It is funny how the Lord will place certain people in you path just as the very time that you need them. A friend I made years ago called me this morning. Jill and I go way back. When Antonio was twelve years old, he got to the point where braces were not enough support for his little legs. I cried the day when the doctor told us that it was time for Antonio to start using a wheelchair. I yearned for my son’s condition to improve with time but instead the opposite happened. In order to accommodate a wheelchair in our home we had to make some big changes.
Making the needed changes to our home was not the only thing we dealt with. We also had to watch the community’s reaction to my child change. The people at church were great and always willing to help out. They made an effort to include him in all of the activities despite his limitations. The general community’s reaction was a little different. I remember one night we decided to go out to eat as a family not long after Antonio got his wheelchair. We choose a nice restaurant to celebrate Josue’s birthday. As we walked in it felt like everyone was staring at us. We told the host that we needed a wheelchair assessable table. At first they told us that they would not be able to accommodate us. My wonderful husband insisted that they find a way to do so. We were able to get in and eat, but this was the first time that I noticed the embarrassment on my children’s faces. It wasn’t so much that they were embarrassed to have a disabled sibling, but more so because everyone had to go out of their way to make accommodations for us. I could see in their faces that they longed to have a normal family.
It was that night that I decided I needed to do something. This community needed to be more aware of people with disabilities and to treat them like they were human. Over the next several weeks I met with members of the community who’s children had disabilities, and we formed an awareness group for children with disabilities. This is how I met Jill. Her daughter has Spina Bifida. We instantly became friends. Over the years we were able to share our experiences such as the one mentioned earlier. We laughed, cried, and supported each other. I thank the Lord daily for her friendship.
Reminiscent in the MarketMy heart is full of gratitude as I sit and ponder about my beautiful life and the many blessings that have filled my years. I am also grateful for the trials that have tested my faith, my strength, my kindness, and my charity. One of the hardest trials of my adult life has been to stand back and watch my son Antonio struggle, hurt, and fail. A mother wants nothing more than to run to her child in a time of need, scoop him up into her arms, and make everything okay. I feel like my Heavenly Father, who I believe is a loving God, feels this way about His children. He sent us down to earth with the tools necessary to come back to Him, but He must often watch us with tears in His eyes as we fall, fail, and struggle to get back up. He must want to reach down and make everything okay, but He doesn’t. He lets His children go through that trial, so that they become stronger. I have felt that heartache as I watched all my children struggle and fail and have their own heartache, but Antonio worried me the most and he was the one I most wanted to pick up and make everything perfect for him.I was reminded of this while shopping in the market last week. While filling my cart with all of my husband’s favorite Guatemalan foods, I saw a young boy walking around with much effort with two leg braces on his little legs. Seeing this brought me back to the time when he was in la escuela basica. He was a young ten year old boy and he was doing very well in school. He was getting great grades, his teachers loved him, and all of his classmates loved him. Antonio was easy to love. He had a smile that could melt anyone’s heart and a heart as big as Texas. (That’s what I would always tell him!) He was keeping up very well with his peers despite is physical limitations, but he was still walking and the children were very good to include him in their outside play. However, as his tenth year progressed, his walking became much more labored. He would walk a few steps and be so tired. Next, and much too quickly, he lost the ability to walk without supports. We had him fitted with leg braces. They were big and bulky and Antonio had to relearn how to walk with them. It was a long process and Antonio was a fighter. His popularity on the school playground was deeply affected by the addition of the braces. The children forgot about Antonio because he couldn’t keep up. They would run and skip and jump ahead as Antonio laboriously tried to keep up. He would never catch them and would spend all of recess watching and wishing he was having fun with his friends. My heart, as it had so many times before that and would so many times after that, yearned to fix things. I wanted him to run with his friends, but I had to stand back and watch him fight and struggle and feel pain and defeat. I could do nothing to fix that, he had to do it himself. He was so strong and through time, he made friends with other children and they were able to play games outside that didn’t require running and jumping and skipping.
Victor has now retired from Obando's Landscaping and left it to our son Josue. What a blessing this business has been for our family and we know that it will continue to bless the lives of our posterity. Now that our son has been gone for just over a year, Victor and I have decided to return to our native country of Guatemala. Although we raised our children with the Guatemalan culture, they learned to Americanize it, naturally. However, we miss our roots and we desire to help our people there, there is much need. We are going to start a charity there in the name of Antonio and help those families in need who have children with disabilities. We know that Antonio would want that to happen. The Lord has blessed us financially and we are grateful for the opportunity to help others with it. We are planning to return at the beginning of the year and we will continue to post about how the charity is going. If you would like to donate we have a P.O. Box that you can send donations to. Our children are still here in Texas and they will be helping the charity here by advertising and keeping up with the P.O. Box.
My son passed away on August 23, 2008, just 3 months after his 24th birthday. I gathered my family together to comfort each other, find peace together and to enjoy our last moments with Antonio. What a blessing it was to be all together for one last time here on earth. It was a bitter sweet moment when my baby boy took his final breath and reached heavenward to return to the presence of Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. I am sure that many family members were there to greet him and welcome him home in a sweet reunion. Antonio was my angel boy and was always such a positive upbeat person amidst all the trials that he faced in this mortal life. He taught my family and I to laugh when times were hard, cry only when we could handle it no more, and bear each other’s burdens. He truly knew what it was to be a disciple of Christ and act and do as he would. We are so grateful for the time that we had to spend with him and learn from his shining example.
Antonio transitioned wonderfully to San Jacinto Community College. I was grateful he still lived at home so that I could still take care of him. He did extremely well in his classes, he enjoyed what he was learning, he was liked by his classmates, he receive great accommodations because of his 504 plan, and his professors were kind and understanding.
