From Fear to Awe

I've been reading the book An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor. Many things I've read in it have resonated with me, but there is one particular phrase that keeps replaying in my head.

In a chapter on reverence--the recognition of something greater than the self--she writes about "making the passage from fear to awe".

Making the passage from fear to awe describes so perfectly what happens at the exact moment we realize that Down syndrome is not going to wreck our lives.

Most of us wouldn't want to re-live the initial diagnosis or the months following. But somewhere along the way, the person that is your child begins to emerge and the words "Down syndrome" begin to have less and less importance.

The fear of what life will be like fades as that life unfolds.

And then there is this person, who is so much more than a diagnosis, who you begin to see as such.

And you stand in awe...