Finding True Beauty: Parenting a Child with Disabilities and Embracing the Unexpected

You just bought your dream home and in the backyard is a beautiful garden. The ground is tilled, and it’s open to plant whatever you want. All you have to do is decide what to plant.

Some people may begin planting multiple kinds of fruits. Strawberries, blackberries, and maybe even plant an apple or peach tree!

Some may decide that herbs and veggies are the way to go. Thyme, dill, cucumbers and carrots!

And some may see an empty garden and get right to work on planting all different types of flowers. Rose bushes, chrysanthemums, daffodils, and daisies!

You decide you want to plant a certain type of flower. This flower has the PERFECT shade of pink and comes back around every year. It’s your favorite.

You plant, you water, you make sure animals and insects don’t destroy, and that the perfect weather and temperature can help this beautiful flower grow.

It takes a couple weeks to grow, and it finally blooms. But it’s not that beautiful shade of pink you love. It’s purple?!

Something you didn’t expect. Something you didn’t sign up for.

At first, you get kind of angry. Who would sell you these seeds knowing it wasn’t the color you had been envisioning? The days and weeks you put every ounce of energy into growing this flower and it’s nothing you had planned for.

But after you’ve sulked, and maybe even teared up a bit, you decide to take a second look at this flower. And it takes your breath away.

It’s not just a shade of purple, but multiple shades of lavender, plum, mauve and violet. And you notice there’s splashes of gold and cream.

This flower is not what you planned for. But it’s everything you could have hoped or dreamed.

I think you know where I’m going here.

Having a child with disabilities is nothing I ever imagined as a child, or ever planned for when we were buying baby clothes and deciding on names.

But Opal and Lucy have opened my eyes to this beautiful world that I would have never known existed. True joy, true grace, true beauty. Just a couple things my daughters have shown me.

I don’t even want the pink flower anymore. Because the purple one, the autism one, that’s where I see true beauty.

Written by Renee Sellers of Life with Opal and Lucy