Witnesses to their lives



Kelly, age seven, with wild plums



Jerry told me last night that he'd talked with a grandmother who'd gotten in touch with the Ranch wanting to donate several hundred dollars from sales of the book she wrote about her young grandson.  Of course we were delighted, and want to see that book, too.

I woke up this morning thinking about this grandma, anxious to hear her story. 

I know I will hear echoes of our story it it. 

We know this feeling so well.  In the weeks after Kelly's birth, little songs began to came over me as I rocked her. 

One went like this:

No less a miracle is my child,

Bright flower from an autumn garden.

Reaching for the sky, never stopping to ask why,

No less a miracle is she.

And did I ever really feel

This child was somehow just not real?

A child of no tomorrows,

Whose song no one would sing?

When this child brought the world to me

And opened up eternity

On life's unending wonder,

Of joy's eternal spring.

No less a miracle is my child,

My little flower from an autumn garden.

Reaching for the sky, never stopping to ask why,

No less a miracle is she.

I know I will this recognize this grandma's book for what it is--a testimony to the love this baby boy awakened in her and in her family, something real and tangible that says to the world:  This boy matters.  This boy has a wondrous life to live, too.

And we who love him will be the witnesses of it.