Faith, Love, and Joey – by guest blogger Jaclyn (Christian views on disability)

 

A few weeks back, someone forwarded a blog entry by the sister of one of our students with autism (You can find the original entry by clicking here). I was struck by two things: the writer’s skill with prose, and the sincere wrestling she had done with the issue of disability and faith in God.

 

Since then, Jaclyn, who writes for the Journal-Gazette, and I have emailed back and forth several times as she has worked on a guest entry I requested from her. The subject of our emails has remained fairly constant. We agree on many aspects of disability and faith issues, but found ourselves disagreeing on one point: how much God was behind or not behind someone having a disability.

 

I have the privilege of maintaining this blog, but this time, I’m giving the soapbox to someone else. I hope that her expressions here will expand your understanding of how faith and disability intermix, and cause you to talk about it as well. With that, I will allow Jaclyn to speak for herself:

One night at youth group, when I was maybe 15, the youth pastor told us to create faith timelines. We were to map out important events in our lives on the primary line — siblings being born, big family moves, traumatic events — and chart our faith as it related to the events above that. 

I did the Catholic school thing from kindergarten through part of fifth grade, and during that part — our youth, where we don’t question much anyway — my faith was high. I hadn’t had much of anything happen during those years, so there was no reason for faith to waver. My brother was born, sure, but no one died. There were no great accidents. I went to church every Friday with my class, and I said my prayers every night before bed.

When I was about 9 and Joey was about 3, he was diagnosed with autism. About that point, my faith line took a nose dive. The paper wasn’t large enough to show the approximate location of where it landed. I didn’t stop believing in God, but I thought this higher power was very bad. I never consciously thought “I want nothing to do with God,” but I didn’t have to think it for it to be true.

When I started to attend Sunday night youth groups in high school, my faith began to come back. Something about spending time with others who wanted to learn and teach about God made it impossible to deny God’s … not goodness, not power … it’s more “Godness,” really; I felt it too many times to question it, and anyone else who’s felt it knows what I mean. Despite this faith growth, I never knew how to wrap my mind around the Christian teaching of God as having a very large hand in our lives while seeing all that autism had done to my family. My mom no longer had a life, as she was the only one who knew how to take care of Joey. My dad kept mostly quiet about things, but it was easy to see his anger and frustration that he and his son wouldn’t have the shooting-hoops or chatting-over-beers relationship he saw his brothers-in-law and friends form with their sons.

My first inkling of how to reconcile Joey and God came my junior year of high school. I was chatting with a cute boy who had announced that the first girl he ever kissed would be his wife. “What, do you expect her to show up with a halo on or something?” I wanted to know. “How will you know when you see her?”

“I just will,” was his very cocky, ignorant answer.

This prompted the cute, but now clearly delusional, boy to go into his religious beliefs. I followed him until one detail, where I stopped him.

“Wait,” I said. “So you think bad things happen because of things our ancestors did?”

“Of course,” he said. “The Bible says …” but I cut him off.

“So you’re telling me my brother has autism because of something my great-great granddaddy did?”

The no-longer-cute boy had nothing to say to that.

The conversation stuck with me, and it made me compare God-as-I-was-taught with God-as-I-actually-believed. I came to the conclusion that if God is truly the all-powerful, all-loving being I believed, it hadn’t anything to do with Joey’s autism.

But what did this mean about the rest of God’s nature? If God wasn’t responsible for the bad things, could I actually believe this power was responsible for the good things? Logic says no, I couldn’t. God doesn’t dole out punishment or reward for humanity. Instead, God provides humanity with the strength and understanding and perseverance to deal with whatever the luck of the draw doles out for it.

That’s all Joey’s autism is: the luck of the draw. Autism is four times more likely to manifest in boys than girls, so if I were a boy, would I have it? If Joey were a Josephine, would she have it? The questions are unknowable, and they will drive us crazy if we dwell upon them. If God is wrapped up somehow in Joey’s disability, I don’t know why. I’m OK with that.

My mom prays with Joey every single night. It’s part of his routine; after she brushes his teeth and washes his face, he gets in bed. She kneels by the bed, and they pray for a good 10 or 15 minutes. I don’t know how the prayers go — Dad and I don’t interrupt them — but Mom has said that she prays for her family’s safety and happiness. She goes through the Our Father and the Hail Mary. She probably talks to her father and her sister. For the entire routine, Joey lies there. I’m not sure if he folds his hands. I doubt he closes his eyes. But he stays still, and he enjoys it. Does he actually pray? I don’t know; frankly, I don’t think it matters. This routine allows a mother and her son to have a special moment together; whether Joey thinks about God or hot dogs is moot.

Joey has affected the way I pray, too. I don’t pray for things to happen; I pray for the ability to handle whatever is thrown my way. That means I don’t pray to God to make Joey better — if God didn’t give Joey autism, it’s not God’s duty to cure him of it. Instead, I pray that Mom and Dad continue to have patience and love in their hearts for him. I pray for strength.

And I pray that Joey knows he’s loved.

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