My wife and I raised six children. Five were born in France, and the last one in Bangkok, Thailand. We are strong believers in early education and homeschooling. It was challenging, but today we thank God that our children are for the most part in a good place, so if we had to redo it, we would.
When he was nearly three years old in 1980, our oldest son contracted a complication from the mumps and became deaf. This was devastating for us, especially my wife. It took her a long time to recover as she could not understand how God could let this happen to the child she was caring so much for. At three, he very advanced in his reading , and was talking; she had poured a lot into him. It was a very difficult time in her life. Years later, we had four more children in tow, one girl and three boys.. Wherever we went, we would introduce them starting with the girl our second, “... This is Melissa, Joseph, Samuel, Pavel, and this is Isaac…” and anticipating the next question, we automatically finished with “... and he is deaf!” We lived between France and Switzerland in those days, so the usual reaction from the people was, “Oh, c’est dommage…!”, the equivalent of, “What a pity…!” While we very much appreciated the empathy, no quality of reaction matched the one we received from an elderly lady in Switzerland, dressed in black and sitting in a rocking chair just outside her chalet. When we went through our usual introduction of the children and she heard about our son’s deafness, she replied in a matter-of-fact manner, , “Oh; if it weren’t that, it’d be something else…!” This lady probably lived long enough to realise that everyone has a burden of some sort to bear in life. It is normal for us to wish that things were different for us but the mistake may be to think that there are some people on earth who do not have any burdens. The truth may actually be closer to the fact that most people in the world have a burden heavier than ours to bear. True, some may appear to not have a burden to bear but it could be because the light hasn’t shone on them yet. Or instead of coming to the light that might help them to understand and deal with their issue by facing it, they live in denial and fill the void in their soul with frivolous activities, overwork, mental affirmations, or even hiding behind some form of altruism and/or religiosity.. The truth is, that as sure as the last day of our lives catches up with us and there is nothing we can do about it, reality also eventually catches up with us no matter what. As I heard it said one time, “We can forgive a child for being afraid of the dark, but the real tragedy of life is when adults are afraid of the light!’
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