When our daughter Penny was born, I was a student at Princeton Seminary. I stumbled through the basic Greek of the New Testament and enjoyed the hours of theological debate over concepts like atonement and salvation and the nature of evil. My husband and I were churchgoers too. We showed up at 9 a.m. on Sunday mornings and dutifully sang hymns and praise songs and listened to the sermon and tithed and prayed and ate the bread and drank the grape juice and desired to follow Jesus. 

Still, for all the theology, for all the good intentions, for all the checked boxes, we weren’t prepared for the news we received two hours after Penny was born—that the doctors suspected she had Down syndrome. As many parents will attest, any unexpected diagnosis feels shocking, and scary, and sometimes sad, and sometimes strangely shameful. 

I walked into the labor and delivery unit, 37 weeks pregnant, with a vision of what lay ahead for us. Not a specific vision, mind you. Just a vague idea that I could imagine the contours of our daughter’s future—the good grades and good deeds, the sports she might play, the colleges she might attend, the husband she might marry. I imagined Penny living a good life, even if I didn’t know exactly where or how that would happen. But the words “Down syndrome” erased that vision. 

Twenty years later, I not only believe that Penny can live a good life, I believe that I would have had a hard time ever living a good life without her. {Keep reading the full essay…}

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