Rattins living Coram Deo

"Mama, when Gracie's in heaven, she won't need a wheelchair anymore, right? And she'll be able to talk to me, right?" (5 year old Ana, this week) Our Gracie is our first-born child.  We've been a family for nearly 7 years now.  We couldn't imagine life without her.  God has used her to shape us in so many ways.   But being on the mission field with a growing nonverbal daughter with spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy, epilepsy, significant development delays, GERD, constipation, and a swallow disorder is not always easy.  God had it all planned out, though.  He directed me to medical school so that Gracie could have her own personal doctor! (She LOVES her HOL friends and is very popular!) Our daily challenges with her include: - No special education so she's homeschooled.  She much prefers that someone BESIDES Mama teach her, so this summer I hired a dear friend who is in university for education.  I've trained her to be Gracie...

When November rolls around each year, we find ourselves reminiscing about our family's beginnings - this Thanksgiving marks 6 years as a family.  Six years of snuggling our beautiful Liberian princess.  Six years of wheelchairs, AFOs, thickened liquids, AAC, Diastat, and therapies.  Six years of praying every night, "Lord, wake me up and take me to her if she needs me." Six years of treasuring every day as a family. I suspect that Gracie will never be able to fully share her story herself.  So, as will be my role for her entire life, I will speak for her.  We sense the joy of the Lord in her and we pray that she does truly understand God - she speaks loud and clear with her overflowing, body-shaking joy that there is a joy in her that exceeds our understanding! We are so grateful that God prompted us to adopt Gracie as our first-born child.  For much of our life as a family, we have lived in countries where birth order is valued greatly.  For in...

Medicaid won't cover a stroller-type wheelchair which is really what I use most for Gracie since it's lightweight so I (even at 32 weeks pregnant) can lift it in and out of the car. It's also smaller so it doesn't crowd up our little house as much as her "big" wheelchair does. But she's outgrowing the loaner stroller that we have, PLUS, it's a loaner so we need to give it back! So I won a Convaid Cruiser CX 14 on ebay for a nice price (less than $200, new they are at least $1500). It's in rough shape, missing parts, etc. But a little TLC should bring it up to the shape we need it in. I'm using the opportunity to make it into the chair that we need for rough-terrain use in Uganda. It's too big for her now but should last her into adolescence (unless she keeps growing so much!!). We received $500 from Gateways (the Area Agency in Nashua) for this chair project! What a blessing! Here's my plan for converting this chair - please co...