Are We Just Victims Of Chance?
By a caring mother
My daughter was born with Auditory Processing Disorder – a condition that makes it difficult for her to comprehend quickly what people say to her, or to even work out that people are speaking to her at all. Normally the part of the brain that performs this function works effortlessly without us even knowing, in the same way that we don’t have to think about breathing. With my daughter, however, her brain finds it difficult to work out the direction that the sound is coming from, and therefore, what sounds need to be listened to. The brain also has difficulty in processing all the different sounds in speech quickly enough to work out their meaning. Though her IQ is quite high, she can appear to be ‘off with the fairies,’ or as ‘a space cadet’, because she misses so much that goes on around her. Her experience would be like listening to the world through a mobile phone with poor reception.
Because I am a teacher who has worked with many such children (around 5% are diagnosed with it, whilst many more go undetected), I suspected fairly early what the problem was. I remember crying out to God one night with an ache in my chest that was almost physical. I saw her life stretching ahead of her with so much pain and frustration. Faces of children I had taught, who had the disorder, passed through my mind. I saw those who struggled to make friends because they couldn’t keep up with the quick banter of other children, and those who spent much of the time exhausted because of the physical effort of trying to listen. I pictured those who found learning to read so difficult because they couldn’t hear the individual sounds in words, and therefore thought of themselves as dumb. I loved my daughter so much, the thought of her facing a life like that was almost more than I could bear. How much easier would it have been to face it myself, than to watch someone I care for so deeply suffer so much. How could a God of love have allowed it to happen? Was it something I did when I was pregnant that she would have to suffer for, for a lifetime? There were so many unanswered questions.
I remember, at the time, talking to a trusted friend who had had to work through the grief of two children diagnosed with Autism. He just said, ‘It will be alright. God doesn’t see things the way we do.’ How true were his words. God does not rank a person’s worth on what they achieve in life, whether they are popular, beautiful, smart, rich or successful by society’s standards. Before we were born He planned each of us with a plan that stretches into eternity. No random act of chance can rob us of an inheritance that will extend long after we are dead. In fact the times of suffering and struggle that we face in life can produce an eternal weight of glory. I could rest knowing that God loved my daughter even more than I did, and He had her future well in hand. I was part of that future. Perhaps even my teaching abilities were given so that I could help her with the therapy she needed from an early age.
Some of the scriptures from the Bible that give me such hope are.
1 Peter 5: 10. ‘May the God of grace…after you have struggled, perfect, establish, strengthen and settle you.’
2 Corinthians 4:17. ‘Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.’
Rom 8:28. ‘And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.’
What a tremendous hope! Whatever the suffering a loved one is facing, whatever the deep pit of despair in which we find ourselves as we taste grief, God is with us. We do not have to be victims of chance. We do not have to build walls around ourselves or our loved ones to save them from hurt. We can know that as we reach out to God, He will be our strength and our comfort. He can use even those things that seem unjust and unfair to strengthen and mature us, giving us an inheritance that is forever.
Two years down the track, my daughter is doing far better than I could ever have hoped, yet I know that somehow I have changed too. I find myself rejoicing in her little successes and seeing her struggles as something that is making her a little ‘woman’ of character, not just a victim of chance.
