Hello all, today I will keep the introduction short as the “Kingsbury
Family Journal” flashback from 2008 is rather long.
For those who don’t quite understand what I am alluding to,
I started this blog in April for Autism month. And I include in each post a
flashback from a journal I wrote when Ben became a teenager, in 2008. Rough
times… If you want to read in chronological order, you have to go back to the
first post of April 2013 ☺ But it doesn’t really matter!
Anyway, today I want to continue my meanderings about
health issues, because, ha, autism is a health epidemic! But whatever you make
of it is up to … YOU! ☺
Duluth, August 2011
The Spiritual Reason for Developmental Delays and other Health
Problems
January 29, 2008
It has been widely discussed
throughout the membership of the Church that children born with developmental
delays are special to Heavenly Father.
As I wrote this last sentence
I paused, and I started my internet search engine to research what the General
Authorities of the Church had said about the topic, going to lds.org for
official Church doctrine. Goose bumps immediately covered my arms and my hair seemed
to stand on its own on my head as I discovered the Church had just launched a
brand new site, called disabilities.lds.org.
I clicked on the link to
unearth a mine of information for the members which supports everything that I
have been writing so far: our struggles with Ben’s diagnosis with autism, my
health issues and our feelings of isolation at times. Maybe one of the reasons
for disabilities of any kind, I pondered as I was reading on the website, is to
teach other people how to deal with us, who are not quite like them, to show
them how to act when things are difficult.
I just have to say that it
amazed me that this website appeared out of nowhere, for me to look at when I
needed it! Of course it wasn’t out of nowhere. I believe it was pure divine
intervention and it gave me renewed impetus to continue on the writing of our
experiences with our son’s autism, my daughter’s auto-immune disease and my
health struggles as well.
Sister Chieko N. Okazaki,
former first counselor in the Relief Society general presidency, writes in her
book Lighten Up: “Is there something you can also consecrate –something
that perhaps you never thought the Lord might want? We think of limitations as
something to get rid of, and certainly we should not cling voluntarily to any
limitations that hinders our spiritual growth. But what about a physical
handicap? What does offering deafness or blindness to the Lord make of that
handicap?” What wisdom in those words! I love Sister Okazaki’s positivism; she
always buoys me up, but this is brilliant: we will consecrate our limitations
to show that with God all is possible and we can make it nonetheless. Grow
spiritually despite our hardships and trials and give him the good fruits of
our labors!
As our family has grown in
understanding of our particular trials, we have come to accept our lot in life
and come to rejoice in the lessons that we have learned. It doesn’t mean that
they have been easy to assimilate! But we feel fortunate to have been given the
chance to be stretched in that manner. Sometimes I jokingly say that in the
pre-mortal world somebody should have stopped me when they were handing out
challenges and I eagerly kept raising my hand! No, in all seriousness, I know
that others are in situations far more difficult than mine.
Sister Okazaki says in her
Book Lighten Up that we must thank the Lord for all things: “In “all
things”? Surely he means just the good things?
Isn’t that an extraordinary
promise? Trials transformed into blessings? But it is the truth if we believe,
we must consecrate our difficulties, even all our hardships, even our son’s
developmental delays, trusting that they will become blessings according to the
Lord’s timetable. All in His due time.
Of course we must not forget
the refining nature of trials, the refiner’s fire. At times I have to confess I
have thought; “Boy, I must be the really coarse kind to deserve such prolonged
refining!” But now I do not ask “why” anymore. Nor do I compare myself to
others. To quote Sister Okazaki again, she says: “Don’t compare yourself to
others –nearly always this will make you despondent.”
Alma 34:32-33 reads: : “For
behold, this life is the time for men to prepare to meet God; yea, behold the
day of this life is the day for men to perform their labors.
And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses,
therefore I beseech of you that you do not procrastinate the day of your
repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given to prepare
for eternity...” I wish to speak
for myself here: despite my limitations I am under the same obligations as
anyone else, to work out my own salvation and to do the best I can.
Elder Boyd K. Packer has
said in his talk, “The Moving of the Water”: “The very purpose for which the
world was created, and man introduced to live upon it, requires that the laws
of nature operate in cold disregard for human feelings. We must work out our
salvation without expecting the laws of nature to be exempted for us. Natural
law is, on rare occasions, suspended in a miracle. But mostly our handicapped,
like the lame man at the pool in Bethesda, wait endlessly for the moving of the
water.” This reveals two things to me: first that I must be the best I can for
Heavenly Father and second that Ben –or I or Angelique for that matter–
probably will not experience a miraculous healing in this lifetime.
Elder Boyd K. Packer said in
the same talk: “...sympathy is generally low on nourishment” and he also
quotes the Prophet Joseph Smith as saying, “There must be decision of
character, aside from sympathy.” I truly believe that one of the reasons for
those struggles of health is to test if we shall remain faithful despite the
pain, the difficulties; to test our character and its resolve to stay true or
curse God. The sympathy that others can manifest to us is nice, but we must not
thrive on it and make it the focus of our existence; conversely if it is
lacking in our lives it makes it very hard to endure to the end.
