What About the Boy?

A Father's Pledge to His Disabled Son

by Stephen Gallup

 
 

Are you ready for healing?

Ridiculous question, right?

Everybody in need of healing is ready for it. At least it seems that way on the surface (Many years had to go by before I was able to add this sentence).

Throughout the campaign to restore my son to his birthright, the high points of which are dramatized in WATB, I felt utterly–almost violently–impatient with any suggestion that:

  • His healing ought not be the first order of business
  • Our efforts to bring about his healing could be misguided
  • Healing was perhaps not God’s will

The apparent odds against succeeding were almost not a consideration. I understood that important goals required effort, persistence, sacrifice, positive thinking–and all that was OK! I wanted to do all that, so we could eventually accomplish the thing our family so desperately needed.

I think now that, if we had achieved complete success, it might have affected me in a bad way. Evidence that I’d been right with regard to the above points could have made me insufferable. Inflexible. Incapable of ever learning again. Never mind the fact that any effect on me would not compare to whatever wellness might have meant to my son. I still cannot see how he is better off without having attained wellness. Growing up as a well kid would have been a good thing for him.

Anyway, without that evidence, I felt confused and humbled. The years that followed have involved a fair amount of soul-searching. I’ve tried to be open to words of wisdom from various sources, but most often the input meant nothing. About a year ago, something triggered a little epiphany, a new way of understanding a word of advice that had been offered near the end of WATB. Today, I heard something that built upon it.

If you have wrestled for a long time with an unresolved problem like this, and are prepared to listen to a message that might not reinforce your own most strongly held opinions, I invite you to click here. As mentioned above, for a long time I was unwilling to hear different ideas. That kind of stubbornness did my family no good.

I’d like to know what you think.