Today 9, soon to be 10 year-old Elizabeth asked us why we have taken Joseph on so many special trips. So today was the day that we told her about her 11 year-old brother’s autism, that all of those special trips have been us taking Joseph to the best specialists in the country. She accepted it well and in a spirit of reverent compassion because we presented it in just that manner.
Joseph doesn’t know because he isn’t ready to know. It’s an individual call.
Elizabeth had over an hour’s worth of questions that we answered slowly, deliberatively, and as thoroughly as we thought she could grasp. Then she asked THE question:
“So why do so many parents want to abort handicapped babies? Don’t they know what they’re missing?”
This from the little girl who awoke every school day at 6 AM for three years so that we could get Joseph to his speech therapy at 7AM and then to school. This from the little girl who sat in waiting rooms daily for a total of 8 hours per week, between all of the therapies, and never once in 7 years has uttered a complaint.
Beth grasps how much of her life, and ours, has been subordinated to Joseph’s needs. Yet she is bewildered that parents don’t understand what they are missing in aborting their handicapped children.
Love sees that which narcissism and fear obscure.
They are holy, these little ones. No doubt why Jesus says that the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these.
Coming Home 
If you are looking for autism education and intervention, I suggest taking a look at Brain Balance . It is brain based, not drug based, and it combines education, behavioral, and dietary support. Good luck in helping your son.
Children can be incredibly cruel – having personally experienced this first hand throughout elementary school.
But children who have the example of loving care of a sibling or even one spouse towards another, easily mirror that caring attitude and behavior.
In my own case, having a child with a brain disorder that merely complicates my life at times and causes extreme distress to us during her “events” I have seem my own children time and again care for her in a most loving manner without my ever having to prompt them. 😀
I think your daughter is very correct – when we abort children who aren’t “perfect” we destroy an especially “mysterious” gift from God.
It seems parents are told how miserable their baby’s life will be and how difficult their own will be. Some parents want to do the right thing but are misled by the medical profession and IF they have a strong belief in their baby’s humanity and have the savvy, they may learn the truth.
Other parents really do have very selfish motives – IF they were to examine themselves a little more closely. They can always point back to the doctor’s prognosis as a reason for the abortion.
It is very difficult to do the right thing today but it is possible.
The first step is not to buy into the lie sold to us about abortion.
That baby is human, it is a person and it has the same rights as you do.
If there is some point along the continuum of life from conception to death, where a baby becomes human then there is likely some point along that continuum prior to death where we might also say a human is no longer a person with the right to live.
Logic deems it must be so.
I think a major portion of “the decision to conceive a child”, which is different from the attitude of being open to a child being conceived, may include the firm expectation that the carefully planned child will be “something I will get, that is mine, and which will bring me satisfaction.” These are generally the ends for which a man or woman might want a son or daughter, and might be the totality of their motives. If so, a “handicapped” child who, upon the doctor’s diagnosis, takes on that handicap as his primary identity, “can no longer provide me with my planned satisfactions. He will take too much of my precious time, and wealth, and will demand far too much of my future otherwise. And anyway, remember that he’s still anonymous, faceless and replaceable with another one like him, only healthy.”
Thankfully, such shallow but too common thoughts are incompatible with and alien to Elizabeth’s warm heart, her eyes open to a brother who shows her love but, even moreso, inspires her to show him love in extra ways, drawing from her extra joys from giving more, and making her more perfectly human, innocently. May we be more like children in the ways He meant us to.
My youngest brother was born in 1958 with an atrial-septal defect (heart) and a pulmonary deficiency. He wasn’t expected to live beyond his first year, but there was a new surgery at the time to relieve the deficiency to allow him to gain strength for the eventual open heart surgery, a kind of surgery very much in its infancy at the time. The first surgery was a resounding success, but the final of three surgeries to correct the defect in the septal wall of the heart wasn’t until he was twelve years old. It is now known that survival rate for this type of heart defect increases when done much earlier.
My other brother and I used to carry our youngest sibling piggyback up the hill to school when he couldn’t keep up, which was almost every morning. Later when my other brother and I were in junior high, our sister would carry him piggyback to school as he grew older and needed a second surgery to repair/replace the shunt from the first surgery. We all shared in our own small ways caring for our brother… and being normal kids we also fought with each other. I never once remember him complaining about his condition. He also had the kind of personality that gained him many friends. The final surgery was successful but he came out of it partially paralyzed on the right side of his body. Again, no complaints of “why me” from him.
My brother eventually died from congestive heart failure at the age of 17, two and a half weeks before I graduated from college. Before he died he asked my father to give his graduation gift to me because he knew he knew he wasn’t going to be there. He often thought of others before thinking of himself. All of us are thankful for those 17 years with our brother, with a beautiful human being, who wasn’t supposed to survive beyond his first year of life.
Having a sibling with a disability was a blessing for us because of parents who showed us how to love each other and demanded considerate behavior toward all. My parents weren’t perfect and we weren’t perfect kids, but reflecting on those past years I see that our brother taught all of us about love because he was who he was. It would have been a unimaginable tragedy had he not been born because of an in utero diagnosis of a genetic imperfection. I still miss him but I know one day I will see him again.
Beautiful story! I don’t know how giving and loving I was at Beth’s age, but God bless her for being so patient with her brother! That’s Divinely inspired love 🙂
Sounds like you’re raising great kids. God bless to all of you 🙂
[…] Coming Home remarks on the great blessings of special needs children, stating, “Love sees that which narcissism and fear obscure.” […]
rev usmc – lovely story and brought tears to my eyes – would you care if I reposted it?