So today I finished reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon, a novel written from the perspective of an autistic boy named Christopher Boone. What starts as Christopher's attempt to solve the mystery of a neighbor's dog's "murder" becomes an adventure into his own life, and the reader is given the opportunity to see the world through they eyes of an unlikely protagonist. Christopher does not understand human emotions very well, does not like being touched or looking at people in the face, does not like the colors brown or yellow, and he uses his incredible memory and math genius as ways to calm him down in a world where there is just too much to process.
One of the most difficult parts of the book for me was Christopher's discussion of God. As Christopher puts it: "People believe in God because the world is very complicated and they thing it is very unlikely that anything as complicated as a flying squirrel or the human eye or a brain could happen by chance. But they should think logically and if they thought logically they would see that they can only ask this question because it has already happened and they exist."
What worries me about this argument is that a lot of my belief in God is based on illogical, intangible things, and I can't imagine trying to explain my belief to Christopher. At the same time, I think his inability to see the emotional world around him takes away from his ability to see what I see. It's my philosophy that God is Love and Love is God, and I can see God in everyone that I am blessed to get to know. It's things like this that I don't expect Christopher to understand if he is unable to look another person in the face.
But, the real reason why I believe in God is something that, oddly enough, Christopher might be able to understand because this reason is a boy who Christopher, if he were real, might meet in his classes at school. This boy, who has his own set of learning disabilities and struggles that will make his life difficult, is my brother Andrew.
Andrew could best be described as a miracle. I remember calling the baby inside my mother "Big Bird" because we did not want to know whether or not it was a boy or a girl, and my sister and I were so excited for the new baby that would becoming in the spring. One morning, however, we woke up on the day of our joint birthday party to discover that my mom and dad were not home, but Grandma and Aunt Lori were making breakfast for us. My mom had gone to the hospital in the night and had delivered our brother, Andrew, 11 weeks early.
Now at the time I didn't understand what a big deal this was, how scared my parents were that this tiny baby had come into the world so soon. My sister and I went into the hospital that night to see him. He weighed 2 lbs. 11 oz. and his head was smaller than a baseball. We had to wear these yellow hospital gowns to go see him, my new little red brother, and my sister put a small plastic cake into his incubator that played Happy Birthday. My dad turned 38 years old that day, and he tells us now that he has never been more scared. He went into the hospital chappel that night and prayed to Our Lady of Lourdes, crying for his new born son who some thought did not have a chance.
I should mention that Our Lady of Lourdes is a name given to the Blessed Mother Mary from when she appeared to St. Bernadette in Lourdes, France. When she appeared, Mary showed Bernadette a spring that to this day heals people with its water. To this day, The Song of Bernadette is one of my dad's favorite movies. My father prayed to her that night because it was her feast day, and he continued to cry out to her to give my brother healing. There was a time when my brother wasn't gaining weight and they were scared that we might lose him. (I only grasped the severity of the situation when months later, the little boy in the incubator next to my brother's, died because his heart had failed.) Now the thought of losing my brother is terrifying, and I can't imagine life without him because he has become such an important part of my life.
It's those little things like the fact that my brother was born on 2/11 weighing 2lb.11oz. and was put in room 211 that make me feel like everything in the universe is working together and that nothing is totally an accident. The number still pops up to this day in the most remarkable of places. But now that my brother is a healthy, almost-13-year-old, it's those big things that make me believe in something higher as well. My brother looks up to me, and makes me want to be the best person I can be. But I can't help but admire him, his positive attitude despite his struggles with school and learning how to read, and his uncanny ability to love and accept everyone unconditionally and forgive wholeheartedly. When Christ said that we had to be like children, this is what he meant.
My brother is my inspiration, by greatest gift and blessing and my personal evidence that miracles truly exist. Even Christopher is able to end his story with hope, and I know that my brother gives me the strength to end each of my days with faith. And while I struggle less than he does with schoolwork, he has made me more conscious of my gifts and more willing to give them to others. I love you Andrew, and I know this is not the last time I tell part of our story.
0 comments:
Post a Comment