ouch
Written in East Harbor State Park during Labor Day weekend, 2005.
Ouch.
That one hurt, it really hurt bad. Here is a pain so deep, it crushes everything inside. It leaves a dark hole behind. To put it bluntly, I am a tough fucker with scars so deep, damage so thorougly saturating my person and it reaches back to the earliest dawn of conscious, all who knew me are appalled by it. I have seen and touched and lived the most grotesque filth from the fall.
But now here is something so filthy and ruinous, it sliced through all those thick layers of callous: I now hold in my hand two of the sweatest, most tender and beautiful souls, so delicate and beautiful to watch, and by all accounts these two are remarkable in their simplicity of heart and willingness and lack of malice. They are also crushed and afflicted, truly forsaken and despised. Men hide their face, they can’t bear to look. They seem stricken by the hand of God Himself.
There was Sean, my firstborn son for whom we sought the Lord for years in prayer, and when we received him, like Samuel’s mother Dar and I gave him back to the Lord out of our deepest gratitude and thankfulness. His birth changed our lives, and he was snatched from death with a violent birth that left Dar’s abdomen sliced from top to bottom and almost killed her. Yet the love he brought us was from a place so foreign to this sick place, it was love hand-delivered by God, and it drowned all the trauma and shock of his birth. He was exceptionally gifted with an ability to project tenderness, warmth and deep compassion for the helpless and weak. We watched Field of Dreams together, and in the end Sean was reduced to sobbing, uncontrolled tears – and it was because he felt so sad for his beloved cousin Kate losing her father.
So amazing, his handicap of Asbuger’s syndrome is a solid barrier to empathy, yet even though he is one year away from adulthood, after a life of heartless and relentless torchure by his peers, there still remains this deep compassion and mercy for the weak and helpless around him. Through Sean we have seen the enduring capacity of thankfulness to rise above even the evil afflictions of this Fall, still holding a heart full of warmth. His hugs are still almost oppressive and smothering, but undeniably authentic, and they express a deep love yearning to burst out and envelop his target. His hugs are smothering, and he intends to convey exactly that: I love you. His yearning breaks my heart, because it is so foreign in a fallen, cold world. How many more times can I bear to watch him reach out with naive excitement to connect, and they simply turn away from him? Yet he remains undaunted, at age 17: last night his heart was so filled with love towards Katrina – so deeply touched he was by what he imagined to be her recent suffering when America’s most destructive hurricane was named after her, and imagining her pain at all the people in this country cursing her name – he embraced her with that same crushing and prolonged heart of love, spontaneously and suddenly, publically and unashamed at the Marblehead lighthouse full of tourists.
Now there is Connor. His brain is damaged for life, and he can’t tie his shoes or ride a bike at age nine. He is continually curious and repeats his questions because he knows he should remember the answer, but he can’t remember, and he needs to know what it was he forgot. Like someone first realizing the onset of alzeimers, he is seized with panic whenever he lost something he was just holding in his hand, and he can’t remember how it disappeared. He is so easily gripped by the terror of discovering the horrible truth he’s losing control over his mind. He is frequently pierced with the terror of discovery that he cannot control his body like all his other friends. He knows the terrible truth that he trails far behind them, and he hopes with desperation they don’t see it. He tries to hide it, and he’s embarrassed by it. He hangs back, watching the others play simple games and having so much fun while he can only watch, uninvolved and uninvited: the kids do sense something, but they aren’t sure yet. Increasingly, they will see his afirmities clearly. They will label him by common consent. As with Sean, they will together turn away from him.
Connor’s affliction is more grevous than Sean’s, because this boy does not have a rich inner life to rescue him from the shame and loneliness. He is strictly a people-person, and without people he is sorely tried to fill his life. He thrives from interactions with people. Yet this will be taken from him, increasingly and steadily as he enters third grade and beyond. This son of mine is imbued with strong, unrelenting and overwhelming emotions, so that every rejection, every insult and every taunt will be amplified and echo with reverberations.
All this tragedy comes together, magnified and focused on this one point: the lifetime afflictions of both sons are not related, according to the experts Dar met with on Friday. This now becomes a stunning reality: my children are caught in a crossfire, from multiple directions, and I’ve brought them into a war zone, on exposed ground. I did it.
If their tragedies were related by genes, it would be sad but expected. The experts have found no genetic link with Connor’s syndrome: rather, it appears among Crack Babies or in third-world nations from nutritional deficiencies or disease while the mother is pregnant. Yet none of these conditions existed for Dar’s pregnancy. It is but murderous coincidence.
I am also struck by one last insight: my Heavenly Father is also broken-hearted by their suffering. I am someone unusually gifted (or cursed) with the ability to read people. It’s always been an uncanny and seemingly rare gift, but with my sons this becomes a terrible curse since I can see deeply into their worlds and their pain is so exposed for me.
Yet my Heavenly Father sees and knows their suffering infinitely more and continually.
Beyond this, my Father in Heaven also sees and feels and bears the suffering of so many more like these two boys crying out to Him in their suffering, or cursing Him. He has exposed Himself to this vast expanse of suffering because He knows this is redemptive: I know my Redeemer lives. I know He is trustworthy.
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