Looking back, I cannot believe I was ever so naive to think our family had the market cornered on miraculous healings. We’d already adopted two children with special needs into our family in 1987, and God made them well.
Meradi the day of the childrens' choir performance, Spring 1996. |
We knew Meradi could not speak, and we’d been thoroughly informed of her challenges of cerebral palsy and strabismus, a deviation of the eye. Reports clearly stated that she was significantly developmentally delayed. But as I traveled to Thailand in 1993, I made plans for speech and physical therapies my husband and I would seek for our new daughter, already dreaming of the day she would stand and give testimony of God’s healing power in her life.
I honestly believed that with love, proper nutrition and excellent therapy, Meradi would one day speak and sing.
After arriving in Thailand, a social worker from Holt Sahathai Foundation (HSF) took me to meet Meradi at her office. As I held her in my arms for the first time, I fell in love with the dream of who she would become, not who she really was. She was in fact a 6-year-old the size of a 3-year-old. She could barely walk unsupported, could not speak one word, and was mentally on the level of a 2- to 3-year-old. More important than any of those facts, however, was her incredible spirit and her beautiful smile.
After our brief visit together, Meradi was taken back to her orphanage. She was told that I, the lady she had just met, would return in the morning to become her mother. What did the word “mother” mean to a child who had been in an orphanage since the age of thirteen months? How does a child form a mental image of “family,” when she has never lived in a family? Yet Meradi took me at face value, on faith, and with enormous hope and trust that could only have stemmed from past kindnesses shown to her by social workers and caregivers.
Meradi waited for me the next morning. She waited for five hours on the porch of her cottage, without food or drinks. Her caregivers told me she refused to go to the dining hall because she might miss her “chance.” With the hope of love, her incredible strength of spirit and joy, and a beautiful smile, she waited for a kind stranger to take her away from her little friends and the only life she had ever known.
I stepped onto the porch and she was in my arms, clinging to a hope that all her longings would be met in the arms of a stranger.
When we returned home, I hit the ground running. I visited every physician, specialist, dentist, therapist and public school special Ed teacher I could find. I was going to work hard so that God would bless my efforts. Together, “we” were going to “fix” the cerebral palsy.
Two and a half years later I was exhausted, and so were Meradi and my other children.
One morning in an individualized education plan (IEP) meeting, I was told ever so gently that in Meradi’s case the words “developmentally delayed” meant what I dreaded—mentally retarded. She was not going to reach milestones more slowly, as I had hoped, but instead she would be limited for life. I struggled with my belief that “God can do anything.” I refused to accept this prognosis no matter what the tests said. I denied not only reality, but also God’s power to work in circumstances beyond our abilities.
That same morning, the speech pathologist and school director told me they had never seen disarthria, a speech condition, so severe. Meradi would never speak, they said. Instead, sign language would become her method of communication.
Grief lay upon me like a dark and heavy blanket. I was angry with God. I cried until my eyes ached and I had no more tears. My throat felt as if I were being choked. My dream for Meradi died. I could not give her what I expected from myself. In truth, I was guilty of the sin of pride but too selfish at that point to notice.
And yet Meradi seemed happy just the way she was. She was loved, she belonged, she was safe and secure and her tummy was full. She had parents, brothers and a sister who loved her. She went to church to learn about Jesus, and she had friends. She lacked nothing.
We plunged into learning sign language, which proved to be fun and positive. Meradi longed to “sing” in children’s choir at church and I knew it, so I figured out signs for a simple song my other children were learning, which Meradi practiced eagerly. On Sunday I asked the choir director if Meradi could join them that evening.
The lights in the sanctuary dimmed. A light above the choir shone down on the children. The music began. If Jesus had stood before me that moment I would have been no more profoundly moved by Him than I was by the sight of one little girl, with one disabled hand, signing the words of a simple children’s song. She poured out in praise all the love in her heart. Her smile, her confidence and her joy were there for all to see. I was the one who was healed that night. Healed and humbled beyond what mere words can express. God needed no spoken words to be glorified. He only needed a small, humble, trusting and joyful little girl, who is what Meradi had always been.
That night I apologized to my daughter for pushing her and working her so hard in the past with oral exercises and monotonous, repetitious sound production. Meradi, whose name means “wisdom” in Thai, smiled at me with her lovely, dark eyes, as if she knew all along that love more than anything else had been my overriding motivation. Meradi was born that night in a way, because for me, it was the beginning of the rest of her life. I understood from that moment on that my job was to love and nurture my daughter—and to let God continue to mold her.
Since Meradi’s homecoming, my husband and I have adopted seven children, five of whom have Down syndrome. The words “developmentally delayed” no longer threaten us, they merely present challenges. I’ve learned that a child with life-long challenges is able to glorify the Creator in a lovely, poignant way, even more than an articulate, bright person too prideful and strong-willed to yield to the will of God.
