If you know me well enough, you know that I'm not the type of person whose faith waivers... except for one instance. There is one thing in my life, so deeply intertwined with my innermost being, so fundamentally a part of who I am, so devastatingly gut-wrenching and heartbreaking that has the power to turn me into an atheist: Daniel.
Daniel was born into this world to a family that deeply, deeply wanted and loved him. He was the gift, the fruit of our new life in America, being born a little over a year after we had made the move across the border. He was the perfect baby--sweet, happy, beautiful, full of life. He was going to be the baby of the family, he was going to be Ceci's little best friend, and JP's buddy (now there were going to be two girls and two boys in our family!). I'm sure we all had great hopes and dreams of what our lives were going to be like with this little bundle of joy with enormous cheeks and a gummy smile. And there's been joy, of course, especially the first few years.
But as he grew older, the autism got more and more severe... and the joyful moments became more sparse. The pain--the absolutely profound sorrow--only grew with every birthday, with every missed milestone, with the sobering reality that his autism wasn't going to be the type they make movies about. The heartbreak when we realized he would never speak. The devastation when he started hurting himself. The sheer fear when we realized just how much he could physically hurt us during a crisis.
And God's silence. God's silence for 16 years since Daniel's diagnosis.
Autism is the type of cross you wouldn't wish upon your worst enemy. It's the nightmare in which you watch your loved one drown while you're unable to save him. We each watch Daniel suffer, imprisoned in his mind, unable to tell us what he needs, what's wrong, what hurts. I've heard it described by high-functioning autism patients as having your brain light up on fire due to overstimulation and wanting to distract yourself from the excruciating pain that causes by diverting your attention to a different source of pain (thus the brutal self-beatings). We've seen Daniel break through a wall with his head, with his torso. We've seen him punch himself until his face is bruised and his hands swollen. We've felt his nails digging into our skin. We've gone back to work or school the next day with bruises and cuts on our arms. We've watched him cry, utterly distraught, once his brain calms down and he realizes what he's done. Reader... it's very much a never-ending nightmare, especially for my parents.
This has been the cross God deemed fit for our family. And we do a very poor job dragging it around. It has unleashed a lifetime of sadness, mental illness, division, resentment, belligerence, and heartbreak upon our family. And God remains silent. The healing, the miracle, never came.
More often than not, I have to make the decision not to think about it. Because, when faced with God's strange indifference over this, I want to scream at Him and figuratively fist-fight Him. It makes me want to run away from Him, to want to punish Him with my disdain (as if a meager human being could punish the God of the universe). Because I don't understand it. I don't comprehend--I cannot fathom why He has allowed this to happen to our family. And the truth is that I never will--until (and only if) I get to heaven (the verdict still out on that one).
So yes, reader... my coping mechanism is complete avoidance. I compartmentalize so hard that I can go a whole day or two without thinking about my family. And I know what this makes me... a selfish prick. Yes, I'll be the first one to admit it. It's the only way I've found to survive. It's also the only way I've found to preserve my faith because the reality is, I love God so deeply that the thought of Him ignoring our prayers and not helping us with this breaks my heart more than I can endure.
But in the last several hours I've been thinking (and arguing with God) about all of this... and it seems that the most I'll get from Him is, "you don't understand now, but one day you will understand." And then, in his ever-gentle demeanor, He offers the consolation that is my other brother, Deacon Juan Pablo, a.k.a. the greatest pride of our family. Because what can be greater than to offer to God a son who will serve Him, whose heart will be configured to the heart of His own Son, Jesus Christ? What an honor! How many families have that privilege? How many families will have a son to give to the Church? We are blessed indeed. It is not lost on me the great source of consolation that my brother's vocation has been for our family. And, while I might not understand why God didn't want to help us with Daniel's autism (or at least in the way we wanted Him to), I am not unaware of the other countless ways in which He has helped us--has helped me.
So, those are my brothers. One, the source of the greatest joy of our life, the other, the cause of our greatest sorrow. Neither one of them is fully in charge of that, I realize--and I'm sure neither want of them is super psyched of having that responsibility. It is significant, however, that Daniel's 18th birthday and Juan Pablo's diaconate ordination happened in the same week. That's a God-incidence for sure.
In the midst of all that, I, once again, consistently fail to give my family much of anything--joy, consolation, support, etc. With so very little to contribute, I'm lucky they still call me to invite me over once in a while (though really that's just my mom). I often wonder if they would be better off if I'd just got lost, really... but I stick around for the sake of my mom. Maybe one day I'll be useful enough to actually alleviate the suffering of my family--or to be a source of consolation like JP is.
In the meantime, I thank God for the gift of my brothers--even when it's harder to thank Him for one.
