Scarred for LIFE

A couple of years back, a friend of ours tipped us off to the work of Ted Meyer and his Scarred for Life project. Holly got in touch to compliment his work and recently we met with him to paint a few of Annie's scars.

We had mixed emotions about it but in the end we decided that we wanted to express that we thought ALL of our Annie-Lu is beautiful - not just the un-scarred parts. Here is Ted's masterful artwork:

his facebook link to this photo is HERE.

Ted asked for a brief Bio on what we thought of Annie's scars for inclusion in an upcoming book and that's why I wanted to do this posting. Here is what I wrote:
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During the second trimester of our pregnancy, as the ghostly shapes of the ultrasound swirled on the screen, the doctor began to murmur, “Lemon Sign . . . Banana Sign . . . Spinal Defect . . . Clubbed Feet . . .  “. Diagnosis: T5-Level Spina Bifida. Although in the mildest cases, people go their whole lives having Spina Bifida without even knowing it, we were told that our daughter would not survive more than a few hours after birth. Now here we are 4 years later with a happy and precocious Annie-Lu who just started her second year of preschool. 

Due to the severity of her condition, Annie is paralyzed from the waist down and she races about in the cutest glow-in-the-dark wheelchair you have ever seen. When people ask if she will ever walk, my response is, “Not with today’s medical technology but some of the smartest people on earth are working on it.” 

A year from now Annie will have another surgery (her 5th in total) where they will insert metal into her spine to correct the curvature. As parents it feels as if we have been receiving regular insertions of metal into our spines since the day of that ultrasound 4 years ago. It has been a tough road; one that has stripped us down to our core not only as parents but as people and rebuilt us with more tenderness and more steel. 

Children such as Annabelle force our society to slow down and exercise patience for others. Children such as Annabelle force us to reconsider our petty selfish griping in light of the burdens she carries. Annie prompts us to open a door for a child when we would normally push through, to crack an encouraging smile in an otherwise smile-less day. Children such as my daughter, Annie-Lu, force us all to a higher and richer level of compassion, kindness and humanity than our society would otherwise attain. What do I see when I see my daughter’s scars? I see a little girl sent to save us by her example from our endless personal obsessiveness. When I see my daughter’s scars, I see a pint-sized savior; sent to bear the burden of our bitter self-absorption and to help us free ourselves from it.
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She's gonna show you how great she is