When John got back from Africa the first time, he contracted malaria. It was the variety where you either recover or die, as opposed to the strain that lingers inside your system until your last breath. Doctors prescribed quinine, is my twenty year old recollection, and plenty of rest. He got better.
My hearing impairments were just part of how my ears behaved, for the past fifty years. Not much sound getting through on the left side, somewhat better on the right. But last summer an innovative doctor tried a procedure that was not around in the sixties, and my hearing is in the normal range. Astonishing.
With Benjamin's autism we have waffled between the belief that just the right strategy will lift him off the spectrum, and resigning ourselves to the reality that this is what his path will always be. Such movement takes energy in and of itself.
Sometimes the people we love fall captive to forces like addiction, or anxiety, mental illness or depression. Things you cannot precisely point to, or see under a microscope. And yet they hijack your routine and whack it to the floor. Things that ostensibly should be simple, like conversations, and decisions, become Gordian knots.
It is tempting to thrash ourselves with the assumption that we could have seen this coming. Prevented it somehow. And yet even that tangential thinking can suck energy from the more immediate effort to accept what is happening.
In the story of Joseph, circumstances contrived to land him in prison without cause. He was kidnapped by jealous brothers, sold as a slave, and then falsely accused.
And yet.
Even in the confines of jail, God managed to bless him. Which is a contradiction in terms if ever there was one.
"Then Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison, a place where the king’s prisoners were confined. And he was there in the prison. But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy, and He gave him favor in the sight of the keeper of the prison." Genesis 39
