Why pray?

On Saturday, May 9th, my friend Yoko found herself with a deep, compelling urge to pray for the life of her son. Since Yoko's son, Daichi, is on active duty in Iraq, she obeyed. She prayed all Saturday, and all Sunday, and all Monday. On Tuesday, she found out with the rest of the nation that a soldier at the end of his third tour of duty had gone on Monday to a mental health clinic in Iraq where soldiers went to receive counseling for combat stress, and shot and killed five other American soldiers. They were all, I think, soldiers with Daichi's unit. Daichi was not harmed.

There is no doubt in Yoko's mind (nor mine!) that the Holy Spirit had told her to pray for just this reason. Yoko and her husband are Christians, but none of their children are. When we found out that Daichi was on his way to Iraq, we all felt a sense of urgency to pray that God would put believers in Daichi's way, and use this experience overseas to bring Daichi to Himself. We all believe that this young man was spared because of his mother's prayers.

But that brings up an interesting question. If God wanted to spare Daichi, why not just go ahead and spare Daichi? Why all the drama? Why the requirement that his mother expend herself in prayer for something God was planning to do anyway? This question has been asked a lot through the centuries, with varying degrees of wisdom applied to the answer. In this particular instance I have only a glimmer of answer, and it's that if Yoko had not known so clearly that Daichi was in some kind of danger, she and the rest of us would not have seen so very clearly God's gracious salvation from it. God knew the end of the story before the beginning, but He wanted to make sure we saw that, and knew Him for who He is.

Daichi does not yet know this story. I have been encouraging Yoko to tell him, and the sooner the better. She has committed herself to do so, and wants to take her time with the computer to make sure she expresses herself in words that cannot fail to be understood. When she does, perhaps Daichi will comprehend at last that while he may not be interested in God, God is definitely interested in him.

The Other Prom

Last Saturday night, I took my son to a dance. A local service group periodically hosts dances for the physically and/or mentally handicapped at the recreation center, and when the flyers come out I always ask Kevin if he wants to go. He always says no. This time, he said yes! So we went.

The ballroom was packed, and the populace was assorted, to put it mildly. I hadn't been sure what to expect, but I had thought that everyone would be about high school age, and that wasn't the case. We had one very small boy, kids in high school, and then ages all the way up. There were a few wheelchairs, one walker, and some coke-bottle glasses. In addition to the physical handicaps, most people there had fairly obvious mental handicaps also. But oh boy, could they dance. There was a live band, and it was one hopping place.

We saw a guy from Kevin's Special Olympics team with his girlfriend, and a couple of guys from his class at school, but the others were not anyone we knew. A lot of them looked familiar though, because we've been a part of the handicapped community for a while now, and you run across each other at events, doctor's offices, clinics, and supported job sites. It's like a small town, really.

As I had been doing the dishes at home an hour earlier, I'd found myself getting tearful over this dance. It wasn't lost on me that a few miles away the rest of the senior class was at the prom, in tuxedos and stylish gowns, with professionally dressed hair and nails, and parents lurking in the front hallways to take pictures before their gorgeous children departed for the night. No such rites of passage for Kevin--he had to settle for escorting his dowdy old mom. So I mopped my eyes and straightened my spine and went upstairs to dress up a little.

And truth to tell, we had a fine time. The music was lively, the pretzels were not bad, and the crowd was cheerful, if sometimes oddly attired. Kevin's dancing involves the arms and the head, not the feet (he was happy to let me do all the footwork), but it came with a huge grin and a hug for his girl. We came home when we felt like it and counted it an evening well spent. Not bad, for something that didn't charge admission.

But still, I got a little misty. I'm a mom, and I kind of tend that way. Kevin's rites of passage are just going to be a little different; that's all there is to it. But I try to make them special in their own ways because he is so very special himself. So he wore black, and I wore pink. And we danced.

Love, Spud.