Team Rainbow

The big girls' school has been spending the whole month of October investing in "awareness".  Each class has learned about something near and dear to their hearts and in their chapel last week and this week they wore the awareness color and gave a presentation telling the school about it.  Their theme this month was "we are all part of God's team".  I love this so much...its like they were doing Down syndrome awareness without even mentioning it, because a big part of Down syndrome awareness is accepting differences as a normal part of life.  We humans with all our strengths and disabilities are a great big team.  I wrapped the month of awareness up today by talking to the kids about Down syndrome.  Reagan has been a favorite at that school from the beginning (120 kids cheered when I announced she'd be attending next year) so the kids loved talking about what they've learned about her.  I decided to share how some of Reagan's strengths and weaknesses tie in with the things all the other classes shared about.  Hearing Loss,  Diabetes,  ADHD/learning disabilities, Childhood and Brain cancer and Alzheimer's.  A lot of those affect people with Down syndrome.  But Down syndrome is also helping push learning about treating some of them too.  The kids thought that was pretty cool.  And it helped with the realization (I have a long running theme here lol) that hard is not bad.  And even that something we see as bad always has a good side...we might not always see it, but that doesn't mean its not there.  Things can be both good and bad.  Our struggles and weaknesses shape us and we shape those around us.  So we shared not just about Down syndrome, but how it fits into the bigger picture.  A rainbow of colors for a rainbow of awareness....and remember that rainbow is a promise...the kids recited their chapel verse for me, proudly stating that they are "fearfully and wonderfully made...and they know it well".  I think they do know it well!  But just in case I sent them home with skittles to remind them of the rainbow ;)