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Change will only occur if there is hope and acceptance included in the formula. Hope and healing are also bound up in a much less rigid reality.

We are a nation who has suffered at the hands of the nations the realities of the world. The parent of a child born with a disability has now achieved this unenviable position of being able to see the world is not yet a completed reality.

This journey begins with the birth of a baby. Not just any baby but a life altering birth. The family is suddenly thrust into a center stage sensation. This is not necessarily a fact yet it certainly feels that way.

With each call the paranoia surfaces. Does this person know yet? Should I tell them now or should I wait and see?

The response to a simple “mazel tov” can suddenly become an extremely complicated greeting.

Normally these greetings and issues are non existent after a birth. However, with the presence of Down syndrome immediately everything becomes confusing and challenging. There is a sense of your privacy being invaded.

In order to withdraw back to what was a normal level of living it is necessary to understand that a baby who is born with a disability will, in time, quietly grow up out of the lime light. There is an expression Israeli’s like to use, “every beginning is difficult.” In other words after a while it will become routine.

Soon this child, around whom so much of your life is revolving, will develop into a fully integral thread in a diverse fabric known as community.

Children who are born with disabilities grow up with hopes and dreams just as their peers do. And soon they will become adults just as we are. They will have neighbors, friends, and coworkers just the same as we do.

Even if a biological family finds a good adoptive family to accept and care for their baby this is none the less a rejection of the infant. This is a self serving rejection as well. After all the infant and G-d did not make this choice.

We are taught from an early age to negate our desires and to lower our level of self importance. To embrace humility.

As we become adults we confuse our daily striving in the work place with our real purpose which is the performance of good deeds. We tend to mitigate our chesed and other spiritual pursuits.

When we are challenged with a child born with something we do not see as part of our normal existence we allow the negative feelings to surface rather than accepting the vulnerability.

It is a simple formula. When confronted with a negative stressor find a substitute or eliminate the stressor all together.

Keep in mind however that this is not a stressor. This is a “chailek Elokai meMaal Mamash.” This is a piece of Hashem indeed. (See below)

When Menachem Mendel of Vizhnitz (1830 – 1884) found out that his favorite child, a daughter who had recently married and resettled in the Holy Land with her new husband, had taken ill he asked to see the mail daily. Thus he was able to stay abreast of her condition albeit two weeks later.

His anxiety was tremendous yet he patiently awaited the news via the post on a daily basis.

This reporting continued on a regular schedule until about a month into the illness during a health setback the post did not arrive on erev Shabbos.

The rebbe asked his chassidim to return to the train station so see if possibly they had overlooked the missing epistle.

Again they returned only to report that the letter had certainly not arrived.

With the beginning of Shabbos the chassidim began by comforting the rebbe that he will probably receive two letters on Motzei Shabbos.

This still did not seem to comfort the rebbe.

As the Shabbos came to a close on Saturday evening the chassidim noticed that not only was the rebbe not himself for the entire Shabbos but they also noticed that the rebbe was actually crying.

The chassidim became very subdued and many of them remained so even as the Shabbos ended and even as the two letters arrived informing the rebbe of his daughters sudden improvement.

The rebbe sat down at the “tish” (table) on Motzei Shabbos for the Melave Malka (the time immediately following the Sabbath set aside for gathering together and to try to extend the Shabbos into the work week.

It was at that moment that the rebbe told the chassidim that they are making a mistake.

He informed them that they erred if they think that he is asking them to do something he himself cannot do. For example to not allow personal pain to disrupt Shabbos or to accept whatever happens as coming from Heaven.

He told them that if they believe that he was distraught over his daughter and for not having received the post prior to Shabbos then again they were mistaken.

He asked them if they remembered a woman who lived on the edge of the town? They all nodded.

He asked them if they remember that during her illness that the rebbe himself went to her house and cut the wood she needed and made the soup she required and that he personally cleaned up the house and cared for the ill woman’s daughter during the entire illness? Again they concurred.

He continued, did they remember that after a very short period that the lady recovered? They all responded in unison.

The rebbe now went on to explain that on Shabbos he came to a realization that he was on a lower level of spiritual development than he realized up until then.

He went on to explain that everyday he receives letters asking for prayers and blessings for people, their children and their families.

It took this period of illness of his own daughter to make him realize that “to love another as oneself must be fulfilled literally.”

Since my daughters’ illness was of greater concern to me as compared to what I felt for that woman who was ill even though I helped her I understood that I was lacking. As further proof of this the rebbe went on I also felt more for my daughter than I did for those for whom I am asked to pray for. I now understood that I was lacking and that I had to correct this.

It is this level of love that we must have for our fellow. The rebbes intense grief made him realize that He had not yet attained this level.

To love and care for someone else’s pain on the same level as you would care for your own child is a level few of us could even hope to attain let alone to literally actualize.

(Based upon a kabbalistic concept, Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi’s [1745-1812] doctrine of the “two souls.” The Devine soul and the Animal soul. The animal soul is the vital principal that stimulates the physical body, the life of the body. The Devine soul of a Jew is a part of G-d above indeed. {Tanya beginning of Chapter 2}. It is completely independent of the body in the sense that it exists before its coming into the body and it survives the body after the body’s death. The Divine origin of this soul while residing in the body and the animal soul to rise above them and act in defiance of the natural dispositions of the individual. {Nissan Mindel, The Philosophy of Chabad, volume 2, Brooklyn, NY, 1985)