Twenty Seven Days

Post Shared by Morgan, Sawyer’s mom. Feel free to follow their story here.

Sweet Sawyer girl,

I don’t really know where to begin. This has been heavy on my heart for the past few days. In twenty seven days, you are having surgery to “repair” your lip. I’m a fairly logical person. I see the reasons for the surgery. I understand in my mind that it will help you in so many ways.

But my mom heart is clinging to every single minute of these last twenty seven days. I think a lot of people will be irritated by my saying this. They don’t see you the way I do. I have had people pray away your sweet face before you were born and people apologize to me for it upon seeing you. People have asked if you can suck your thumb “like a normal baby” and apologized to us for our “suffering” as parents.
If I weren’t censoring myself, I would have choice words for all of those people.

Sawyer, your face is a blessing. Your smile has reached out and grabbed the hearts of so many. Serious business men giggle upon seeing it. Grandmothers who rarely see their own grandkids can’t wait to snuggle you close. Little children look on you and declare you “so cute”.

Your smile is magic. I know your new smile will be just as beautiful, but there is something so special about you just as you are. In the grand scheme of your life, you will spend much more time post lip “repair”. But this smile that you give so freely today is the one I first saw. Your face as it is today is the face that made me a momma, something I had ached for in a season of waiting. I labored for hours and your sweet face was my reward.

Sawyer, your beauty is flawless. God made you and declared you VERY good. I always put the word repair in quotations because you are not broken. You are not a car with a dead battery, needing to be fixed. You are a living, breathing daughter of God who was made so wonderfully in His image. Anyone who feels different can go find someone else to pick on because I’m done tolerating it.

Tears flow as I write these words. I find myself holding you as you sleep instead of putting you down to go about my business around the house. I get teased for having a full Dropbox account because I can’t stop taking pictures so that I can remember your sweet cleft from every angle. You are growing and changing so fast and this is a change that I’m not ready for yet. I will cry the first time I see you after surgery. Tears of joy that surgery is over and you are still my beautiful girl. And tears over a smile lost. A wide, uninhibited smile. An innocent, freely given smile. We will make it through this by relying on God and loving each other. We will.

Having a child with a cleft lip and cleft palate is not a trial. I am not so brave in my faith and strong. Is it humbling? At times, yes. But more than anything it is a blessing to see how one little wide smile can change my world and influence so many people.

I love you, Sawyer girl.
From your head to your toes.
Always,
Mom