, my grand parents and some other family members and friends are keeping watch for us.

I believe that when I get in a plane, I can ask every single Gods from every single religion and some that probably don’t even have a known religion to get me there and back safely!

I believe we are not alone!

I have values which I cherish.  Do I need to go to church to show others that I do?  No!

When Emily was born, I wanted her to be christened because that’s what we do in our family.  Even before knowing that she would be facing an extremely challenging life, we had agreed that her christening would be the only religious ritual we would put her through until she could decide for herself…

When we met with the priest in the town where we lived at the time, Jon was really blunt and told the priest that we had never been in his church and would probably never return….  Not a good start to a conversation regarding our wedding and Emily’s christening…

Yes, we had Emily before being married!  That’s how we do it in my world!  In my world we don’t get married, we live together and raise a family without marrying.  Marrying wasn’t important to me, it was important for Jon and his family so I went with it!  Jon told me that a visit to the town hall would be sufficient so I told him that if I was going to get married, I was getting the white dress and it would be at the church!

I won!!!! 🙂 And my new husband looked really good in a tuxedo!

Surprisingly, our meeting with the priest that day went well.  Jon did is little speech and than the priest asked us questions…

Did we take care of our daughter’s needs?  Of course we did!

If a friend needed a roof for awhile, would we help?  Of course we would, just ask Julie, Anick or Mike (and his boys)….  we’ve opened our house to friends on multiple occasions.

And so on!  That priest was cool, he understood us and knew that we were good people, just not the kind that goes to church on a weekly basis…

Where am I going with that?

Fast forward several months, Emily has been diagnosed and I am spending a lot of time on the internet.  I found 2 support group for the families with children that has the cri du chat syndrome.  One in the UK and one in the USA.  No facebook at that time, we exchanged email addresses and communicated via message board and email only.

Suddenly my mailbox was full of “God” emails……

I HATE GOD emails!

Here we go, I wrote it…… for the first time!  If you sent me “God” emails, please note that they were deleted.

I was learning to live with Emily’s diagnosis, adjusting to our new reality, spending too much time at the hospital and in therapy, I was learning who my real friends were and struggling with all of this!

The fact that some people believed that God gave me a severely handicapped child was appalling to me.  The fact that God would think that I was so good that I should be the mom of a special need kid just sounded wrong.  The fact that God decided I could do this made no sense….  Why in the name of whomever would my daughter, husband and I deserved this new life with all the challenges that were coming with it???  If God really had anything to do with this, God was out of my life!!!

Harsh?  Maybe but although well intended, those God emails were hurtful!  Extremely hurtful and I couldn’t take it anymore.  I removed families from my email list, block some senders and forwarded all emails referencing God to my junk mail folder…. It didn’t feel right but it had to be done.

During that difficult time, we were invited to a christening at the church where we got married, the priest who married us was performing the christening…..  I didn’t really want to go, God and I were not on speaking terms at the time but my mom raised me well and our friends invited us so we went.

Before the ceremony, I had a chat with the priest….

I told him about Emily’s diagnosis and asked him if God had anything to do with it?  He smiled and told me that God had nothing to do with the fact that Emily was missing a piece of chromosome…..  he told me that God was busy with other things and didn’t decide to send a special need kid to this family or that family.  He told me that God could help me get through it, he could give me courage or strength when I needed it but that was it.

God didn’t pick me to be the mom of a special need kid and he didn’t decide that Emily would be struggling forever.

Thank god for that!

Who would want to worship a God who would do that anyway?  Certainly not me!

His simple answer worked for me!  I didn’t start going to church after that but I was in peace with the fact that all those God emails were going to my junk email folder 🙂  And just so you know, they still do!