8:30pm – bed time prep for the early bird like me. I was brushing teeth when the father of the children walked in and smiled with an arched brow: “S has got a B+ with his Physics test.” I blurted out: “Wonderful! Did you praise him up and down?” Some men are not accustomed to big shows of emotions and mine is one of them. He handed me the phone: “Why don’t you?” I dialed and followed up with the “good for you… I am so proud” dutiful yet truthful praise. I could almost see his mouth curved up with a slight smile as he accepted my congratulations. After over 21 years, I learned to take his not-at-all exciting excitement as true excitement. He was happy despite of his scant exhibition of emotions.
A B+ from a relatively ordinary state college is nothing extraordinary comparing to our friends’ children’s A’s from those prestigious schools. To us, it is. May marks the end of his junior year, a miracle of itself that exceeds all our wildest dreams. It also has been the calmest time since the day he was born. Distance has mended much wound for us all. Now that he has leased a year-round apartment, his trip home has become even more scarce. Whenever we see him, he seems relaxed and almost confident, in contrast to the tormented (and tormenting) phantom that was so miserably inapposite. As much as I want to keep the safe guard of low (or no) expectation about this once explosive tragedy, I can’t help feeling hopeful – that the future might be good, that he would be fine and that he could be happy.
I recall having a conversation – one of those mixed-agenda talks before his junior year to prompt him to strive for a good school year. I started with a picture of the past of gloom and doom and then paired it with a contrast, a future filled with prosperity and joy - if he would work for it. “You deserve to be happy. It’s time for you to be happy.” I emphasized. It sounded like one of those pep talks a parent would say to encourage his unfocused child. And yet I meant every word of it – of all the goals, dreams and hopes I ever had for him, I wanted him to be happy.
I thought of one particular sermon when our pastor admonished the secular mentality of parenthood – “whatever you do, I just want you to be happy”. Have I just defected to the other end after 21 years of Christian education and fervent prayer we have invested on our children? I found myself choking on this frightening question. Is there any ground to pardon a convict when the cause of her crime is as unintentional, even innocent as the offense itself? Surely there have been and will be plenty of suffering lives much worse than him, but he is in fact the saddest human being whose unhappiness has been incurred not by his poor choices but by being himself. Can I, as his mother, find exception in God’s judgment for a superficial hope like “happiness” for a sad child like him?
Nerely 3 years he has gone off to college, giving this family a much needed time and space to heal from a volcanic nightmare that feels like yesterday and a life time ago. Such paradox is confusing but every bit true, just like him. I have to discipline myself to stay at the farther end where memory fades out and almost seems unreal. Still, there are moments when the past would flood in and become present, and there it is all over again: his tears and agony were mixed with mine, his hell became mine and his suffering mine too. I have not yet fully forgiven myself when I remember his loneliness – not one, his family included, ever offered friendship to him. For 18 years of his life, he was subjected to nothing but his peers’ cruel tease and cold alienation. The phone never rang, birthday invites hardly came and at the youth group the ball conveniently skipped him. He was the square peg in a round hole, unwelcomed if not unseen. The two words he carved on his wall in NH home “I SUCK” might as well be engraved on my heart forever. I could still see him there, the poor boy at the far end looking at this world with every longing but no capacity to fit in, all the while thinking it was all his fault that he was this lonely and unhappy.
No, I have not forgotten man’s chief end and that without faith all happiness in life is but vapor. With an exception like him, whose disability is who he is, I have but the comfort of not only God’s limited atonement but also His unconditional love. If he is His sheep, the Master and Maker would continue to care for him to the end, despite of what this poor mother’s guilty and selfish wish, even when it is plainly “I just want you to be happy”.
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