Why I don't pray for a miracle

First of all, I have to say that as a Christian, I believe in the supernatural. I believe in miracles. I believe that healings still happen today. However, I do not pray for Maddy to be "healed" of her dwarfism. Not because I do not have faith, but because I completely believe with all my heart that God made her different for a reason, and to change that one aspect of her would be to change who God made her to be. 

There are people in our lives who seem to be fixated upon the fact that Maddy is a dwarf and they continue to "pray for a miracle" for her. This really bothers me because these people are missing a very important biblical truth. I wrote part of my thoughts on this topic over a year ago in this post - "My thoughts on God and suffering" (have a read, if you haven't already. It's one of my favourites). Simply put though, they are missing the fact that sometimes God allows something that looks like weakness to the world in order to show His strength. In my pregnancy, I felt a lot like Paul did, when he prayed and prayed for God to remove his "thorn in the flesh". God's answer to him, as it was to me, was "No - my grace is enough for you". And so Paul learned to accept and boast about his weaknesses instead of continuing to pray for God to change the situation.

In order for God to "heal" Maddy, he would need to change her DNA completely. He would need to go into every cell in her body and take out the affected DNA and replace it with different DNA. DNA that was not Maddy. There is absolutely no difference in me praying for God to heal Maddy's dwarfism as there would be if I prayed for God to change my Chinese husband and make him Caucasian. Or if I prayed for him to turn my uncle into an aunt. We can all see that features such as race or gender would fundamentally change who someone is - and it is the same with this one little gene that causes dwarfism. If God changed it, he would be fundamentally changing who Maddy is - and I don't want that. I love my daughter the way that God made her, and I wish that everyone else would too!

Today I came across a fantastic new blog called Noah's Dad. Noah's dad was writing about this same topic and echoed my thoughts so well - in fact, his post was what inspired me to write this. He says:

... sometimes when people say they are praying for our son they have this tone in their voice like they are praying for him to be “healed” of the swine flu, or the chicken pox. I jokingly (and I really do say this) say to them, “No!  Please don’t pray for our son to be ‘healed’ of Down syndrome. We really like our son, and would prefer to keep him!”

... If you were to “take away” Down syndrome you would take away our son.  He would have a completely different genetic code, thus being a completely different person.

So pray for him to behave, pray for him to come to know God through Christ, pray for him to develop into everything God has created him to be, pray for him to be loving, and kind, and pray for the small hole in his heart to close up before we go back to the doctor.

But please don’t pray for him to be “healed” of Down syndrome.

So in my own words, I want to ask you all - please continue to pray for Maddy. Pray that she will be the healthiest Diastrophic Dwarf in the world, that she will not have many of the common complications of her condition. Pray that when she has the surgery to close her palate, that she will respond well to the anesthesia. Pray that she will grow up to be loved and accepted by all, that she will develop a strong sense of identity. Pray that she will excel in everything that she does. Pray for her character. Pray that she will learn to accept that God made her differently and that she will allow Him to be made strong through her weaknesses. But please do not pray that that she will be made different than who she is. By doing so, you are praying against one of the very things that God intended to make her special.