Awakening

September 10, 2009

As I prepared for bed, a realization set strongly upon me. I sat down at the computer to try to put this Awakening into words, trying to give enough background for the epiphany to make sense. I don't know that I succeeded, but I trust you'll understand.

For months, this post has sat unpublished. Mostly because it's personal. But for whatever reason, while inhaling a nervous breath, I am sharing it today.


My dear Cledi. My perfect Cledi.

We talk about Cledi being our "g-tube", or feeding tube. We joke that if the Lord needs to give us any "nutrition" or guidance in our lives, He can do it easily through Cledi. If we need humbled, Cledi has a few bad nights. If we need to remember who's in charge, Cledi baffles us with questions we can't answer, and we are forced to go to Him.

For background's sake, the Lord has given us profound impressions that have taught us her role in our family. Most importantly, Cledi chose to come to Earth in this body. In her current state, she gains the blessings of obtaining a physical body, but is exempt from the diverse temptations of the Adversary. She is perfect in all of the ways that count and will return to live with our Heavenly Father when she passes beyond this life. Secondly, Cledi was a gift to me. She was not the gift that I was expecting, but she was a specific gift to her mother. And, thirdly, we have felt strongly that Cledi's siblings will need her influence as well.

Even understanding all of these things about our precious daughter, I have not focused nearly enough on what Cledi is teaching me. More often, I find myself feeling confined to a life that I didn't choose, and trying to figure out a way to get back on track with the life I was trying for.

What a selfish fool I have been.

As I was watching a video tonight of my first few moments with Cledi hours after her birth, I listened to that naive me say, "You know you put up a quite fight from the inside, darling!"

I know what I was thinking. I was thinking that Cledi didn't want to come out. I was in labor a long time, but was not progressing enough to where I could get an epidural (likely due to the degree that she was entangled in the cord)... and the contractions were unrelenting and unsuccessful for most of the night. At last, Cledi quickly descended, and there was no time for the anticipated epidural. It had been one of the longest and most difficult nights of my life, and I was selfishly thinking of my own pain during the labor process.

But there was much more truth in my words than I ever could have known. Cledi, we came to understand years later, did not have one single event that deprived her brain of oxygen. She had several prolonged periods of partial oxygen deprivation during that long night, and yet she fought so hard to survive it. She put up more than "quite the fight from the inside." She fought and struggled to come to this earth and receive her body. Even a body that would give her daily pain and would not allow her to sleep restfully at night.

I ask myself: How is it that I can find so many reasons to complain about and rue this earthly life that I struggle and fumble through, when she fought so hard to obtain it?

I have thought many times about meeting Cledi in the hereafter, and seeing her with her perfect and resurrected body. I think about getting to know her, asking her questions, and sharing a big hug and tears. For some reason, as I am caring for her needs day in and day out, I often imagine her thanking me some day for diligently meeting her needs and for sacrificing the life that I envisioned, from small things like finishing my MBA to having a bigger family. I guess imagining such a time helps me treat her with the love, care, and attention that she deserves.

How naive. How blind.

It is I, and only I, that will, with tear-streaked eyes, be thanking her on that day. It was Cledi who chose to come to Earth, to fight hard to receive her disabled body, and who fights that body every day to sleep, to eat, and to communicate. Often I find myself frustrated with training care providers and helping them to understand Cledi, as if it is a burden to me. But she is the one who can only cry to communicate, and she is the one who suffers when they don't understand.

And it is for us that she is here. If Cledi would have given in and passed away after receiving her body, her earthly mission regarding herself would still have been complete. All she needed was a body.

But she fought, and continues to fight, so that I learn and my children learn those important principles of the Gospel that the Lord intends for us. What I have sacrificed is a single drop in the ocean to what she endures to bless us with her presence in our home. Cledi is truly the most Christlike individual that I have known. Her sacrifice is living. She lived to give us an opportunity to grow to be more like Heavenly Father. Without any guarantee of us choosing to grow from the experience or not, she was willing anyway.

My precious girl, thank you for continuing to teach me with unmatched patience. You truly are an instrument in the Lord's hands and He uses you to inspire me, your siblings, and the many other people that interact with you.