Clothe her in your care.

A mother stitches her dreams for her handicapped daughter into the seams of her First Communion dress.

Laura was special and precious. She was severely handicapped from birth and struggled with many physical problems and mental disabilities. The doctors told us that if everything went well she might live to be 3. When she was 8 we knew we were on borrowed time.

One Sunday in early February of 1990, the children beginning their preparation for First Communion were being called forward one by one to receive their enrollment symbol. Diana Barron, Jason Burk, Paul Collins, Elizabeth Anne Corwin.... A small hand-carved wooden white sheep threaded onto a golden cord and inscribed with the child's name was being prayerfully placed around each neck by the First Communion catechist.

My chest constricted. I tried to slowly swallow the salty tears that began welling behind my eyes. With dawning clarity I realized that if only ... if only things were different, Laura Ann Schreckenberger would be called forward following Mary Rose Perez.

Laura never walked or talked. She couldn't help herself in any way. We threaded a tube down her throat to give her the nourishment she needed to live. We never fully understood what she was able to comprehend but she knew our voices and responded with a smile when we called her name.

"He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out." This scripture verse from the Gospel of John and the image of the sheep hung so tenderly around the children's necks haunted me. I anguished during the week. Our family had found acceptance within our small faith community, and yet I wondered for years where a little girl with limited capabilities fit into the Catholic Church's image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Was she one of the sheepfold or banished outside the gate?

I decided to call the catechesis director and ask her if the children preparing for First Communion could be made aware of Laura and perhaps include her in their prayers during the preparation sessions. We talked.

The kindness in her voice dispelled my apprehension. After answering my questions, she gently asked, "Do you and Paul want Laura to receive First Eucharist?"

"Could this be possible?" I asked her, firmly believing that Laura's disabilities somehow excluded her from receiving this sacrament in the Catholic Church. Her response was simple.

"If not Laura, then who?"

Together we made the decision to wait, and the following year Laura was included with the children preparing for First Communion. In February 1991, Laura was named, along with Sarah Amandes, Allison Anich, Kathleen Brey, Michael Lesniak, Tommy Plastina, Ben Roberts, Tim Wagner, John Ziegler, and several other children from the community. She was wheeled forward, an equal among her peers, and received her sheep.

During the preparation period, I decided to make her white dress. I chose a pattern with a large square collar and long sleeves. I hoped the collar would help to hide the security straps that held her in her wheelchair and the sleeves would cover the bulky foam arm splints she had to wear to protect herself from injury. The material had to be soft but beautiful, the lace delicate along the edge. I chose a white cotton eyelet. I loved it because the swirl of the stitching across the fabric looked like L's.

The sewing machine whirred throughout the quiet afternoons during those spring days of 1991. The hours melted in the warm April sunshine. The smell of blossoms and the freshly mowed lawn wafted in through the open window. I sang with the robins busy building their nests: "Bathe her in your love. Clothe her in your care. Send her along with the wind and a song and the rains of the earth in her hair."

The bedroom became a sacred space, the sewing of the dress a sacramental creation. It was a time of inner transformation and conversion. A time of bittersweet imagining and mourning. Laura's spiritual journey became intertwined with mine as stitches sewn along seams began to close old wounds and piece together a faith that had become lost to me in the years following her birth.

My mother-dreams became sleeves, a bodice, a collar, a skirt. I stitched her First Communion securely across the yoke, inserted her first prom along the lace edge of the collar. I carefully slip-stitched her graduation from high school into the cuffs around each sleeve. Her wedding day I prayerfully tucked into the scalloped edges along the hem.

April 28, 1991 was Laura's First Communion Day. It was the most blessed and celebrated day of her life. Ten months later she died. She lay amid the folds of white satin lining the small white coffin. The soft, white cotton eyelet of her dress made her seem blanketed in a sea of tiny white flowers. The long sleeves looked huge now without the foam splints to fill them up. I traced my finger along the edge of lace that bordered the large square collar, remembering how stubbornly that strip around the corner had resisted my coaxing to lie flat under the stitches.

Humming softly, I smoothed out the folds along the scalloped edge of the hem. "Light her way back home. Love her as your own, for thus she has been and will be again, and is now, forever, amen."

The stillness of her hands folded together in prayer seemed strangely comforting. I was unprepared for the joy.

By ANN SCHRECKENBERGER, a freelance writer who also gives retreats on women's spirituality. The song Bathe Her in Your Love was written by Joe Wise ([C] 1977, GIA Publications).