If ye love me, keep my commandments.
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Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.

…There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
Sylvia Plath, ‘Daddy’

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Exodus 20:12

Paintings

I love the Dutch Masters.

Here you see worthy folk presenting themselves before God and the world, in beautifully executed, honest paintings, that celebrate the great protestant virtues; humility, modesty, industry, love of family and love of God.

The free, Middle Class lifestyle being then relatively new, many of the paintings present an interesting double pairing of contrasts: of common experiences that were also special enough to be worth celebrating — in this case the many bourgeois settings — and intimate, private moments that also evoke shared, universal human emotions.

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Introducing my daughter

One of my daughters was born with Down syndrome. She is two now, but the picture above shows her when she was aged one (click for a larger look). We knew about her condition before she was born — in fact we were told a highly exaggerated story about how disabled she would be, but that’s a tale for another time.

She’s a wonderful kid, curious and cheeky in a very cute way, with a big infectious laugh and an almost outrageous enthusiasm for life that frequently bubbles over and draws in the people around her. And she has a special place in her heart for me — she’s a ‘Daddy’s girl’. Of course she loves her mother deeply (as do we all), but when she’s upset it’s me she turns to first for comfort. And when we’re out, she and I are a team.

As well as an ordinary play group, she goes to a special class once a week, with three other little children of around her age. She has a wonderful time there, she likes the other kids, and she is especially affectionate — in a surprisingly grown up and sweet way — to one particular little boy with whom she has been in class since shortly after they were born.

My wife and I, as well as her teachers, are delighted with her progress.

In the top 2% all round

In fact all the kids in the class are are doing very well. All four of them are in the top 2% of that class for this year. The other 196 kids in her class have no chance of catching up, ever. Because those 196 kids were among the 98% of babies with Down syndrome whose parents have been persuaded to allow their doctors to kill them before birth.

The centre where the classes are held caters to about 100 special needs children, and I guess they are in the top 2% too — every one of them. The approx 5000 others who would have gone there will never learn to walk, never sing songs, learn clapping games, or give their little playmates hugs and kisses.

They’ll never squeal with joy, or sob on Daddy’s shoulder.

Jesus’ commando raid

But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night… 2 Peter 3:10

I perfectly understand why parents-to-be feel unable to bear a disabled child, I was horrified and terrified when I found out my daughter would be intellectually disabled. I felt sadness, disgust, anger, humiliation, guilt — every selfish and stupid emotion a man can feel. I’d love to say ‘I’m not ashamed to admit’ how I felt, but the truth is I am deeply ashamed of the awful things I thought.

But in that darkness, in the darkness one night, Jesus blessed me with a single grain of sense and, contrary to all that was going on in my mind, I found myself praying to God to help me love my daughter, and that if he didn’t reject me, then to make me able to not reject her. I prayed, ‘Lord, just put the love into my heart!’

My daughter is the second of non-identical twins, and there is a lengthy tale behind her first few days in the world, involving ambulances, incubators and misleading diagnoses, but I will cover that another time. Nevertheless, much had been going on, and I had been able to maintain an emotional and physical distance from her for a long period of time. It wasn’t until several days after she was born that my wife, who could see what was happening, told me gently but firmly that it was time to stop keeping myself apart from our daughter, and suggested, ‘why don’t you bath her’.

I undressed her and there she was, pale, naked and limp like a little rag doll. I looked into her eyes, and it seemed that they were searching — searching for someone to love her. And as I recall it, perhaps a voice inside me whispered, ‘man, look at this child, she needs a mother and father to love her, can it be you?’

Then I felt something happen in my heart. Like a commando in one of those old war movies, Jesus had placed a bomb in the huge concrete dam I had built around my heart. First there was a faint rumble, then a little crack, then a trickle, then as the warm water splashed gently on my daughter’s skin, a great flood of love began pouring out.

…as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.The Gospel of St John 13:34

God has blessed me with so much love for my special little darling that my heart nearly bursts with it — and he filled her with more love for me than I ever imagined such a little vessel could hold. And out of his grace, and without needing to be asked, he blessed us with much joy and laughter too.

When we were trying to come to terms with the imminent prospect of a disabled daughter, some people told us ‘It won’t be as bad as you expect’, but for me that doesn’t begin to describe it. A better explanation would have been, ‘it’s going to be better than you could ever have imagined.’

Further reading

“Not a vegetable after all”

I like the scene in ‘As Good as it Gets’ where at the start of their road trip the troubled protagonists are glumly discussing how bad they feel, and how they have so many hang-ups all resulting from their crummy childhoods. Then, in an attempt at consolation, one of them says something like ‘everyone has a similar story’. Whereupon Mr Udahl, Jack Nicholson’s character, gives a short comic monologue to the effect that not everyone has had crummy childhoods and not everyone is miserable in their lives. Some people have wonderful happy lives, with ‘noodle salad’, and furthermore that the real reason our protagonists feel miserable is not due to events in their pasts, but due to simple childish envy.

I’m not sure whether it was intended as such, but to me this is the turning point in the movie. If everyone is sick all the time, then the chance of becoming healthy logically must be remote, but not everyone is sick. Some people have a bad start in life and never get over it, others have a bad start in life and go on to live great lives, others start off with all that life can offer but end up unhappy; and still others have wonderful childhoods followed by blessed and happy lives — ‘noodle salad’.

The road to healing begins with the realisation that you have a choice.

There are people who are whole, they live joyous and purposeful lives, they enjoy love and support and give it to others, they bring up their children with abundant affection in stable caring households and enjoy great family realtionships, they love God and live in the miracle of the Holy Spirit, and when they die Jesus says to them “Well done, thou good and faithful servant … enter thou into the joy of thy lord.” (Matthew 25:21)

Introduction

I was reading one of the many excellent conservative commentators whose work is available these days on the internet (when I remember whom it was, I will update this post), and he or she made the following highly perceptive observation.

It’s widely believed that we as people do what we do — particularly the bad things — because of our emotional state, whether in the passion of the moment, or as a consequence of the long term emotional effects of things that have happened to us, in childhood for example.

There is some truth in this, undeniably our emotions have some influence on our behaviour — especially strong emotions that cause us to temporarily act out of character — but by far the most important reason for what we do is not how we feel, but what we believe. Most of what we do, and almost all of the worst things we do, are not ‘out of character’ at all, and even those things we do when we lose self control are strongly influenced by the beliefs we hold.

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A time and place for everything

But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, [and] easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. James 3:17

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