Healthy versus Happy

“Do you hope it’s a boy or a girl?”

I really dislike that question. I know that deep down we all have an inkling of what we would like...but it totally puts the focus on something that in the big picture simply shouldn't matter.  Matt and I have had the experience of a little girl, albeit too short, and everything about her memory makes us smile.  Now we are having a boy and couldn’t be more thrilled. It will definitely be different, but we welcome any opportunity that we are given to love a child of our own.  Sure, I would love to have another girlie some day, but my "hopes" lie somewhere different.


The canned response that typically follows the question above?

“I don't really care, as long as it’s healthy.”

Again….I'm left with mixed feelings. Don’t get me wrong, I totally get it. I pray beg and plead every day (multiple times a day for that matter) for the health of our son. I pray that he never has to experience all of the scary things that Charlotte did. I pray that he can come home from the hospital naïve to the world of surgery, chest tubes, wound vacs, scars…you name it.


But what IF God had chosen to give us another “unhealthy” child?


Would that have changed my mind about having this baby?


Would it make us love him any less?


Being a heart mama has made me look at life with new perspective. I’ve said it a million times on this blog, but our experiences with Charlotte, whether happy or heartbreaking, opened our eyes to the things in life that are truly important. And while health is a big one…when we think about Charlotte the thing about her that stands out the most is how HAPPY she was.


Did our love for her change when we found out about her broken heart?  Sure it did.  We didn’t love her any less though…as a matter of fact, in the span of about 2 seconds I’m pretty sure our love for her doubled, tripled, quadrupled...You get the point. We didn’t want to send her back. We didn’t change our minds about having a baby because there was something “wrong” with her. We knew that she would need us more than we could have possibly understood…and we needed her just the same.


Charlotte was handed a challenging road from the get go, yet despite it all, no one ever comments about her health. Instead they remember her being HAPPY —they remember how her grin and her big ol’ eyes could light up a room (or elicit a smile from a blog reader through the computer screen!)


She may not have been HEALTHY, but boy-oh-boy was she HAPPY.

When it comes down to it, isn't that what really matters most?