“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among
earthen pots!

Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?

Or “Your work has no handles?”  Isaiah 45:9

Maggie is a 17 year-old girl with Down syndrome, who loves
life, adores food, and can’t live without music. She is my daughter, adopted
from Brazil at 14-months old. She is very uncommunicative unless she knows you,
and is happy to sit without talking for long periods of time. She could eat
peanut butter at every meal. She decides what she will and will not do and can
out-stubborn most people we know, hands- down, no contest. She loves Mary
Poppins, and Hairspray, and Beauty and the Beast, and can sing most of the
songs, and knows all the words. She doesn’t go anywhere without her dolly (a
dark brown groovy girl), and you can use that dolly to motivate her to do
almost anything. She loves to work, though due to limited abilities, there are
few things she can do completely on her own. Those things she can do, she does
in spades! She sets the table, clears the table, puts all the clean dishes
away, carries laundry to each person’s room, puts groceries away, and loves it
when we do a whole-house cleaning. 

Most people don’t think too much of Maggie, or what they
think isn’t too nice. She makes funny sounds. She pulls her pants up after she
goes to the toilet (all the way up to her chest, and usually over her shirt,
which does look a bit socially unacceptable). She says the same words over and
over and over and over. She doesn’t ask about your life, or what you’ve been
doing. She is 17, and takes a dolly everywhere she goes.

There is one thing that Maggie has done in the past, a few
times, that has made her stand out. It started when she was about two years
old. We were at a luncheon after church, and as a cute Pastor’s-kid, Maggie had
been passed around. I went to make sure the woman holding her was alright with
not being able to eat. When I got close to her, I realized the woman was
crying. I asked if she wanted me to take Maggie, and she said, no, she’d like
to keep her there for a little while. Later on, when talking with my husband,
Eric, he told me of her deeply sad situation at home, and how, when he looked
around at the people there, Maggie had ministered to the person with the
deepest need. When this woman returned Maggie to me, she thanked me for
allowing her to hold Maggie, and told me how much Maggie had ministered to her heart.
Maggie? My quiet little girl who likes to
hold people’s noses? Who doesn’t ask questions about what is going on in your
life?  How did she minister? I
still don’t have a good answer to this question, but this story has been
repeated throughout the years, time and again.

Another time this occurred was when Maggie and her two siblings (who also happen to have Down syndrome), Eric and I visited a local nursing home. Maggie is always the caboose in our family walking train. So, walking down the hall, she was behind all of us. She went up to a woman in a wheelchair, and put her hand over the woman’s hand. The woman slapped her hand away. Maggie put her hand back on the woman’s hand. The woman slapped her hand away again. Maggie then started kissing the elderly woman’s hand, over and over again. The nursing staff couldn’t get over it, since this woman, apparently, was notorious for not being kind. But here she was, with Maggie kissing her hand, and she, weeping. An elderly Caucasian woman weeping, hunched over a wheelchair’s tray in the hallway of a bleak elderly home, while a short, stocky very dark-skinned little girl kissed her hand.

Maggie is one of the only people I know in the whole world who would actually choose to serve people over sitting and being served. At the end of our meals, and only when she is sure we have told her she is not getting any more food (which is truly the crux of the matter!), she hops up and begins to clear the table. She also loves to fold laundry. When she has folded it, everyone knows who has done it, for everything, absolutely everything, is folded in half, very carefully and precisely. And even though we have worked on matching socks for years, she still folds each sock exactly in half. Even when I have showed her that she has two feet (at least 500-600 times over the years, since we do laundry at least twice a week, and she always helps!), she continues to fold each sock separately. 

Maggie is one of a set of twins, and she is the quieter, less communicative one of the two. She doesn’t mind that Mollie usually gets more attention from people, but she does mind if Mollie is missing. She and Mollie spent the first thirteen months of their life in an undersized crib in a hospital lying head to foot. All day, every day for thirteen months. When they were young they created a “language” of varied grunts, snorts, and clicks which, along with their secret touch dialect, formed the basis of their inner-twin communication. We were always fascinated about their ability to communicate with each other but if any one tried to copy a particular grunt or snort, Maggie and Mollie would give the bumbling linguist a look of disdain akin to the look a Parisian might give some American when they try to ‘poli vous’  their junior high ‘Frances’. 

“Woe to him who strives with him who formed him, a pot among earthen pots!

Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?

Or “Your work has no handles?”  Isaiah 45:9

Maggie, is a seventeen year old girl who happens to also have Down syndrome.  I don’t claim to understand her or “Him who formed her,” but I have no arguments left. 

Holly Nelson, along with her husband Eric, is the founder of Special Hope Network, a Christian ministry dedicated to serving individuals with intellectual disabilities in sub-Saharan Africa. They and their three children live in Zambia.