She's Not Heavy....

She's my sister.
I am so very lucky. These are pictures of my third and fourth daughter. I know I have told this story before but it's Rachel's favorite - so here goes.... When my third daughter was nine she asked me to give her a little sister and I told her that I was too old. She decided to pray for one, so she was not nearly as surprised as I was when I got pregnant!

From the time Rachel was born, her big sister felt that Rachel was as much hers as she was mine. I'm sure there must have been some problems along the way but all I remember was these two girls loving each other so very much. From the time that Rachel was sixteen years old, her sister was asking, "When can she come live with me?" When Rachel turned twenty-one she decided, herself, that it was time and she spends nine months a year with her sister and her wonderful brother-in-law and three months with her dad and I. She has a wonderful, full and exciting life in California, thanks to the love and commitment they give to her (in fact, last week she was on T.V.!)

When you have a child with a disability, one of the first things you worry about is where they are going to be happy and secure, after you are no longer here. I have never had to worry about that. I have two other daughters, who are twenty years older than Rachel, who would be more than happy to have her with them. But these two? These two were just meant to be!

p.s. These pictures are of, when Rachel was her sister's maid of honor, when she and her sister and brother-in-law went to the snow together, when she visited her sister at college and spoke to her class about what it felt like to have Down Syndrome, when they were small, when her sister graduated from high school and just playing around!