One of my favorite musicians, Mark Schultz, wrote an amazingly impassioned song called “He's My Son”. It’s about a man who is praying in desperation because his young son is very sick and slowly dying. He would do anything, even trade places with his son, if God would only answer his prayers and make his boy better. At one point, perhaps in frustration, he calls out to God:
Can you hear me?
Am I getting trough tonight?
Can you see him?
Can you make him feel alright?
If you can hear me,
let me take his place somehow
See he’s not just anyone,
He’s my son.
Now, I’ve never been to the brink described in this song, and perhaps you haven’t either, but I’m sure we’ve all felt similar feelings of angst in our prayer life. We rely on God’s multitude of promises to get us through, such as “wherever two or more are gathered…” and “you shall have the desires of your heart…” and when we come to God, we want answers that will satisfy our frailties.
For the last seven years my wife and I have been struggling with some very serious behavior issues with our oldest son, who is now 14. Two years ago his actions drew us into the realm of legal entanglements, a place we had hoped we would never have to go.
We have prayed and prayed, from every angle we can possibly think of, but the progress we hope for just doesn’t seem to be on the horizon. As a matter of fact, things with our son often seem to be getting worse. Fortunately, my wife and I have a very big God who has blessed us with a strong marriage. Without Him and his blessings, we never would have made it.
Still, sometimes when I pray for my son I find myself wondering and asking God “What am I not doing right?”
Our other son, Kieron, is a 12 year old miracle-boy. I see him this way because of the things that I have seen happen in his life, things that could have only come to fruition by the grace of God. Kieron is a child living with autism (Asperger’s Syndrome, to be exact) who has progressed so beautifully beyond all the initial expectations since his diagnosis at age three that it can be qualified as nothing short of miraculous. More on that in another installment.
Kieron is a budding lexicographer (not to mention meteorologist, pilot, neurosurgeon and superhero) and he likes riddles and puzzles of any kind, but most of all he LOVES word puzzles. He is the consummate punster, just like his dear old Dad.
He brought an especially cool little poser home from school recently wherein his teacher challenged the students to make as many words as possible using only the letters in the word LISTEN. The carrot at the end of the stick was that each student would receive bonus points on the next test for completing the puzzle, one point for every five words they created and a whopping five points if they could find another word that used all six letters.
The Asperger’s in Kieron often brings out an unflagging tenacity that I sometimes envy. He will stay at a task to the exclusion of all else until that task is completed. Sometimes it’s quite maddening for us as parents because along with the amazing stick-to-it-tiveness often comes some pretty serious frustration. Once Kieron’s mind is made up about something there is little, if any, room for deviation. That said, Kieron had set his eyes on those five bonus points and God help whatever got in his way.
He worked the letters for more than two hours. There were some tears that we had to help him through, but eventually he made 53 words. Some of them were short, like I-S, and some had five letters, like t-i-l-e-s, but the grand prize, that six letter word just would not reveal itself.
After another hour I heard a loud shriek from Kieron’s room and then a blaze of running footsteps just before he burst into the kitchen, his face beaming and a well worn piece of notebook paper in his hand. “I did it, Dad! I did it!” he shouted with pure, infectious joy. His smile was ear to ear.
“Let me see!” I nearly shouted in my own excitement, sharing his unbounded happiness- and tinged with no small amount of fatherly pride. He handed me the paper he had been working on. It was this sad little scrap that bore scratch out after scratch out and at least three scars where it had been erased nearly clean through. Amidst all the chaos there it was at the bottom of the page, written in proud little letters: S-I-L-E-N-T.
After all the jumping up and down, chest bumping and fist pumping that would make anNFL touchdown celebration look like child’s play, Kieron said something that just opened eyes:
“I guess you can’t make LISTEN without S-I-L-E-N-T. Isn’t that cool, Dad?”
Wow. I was speechless, which is no small accomplishment. My “eureka” moment had just come from the mouth of my son. From the mouth of a babe came the answer to the questions that had been draining me for all these years.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t been praying enough: my problem was that I hadn’t spent any time at all in silent humility at the feet of the Maker of the Universe! I had been determining for God the manner in which my wants would be met and the way that the answers would come. I had been bringing my soup sandwich of prayers to God in relentless waves of loud, clanging bells and actually expected Him to do my bidding. My problem was not the volume of my prayers, which could have filled books. My problem was the volume of my voice. My mouth was open when my ears and heart should have been. You cannot really L-I-S-T-E-N without being S-I-L-E-N-T. When we surrender, truly surrender, our hearts and mind and soul and strength to Him, there is no room for the sound of our own voice. There is only room for our silent humility.
The sudden peace that filled me was incredible. A little confused at my reaction, Kieron asked, “Are you okay? Why are you crying?”
“I’m okay, Kieron” I said with a little manly sniffle. “You have noooo idea just how okay I am, now. Great job!” He ran off, happy as a lark and with no idea just how much he had helped me.
I watched him disappear up the stairs and thought about the people who had told me that he would never be able to tie his own shoes or even dress himself. The boy who at one point had no future as far as they could tell had just completely shifted my prayer life and made me a better man and a better father.
I looked up to the heavens and said the only thing that came to mind.
“Isn’t that cool, Dad?”
***In case you were wondering, according to Scrabble’s on-line data base, there are 67 words that can be made from LISTEN and there are four words that use all six letters. You now know one of them, but can you get the other three without using the internet?
