The Boy

My wife and I, much to our dismay, don't have children of our own and it seems that we probably never will. My wife's sister and her husband, realizing this, decided to let us in on their children's lives as much as possible. So while other Uncles and Aunts are merely Uncle Name and Aunt Naima, we are Nunkie and Auntie. The following is an e-mail (slightly edited) that I received shortly after our Christmas time visit.

"Yesterday the little Neighbor boy came over to play. Of course The Boy had to to be the first to tell him all about his Christmas. It pretty much revolved around, 'my Nunkie'. the neighbor kept saying, 'what??' and The Boy said, 'you know, NUNKIE!!!!' Well anyway, it was humorous because they were both so earnest. Then The Boy said, 'My Nunkie drives all the way here from Indiana and it's many long hours in the car. He makes sure that he comes here each season every year for every holiday like my birthday. He comes for thanksgiving and we eat turkey and then he comes for Christmas and lives in the basement while he waits for santa claus. He takes me to church and we take adventures together and we love God.' I immediately thought, Richard is going to die when i tell him this."

Yep, I'm officially dead. Swollen and exploded by love.

The boy is like any exceptional boy in so many ways. And it never occurred to us that anything might be wrong until he started preschool. Then with the sensory overload of a room full of kids hopped up on life, some unusual behaviors began to present themselves. Now in kindergarten the behaviors have gotten more and more disruptive and he has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome (AS). This is sometimes referred to as High-Functioning Autism.

It doesn't matter that there are worse things that a child may suffer from. And it doesn't matter if we say, "at least this" or "at least that". All that matters is that there is a child that I love that is suffering. This is so much more wrenching than knowing that an adult is suffering. And the boy really is beginning to suffer; he is starting to realize that he is not like other kids, that his acting out and repetitive behaviors set him apart from the other boys. But he can't seem to make himself stop. ARRGGGHHHH!!!!!

I want to hold the boy and say the right words and make it all better. But I have nothing but love and prayer. Nothing? I guess this is where faith comes in. Can God give us the strength to deal even with this? Can God work even this out for good? (See Higher Than the Angels)

I've thought about how to explain this to the boy, when the time comes, and this is what I've come up with: Jesus struggled and stumbled under the weight of His cross, and Simon of Cyrene had to carry it for Him. So, while as God Jesus can do anything, as a man He sometimes needs help. This is a little cross that the boy is carrying for Jesus. And the boy does love Jesus. As a Christian he is "completing the sufferings of Christ." But The Boy is not alone. Nunkie and Auntie are carrying crosses for Jesus. Mommy and Daddy are carrying crosses for Jesus, and so is little sister.

I realize that to an unbeliever this may sound like madness, and God may sound like some monster: "The Great Vivisectionist in the Sky". It is true that the existence of evil is the great challenge to belief in God. There are good philosophical answers to this problem. But notice that when confronted with concrete situations, it is not our intellects that are immediately engaged, but our emotions. So is trying to deal with these sorts of situations by appealing to logic alone really logical? No. But in the meantime, I'm adding The Problem of Pain and The Pillar and Ground of Truth to my reading list.