BY Dennis Morreau | June 10, 2020
That little guy in middle of the picture in the upper left was born about 3 ½ miles from that picture in the middle which, in case you don’t recognize it, is the U.S.S
Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The year was 1957, just 12 years after the war ended. The place was Tripler Army Hospital, a medical facility staffed to treat casualties of war, not complicated pregnancies. I weighed in at 11 pounds 9 ounces, and yes it was a difficult birth to say the least. Among other things my collar bone had to be broken in order to get me into this world after which the fun began. You may have heard of the various causes for children born with Cerebral Palsy and I certainly had many of them. The use of forceps around the base of the head, not enough oxygen in that I wasn’t breathing for quite a while followed by the use of 100% oxygen to keep me going. I am told the doctor came out three times to tell my father I had died only to be interrupted by a nurse rushing out to tell the doctor I had come back. To be clear, I wasn’t revived, I just came back. After the third time they had to lock my father in a room because he wanted somebody’s head. For my parents the news only got worse. I would probably die within a few weeks or months and even if I lived I would be severely disabled and mentally retarded. Their best bet would be to place me in a state run institution where I would receive palliative care until I passed.
For my parents, giving me up was not an option. They were both devout Lutherans and I was their child. I would receive the best care Navy doctors could provide. After a significant passage of time a name was given for my condition, Cerebral Palsy. That sounds very specific doesn’t it? Well in point of fact it is much like saying “There is something wrong but we have no way of telling what it is or how serious”. The way it was explained to me by a doctor friend of mine went something like this. Cerebral refers to the brain and palsy indicates trauma. Cerebral Palsy means some part of the brain received some form of trauma. Depending on which part of the brain was affected and how severe the trauma the resulting manifestations could cover a broad spectrum and you are probably never going to know for sure what that is for any one individual.
For myself the outwards manifestations are my fine hand coordination, my speech, and my ability to walk. Well that’s what you can see now but that isn’t what my parents saw for many years. I don’t think I took a step until I was about four and no one had any idea my brain was working for quite some time after that because I couldn’t vocalize. Signals from my brain to my speech centers and various muscle groups were being disrupted. I could make my different body parts move but it wasn’t automatic. It was all manual until by brain worked out new signal paths which it was able to do up to a point. Retraining the brain and strengthening the body was going to take time and effort and the more active I became the more injuries I would incur. At that time there was very limited medical knowledge as to how best to move forward because prior to the 50’s there was no forward. There were operations that were being experimented with which had very mixed results and thankfully I did not receive any of those surgeries.
Physically my development was based on dumb luck. Sure I received physical therapy on a regular basis but that was limited to stretching to keep things limber until the muscles develop but how was that going to be accomplished? For that I have to thank my grandparents. My grandmother, who at that time worked at Hechts department store, ignored everybody and bought me a blue tricycle. I so much wanted to ride that thing that I would pull myself up until I was able to sit up on it. After I was able to pedal my legs started to develop and because I was sitting my core developed and I began to be able to balance. My grandfather was a huge baseball fan and decided I needed to play baseball. He got me a plastic bat and ball and began by propping me up against the couch and would then pitch the ball to me so I could swing at it. That would go on for hours, and for him, everything in the room became expendable. As I grew older we took the activity outside where we would play catch again for hours at a time. By the age of ten I was a very active little boy, though still very small. What was important though was I had a good foundation on which to build and build I did. I was very active in the Boy Scouts, going hiking, camping , and canoeing. Later in life I took on Taekwondo which got me in to very good shape and kept me there for many, many, years.
All of this sounds wonderful and, in fact, it is. Here was my problem. In all my years of public schools, colleges, and workplaces I have not met or known of anybody with Cerebral Palsy, save for my wife and two close friends, that have even come close to my degree of independence and after college I was really beginning to wonder why. I had attended a special school for the disabled through the fourth grade but after that I saw not one disabled person all the way through college. Billie, my wife, whom I did not meet until my thirties, went to the same middle school I had attended and had a few of the same teachers. She benefitted from what the teachers had learned by teaching me because I was their first. I know this because I went back and asked them. Around the age of 23 I began asking the big question and instead of it being the question God asked of Elijah, ”What are you doing here?”, it was instead me asking of God, “Why am I the only one here?” You see I knew that I was not alive because of medical science. No, I was brought back to life, evidently several times, after medical science had given up. The answer I have been given over the last 40 years will take many more post to cover. For now, let me give you a few faith based views of what we have mis defined as a “disabled” individual.
What society views as disabled, God views was perfectly formed. That life, which was a gift of God, has value and it has purpose. It is for us to find what special ingredient God put in to the making of that individual and nurture it and it is my belief that we are going to be held to account when we neglect and discard that which God created. As in my case, you may not see that special ingredient for years or even decades. An individual’s value cannot be determined by how conveniently they fit into our world. Indeed their value is only realized by us when that which God put into them is allowed to flourish and shine. What does this require from us? Some of our time and all of our love. That may seem over simplified but it isn’t. I seems to me that this is how we as Christians are called to respond to all people everywhere, some of our time and all of our love. We are actually given the standard for that love and it is not the Old Testament standard of “Love your Neighbor as you love yourself.” No, it is instead the New Testament standard of “Love your neighbor as I have loved you.” As you may recall the gentleman who said those word died a few days later on a cross for our salvation. If we will just choose to live by that standard and realize that spending time and effort with individuals that take us out of our comforts zone seemingly to no end is not some painful duty we must perform, but is in fact a treasure hunt to find what gems God has placed in individuals He alone created , we will then and only then begin to experience the magnitude of God’s creation.
That Still Small Voice 