Ain't No Yellow Brick Road

John’s disciples told him...these things. Calling two of them, he sent them to the Lord to ask, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?” Luke 7:18-19

Doubts come often to the parents of a disabled child. They doubt their ability care for such a child. They doubt whether the child can make any real improvement. They doubt the world’s acceptance of such children, doubt the world’s willingness to truly make space for them, doubt the world’s willingness to help.

Doubts about God, about Christ, about their own faith creeps in as well. Sometimes it is fleeting, coming and going again in the blink of an eye. At other times, it settles in and fills up the cracks and crevices of their psyche.

All too often, doubts about God’s hand in the life of their child or the promise of the Savior’s companionship through all manner of things – including this arduous journey -- prompt them to turn away. They give up on God, they turn from Christ, and they surrender to the ways of the world.

It’s the worst thing the parent of a disabled child can do.

Rather than turning away, their doubts should push them into confronting Christ. They should do their own exploration of his authenticity, his promise, his resurrected life. They should ask of him their questions – even those that hide in the darkest recesses of their hearts. They should challenge him, explain their doubts, and let him provide the answers they so desperately seek.

But to turn away without confrontation, without exploration is folly.

The moment they turn away, they are lost. The moment doubts steer them into the grasp of the world and its materialism, into the arrogant belief that man and science can unravel all the mysteries of the universe, into the grip of a place where hope is often centered on superstition and hypothesis, it will be as if they have put their faith on a shelf. It will be as if they have put Christ in a box up in the attic

Christ never counted doubt as sin. He did not reprimand those who expressed it or who asked him to dispel it.

Remember Thomas? He’s the apostle who despite witnessing first-hand miracles and power of Jesus Christ held onto his doubt until he had put his hand on the nail holes and the wounds of the risen Christ. (John 20:24-30)

Doubt, too, dogged John the Baptist. At one point, jailed and growing uncertain about the true identity of Christ, he sent his followers to question Jesus. He wanted reassurance. He wanted his uncertainty washed away. He wanted to be sure. (Luke 7:18-35)

Perhaps we should remember the doubts of a lesser man, a parent, the father of the demon-possessed boy who asked Christ’s disciples for help and got none. When he stood before Christ, his doubt came to full flower.

“… if you can do anything, take pity on us and help us,” the father said.

“’If you can?” Jesus said. “Everything is possible for him who believes.”

“I do believe,” replied the father. “Help me overcome my unbelief.” (Exchange taken from Mark 9:14-29)

Help me in my doubt, the father was saying to Christ.

And our plea should be the same. When doubt comes to us, when it takes us or shakes us from our course, we should plea for such help. We should turn toward Christ – not away from him – and put our doubts at his feet.

We should count on him to cast those doubts aside for us, to remind us of all we have already seen, and the hope we have in what is yet to come.

But in your hearts set apart Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have…1 Peter 3:15

Once we begin relying on Christ to fill our hearts with hope for our children, for their futures, and for what is yet to come, we may find those who know us or watch us asking questions. They’ll be curious and uncertain about what they see.

Our deep joy – which will shine through the days of tears and remain true even on the darkest days – will have them wondering if we live in denial. They’ll want to know if we’re taking medications to help get through the tough days. They’ll want to know why we have not given ourselves over completely to bitterness and rage.

They’ll wonder why we have not abandoned our God, our Christ, and our faith.

Opportunities to witness both to the hope we find in Christ and the reasons he gives us hope about our child, the future, and the life we live will come in such moments. We should make the most of them.

We do this by starting with honesty. We must be honest, genuine and transparent about what we hope, what we believe, and the good and bad that comes to us each day. We should admit that doubts sometimes come. We should talk freely about the days we cast our Bibles aside, the days we can’t find words for prayer, the days venom seeps into our spirit.

But we should also share openly about the days that we find hope. We should share how in our times of doubt, turning toward Christ – rather than away – renews and refreshes us. We should talk about the ways we have seen God’s hand in the life of our child: the neighbor who always makes time for him. The special attention sent along from family members near and far. The way strangers make space and offer up unexpected gifts.

We should talk about the way this unusual and special child’s life has altered our very own. In the grit and grip of every day life, it’s likely the child has touched us deeper, made us more aware of others, and forced us into a more genuine examination of our lives and our beliefs than any other event or person that we can recall.

We should remember that in what many will see as curse, we have found blessing. We should remember in that in what many will see as struggle, we have found succor. We should remember that in what many will want to pity, we find privilege.

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened…Ephesians 1:18

The pursuit and understanding of Christ requires that we make use of the eyes of our hearts. We must be willing to see what is not always visible, to believe what can’t always be proven, to trust in things that may seem unpredictable.

Living as the parents of disabled children demands of us that we do the very same thing: we must open the eyes of our hearts.

In pursuit of a better, richer, more meaningful life for our children, we must do what the world calls foolhardy, even unwise. We must teach ourselves to see with our hearts; opening ourselves to things we cannot always prove, hoping in things we cannot always see, trusting that the odds can be overcome.

None of this is ever easy. But it becomes possible when we give ourselves up to the idea that the world does not hold all the answers to our questions.

We count on science for help, but we are wise not to see it as the be-all, end-all solution. We count on our wits, our education, our money but we are wise to remember they cannot provide all that our child needs. We count on family and friends but we are wise to remember, as much as they love and help us, the journey we walk is our very own.

