In my last blog I wrote about how enchanting a child's perspective can be. The very fact that we are born with a sense of how things ought to be is evidence that there is a God and that we're living in a fallen world. No one had to teach Sloan that it wasn't fair for one child to be born with sight and another without and no one had to teach my friend's little boy that his big sister is not the way she ought to be.

My friend Stacey's 15-year old daughter Alisha (who, like Brett, was born with severe disabilities) sometimes giggles for no apparent reason. Often this involuntary giggling occurs at inappropriate times, times when they wish she would remain quiet, like during their meal time prayers. Usually it's Stacey's five-year old son Caleb that struggles to be still and quiet for prayer, but the other night, Alisha started giggling, and little Caleb became a tad irritated. When the prayer was over, he asked, "Why did you get her anyway?" (implying that she hadn't been one of their better choices). He wasn't entirely satisfied with their answer that they'd actually "gotten" her before him, and he exasperatedly asked why God doesn't just "heal her up?"

Caleb doesn't know a life without Alisha. She has always been there, and he has never had any inhibitions about trying to communicate with her. Stacey tells of how (since he was really little) he has been scrambling up onto her wheelchair and pressing his nose against hers, just staring into her eyes. Though Alisha has always been a fixture in Caleb's life, he is probably only just now beginning to realize how much easier their life would be if only God would just "heal her up". Sadly, we aren't going to be able to give him any simple answers, because we don't have them. We can only share that we have chosen to trust in God's word and His promises and that as far as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways higher than our ways and His thoughts than our thoughts. (Isaiah 55:9). Sure, there have been blessings unveiled in some of the difficulties, but the sharp ache of what could have been never goes away entirely and sometimes it's overwhelming in its intensity.

I've shared here before that Paul's words, "perplexed but not in despair" (2 Cor. 4) epitomize how I feel about Brett. I take great comfort in the fact that Paul, in spite of witnessing all manner of spectacular miracles, still didn't feel like he had all the answers. If even Paul never got to a state of being un-perplexed, than I can be certain I'll never arrive there...and that's okay... because, like Paul goes on to say, "we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that for outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal" (2 Cor. 4:16-18). We can't see the eternal glory that Alisha and Brett are achieving here on earth but we can live without despair and know that they will be perfect and whole for all eternity and that their heavenly rewards will be far greater than anything we can possibly imagine.