Elder Boyd K. Packer has
encouraged members to show compassion: “Why not help the parents who have extra
things to do and extra expenses and are confined because of a handicapped
family member. Encourage the teachers and social workers who show such devotion
to them. And it wouldn’t hurt you to donate a few dollars or a few hours to one
of the many organizations which help the handicapped. If we do this, without
the slightest idea of selfishness, it will remain in our account against that
time when we may need help. And the works of God will be manifest in our
lives.” I don’t think it really matters what you do and how you serve as long
as you show understanding and compassion, then the good works of God will bear
fruits, for you and those you have unselfishly served.
I now wish to discuss a
truth, profound but never talked about in General Conference. Perhaps because
it isn’t essential to our salvation to gain a testimony of this truth while we
are here on the earth, or maybe because it doesn’t pertain to the majority of
the Church membership.
In the very beginning, there
was a war in heaven. Jehovah, before he became known as Jesus Christ, presented
his plan which was accepted by our Father in Heaven: He would provide a way for
Father’s children to come to earth and return if they so choose by following
Him through His Atonement, He would be our Savior.
Lucifer, on the other hand,
wanted to force all of us to return to Father’s presence, not one would be lost
but we wouldn’t have the freedom to choose. Heavenly Father chose Jehovah’s
plan. Lucifer became furious. One-third of the spirits of heaven thought his
plan was good and wanted to follow him. But Heavenly Father ordered Lucifer to
be cast out of heaven. Michael the Archangel, before he became Adam, was one of
the ‘soldiers’ commanded to escort Lucifer out of heaven.
Revelation12:7:10 reads:
“And there was a war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the
dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,
And they prevailed not; neither was their
place found any more in heaven.
And the great dragon was cast out, that old
serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was
cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”
We know that Lucifer is
Satan and that his angels are the one-third of the spirits who thought his plan
as good and chose to follow him and were then cast out of heaven. Michael is
also known as Adam who is our first mortal father in our lineage. But who are
“his angels” mentioned in Revelation 12:7, the ones that fought alongside him
during the war in heaven and succeeded in casting Lucifer and his one-third out
in to the earth?
We know that these “angels”
must have believed Jehovah’s plan was the best plan for them to return to
Heavenly Father’s presence after their mortal probation. They must have been strong
warriors like Michael, their leader. As I write tears come to my eyes because
in my heart I believe my Benjamin to have been one of them. I do not know why I
believe. I just think he might have been there. As I have read the scriptures
and pondered, I can imagine him having been there.
I imagine Satan might not be
thrilled at having been escorted out, to put it mildly, as we know from the
scriptures that it was an all out war, by those “angels”. We know from the
scriptures also that he was there from the very beginning, making life
miserable for Adam – and Eve of course–. But now, being in the last days, he
knows that Satan’s days are short to try to get at us and especially at those
special “angels” that cast him out of heaven. Perhaps those souls that come to
the earth with special limitations imposed on their spirits, with mental and
developmental delays, are protected from the adversary’s attacks by a merciful
Father in Heaven.
And maybe the special little
boys that are so impaired and remain pure, not touched by the Devil’s cunning
temptations, were some of Michael’s “angels” that fought in the war in heaven,
protected by their disabilities until the time they can return to dwell with
Christ and Father once again. Incidentally I was talking about this theory of
mine with one of the missionaries serving in our ward, Elder Guison. He shared
with me that his mother’s uncle has cerebral palsy and received a patriarchal
blessing which would confirm this.
But I want to underscore
that nothing has been officially stated by the Church on this matter. Again,
probably because it does not pertain to the whole of the body of the Church. It
is however very interesting to us parents of those children and natural for us
to wonder. It is comforting to me that indeed, Ben is as special as I feel he
is and some days, it makes the burden that we have to bear a bit lighter. But
in the long run, it doesn’t change much, we still have to live up to our
individual expectations, and endure to the end.
Doctrine and Covenants
58:11-12 says: “After that cometh the day of my power; then shall the poor, the
lame, and the blind, and the deaf, come unto the marriage of the Lamb, and
partake of the supper of the Lord, prepared for the great day to come.
Behold, I, the Lord, have
spoken it.” I am comforted by these scriptures which tell me that disabilities
will be no more after the restoration of the perfection of the souls. And
eternity is forever whereas we’re in this mortal sphere but a small moment. If
we were aware of how very quickly our mortal lives really pass by, we wouldn’t
despair as much as we do. Enduring would not be as difficult.
President Gordon B. Hinckley
just passed away on Sunday night, I will miss him and Ben will too as he is the
only Prophet that my son has known. Ben was born a few months after President
Hinckley became the Prophet of the Church. But President Hinckley is perfect
now, completely restored to incomparable glory. How wonderful is that promise
for us who still wait!
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