So we must open ourselves up in ways that the world might call unusual, unproven, and uncertain. We must give our hearts room to break, room to grow, room to take us in directions not easily mapped out ahead of time. When we start looking and seeing with the eyes of our hearts, we improve the odds for our children.

Seeing with our hearts means relying on God to guide us to the places he wants us and our children to see, to be, to live. It doesn’t mean we give up on medical science, it just means we accept that it has limits. It doesn’t mean we stop spending our money on medicines, on therapies, on experimental programs, it just means we know there is no magic cure. It doesn’t mean we abandon common sense, education and our own abilities, it just means we know our own human conditions limit us.

But when we start looking around with our hearts we open our spirits to the possibility that God is involved in every, single second of our child’s life – past, present, and future. When we see with our hearts, we find more than meets our own, human eye: the child who slowed her walk to match the pace of the wheelchair or the stranger who held the door for the sightless child or the typical kids who welcomed the mentally retarded one onto the ball field.

Seeing with our hearts means involving our spirits, relinquishing our desire for control and agreeing to make the journey without knowing what each twist and turn in the road may bring.

Some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him…Mark 8:22ff

We must learn to rely on the faith – and the intercession -- of friends and family if we are going to achieve any success on our journey as disabled parents.

A tough truth we learn on this walk with our child is that we can become enslaved by our own fears and our own faltering faith. Our desire to keep up appearances, to seem self-reliant or to be perceived as being imminently able can become like shackles.

There is no shame in letting others help. We are no less than we were because we let a friend pray for us, lend a hand to us, reach out to us. We are not failures for admitting we cannot walk this path alone.

Instead, we must guard against isolating ourselves and failing to avail ourselves of the offers of prayer, of help, or intercession of any kind. We have to set aside our pride and be willing to be embraced by the love and compassion of those around us.

Time and again, the Bible reminds us of both the power and the glory in the act that binds one believer to another through the compassion that leads to intercession:

People bring a blind man to Christ and he heals him. (Mark 8:22-26)

A woman accepts the label “dog” to secure the blessing and healing of a daughter. (Matthew 15:21-28)

A father wins healing for a son by approaching Christ’s disciples and then Christ. (Matthew 17: 14-21)

Friends lower a paralyzed man through a hole in the roof to get him close to Jesus. (Mark 2:1-5 & Luke 5:17-20)

A centurion asks for the healing of a trusted servant. (Luke 7:1-10)

Community grows up around those who touch one another and share the burdens, the infirmities, and the weaknesses of their spirits, their bodies, and their faith. When we drop our masks, when we step out from behind the walls of our artifice, we become transparent.

Our brokenness and our faith must be put on display. Rather than hiding, we let people see both our boldness and our fear, our doubts and our demons, our weaknesses and our willingness not to surrender. When we accept their help, when we allow them to intercede with prayer and faith, we begin an exchange of blessings that can only be completed by the work of Christ.

There can be no guarantee that their prayers will heal us or heal our children. The healing of which we dream – the physical transformation of our disabled children – is unlikely to occur in this lifetime. But a healing is possible, nevertheless.

We may find ourselves being healed as we nurture the connection that binds one believer to another. We build community in such connections. Our wounded spirits may find salve. Our dented and bruised wills may be invigorated. Our capacity will surely be stronger and grow larger for in the sharing of such things because we become multiplied, our faith becomes amplified and our hearts are enlarged.

…when you pray…Matthew 6:5

One of the hardest things for any of us to do is pray. The human condition – our guilt, our mistakes, our failing faith, our tendency to trust only what we see or know – makes prayer a struggle. This is especially true for those of us raising a disabled child.

We look at our child and we feel forgotten. We feel overlooked. We feel punished. We let the questions of why him and why us get in the way of our communion with God. We doubt. We get angry. We let the struggles of the day sweep us away.

Yet, Jesus is clear. We are to pray.

He didn’t say, “if you pray” but rather, “when you pray.” It’s an instruction. It’s an expectation. It’s clearly meant to be an integral part of the Christian life, a critical thread woven into the fabric of everyday activity.

It’s a choice we must make. We must see the possibility, the hope, the opportunity in choosing to talk with God on a personal level. It’s a one-to-one communication, a chance to cry out, to talk, to listen. It’s a chance to see our hearts change, a chance to hear the Lord speak to us.

With prayer, we take our masks off. We let our defenses down. We come out from behind our fortress and the walls we erect to protect ourselves. We lay out for God our grief, our hope, our frustrations. We can share our dreams and our fears, our accomplishments and our failings.

There, in that private space, in that conversation with the creator of the universe, we can offer up our hard heart and see it softened. There, we can pile up the mass of grief and frustration that entangles us and see it unraveled. There we can be reminded that we were chosen for this life and set apart for reasons we cannot always understand.

There, we can sing the praises of our amazing, almighty, incomparable God.

To be sure, God has given us every opportunity to choose how we live. We can choose to avoid such conversation, such intimacy, such reality. But we must, in the interests of our child and in the interests of our own sanity and salvation, choose to follow Christ’s instruction.

We must pray. We must call out. We must speak to Him. It can be done in as formal a fashion as starts out with the words, “Our Father, who art in Heaven…” It can be done as informally as asking the question, “God, are you out there?”

It can be done in almost any fashion. But we must do it.