My daughter is handicapped. Whose fault is it? I need to know who to blame, because I have a score to settle. I'll need good lawyers, because I'm in a furious state of accusation.
There. I've said it. Now I must confess that this hunt for someone to blame is painful, destructive, and I want out of this inner courtroom. That desire is recent because my awareness of it is recent. I have to acknowledge that for some months now, a kind of order has begun to assert itself inside me. I can only say what I understand of it now.
When I learned during pregnancy that Philippine would be handicapped, I asked myself what careless thing I'd done to bring on such a catastrophe: a medicine? A fright? Or was I simply too tired and drained to conceive and carry a child? Had we been irresponsible? Then I remembered a quarrel between my husband and me: was it possible that clash had so shaken me that it damaged the child? (A subtle way of blaming my husband.)
The search for someone to blame was there from the start. It rooted itself at the heart of our marriage and my motherhood. It was a futile attempt—trying to rewind events to control evil or to prove it could have been prevented.
I buried these thoughts under simple convictions right away.
I told myself rationally that I was not guilty. Neither was anyone else. Least of all God, who is good. My suffering was tinged with willfulness or self-pity, and it gradually came apart.
I cannot prevent or repair evil
A few days ago, my eleven-year-old son—who has very weak vision and motor difficulties—said to me with tears in his eyes: "Mamma, I wish you could have made me without problems." Then he added: "I know that's not possible." Those words pulled me back into guilt: I made Piero badly, and Philippine worse still. The path my son showed me out of this self-accusation was to accept my own powerlessness. I cannot control life. I do not make my children; I pass life to them and receive them as they are. But there was another threshold to cross, which another event revealed to me: I must admit not only that I cannot prevent evil, but that I cannot repair the evil they suffer or divert it. Philippine had surgery some time ago that went wrong. A few days later, I began to feel her same symptoms—as if my body wanted to take her pain and carry it instead of her. This troubled me so deeply that I entered into rebellion. Seeing how far my guilt could push me infuriated me. I turned on God: wasn't it enough that my children were so damaged? Now guilt was driving me to destroy myself. For weeks I raged at God. I had thought I'd reached some acceptance of this trial, but I thrashed against it. I couldn't accept the reality of the handicap anymore. I wanted to stand between her and the harm that struck her. Suddenly, accepting Philippine's handicap felt like a betrayal of her. Full of anger, I screamed at God: "What are you doing? Don't you see what's happening to us? I don't want to be good anymore, do you hear me? I can't trust you or pray to you anymore. You'll hear me scream instead, because I have nothing else. Our contact hasn't broken, Lord, but expect some blows, because this can't go on." I, who for eight years had known no rebellion and judged it useless and exhausting, now felt it surge up in me with such violence that it sent panic rippling around me. I felt like Job on his dungheap, sometimes like the prodigal son leaving home because clearly the Father understands nothing at all.Becoming small
I asked myself how to escape this agonizing state. My first attempt was a frantic intellectual search for the causes of evil. But soon I understood that nothing would come of it and that I had to give up understanding, had to stop hunting for a culprit to punish. That requires an humility that costs me dearly. I see that the only way out of the vicious circle of destructive guilt is not to swell with anger but to become small—to admit that I cannot control life, not even my children's lives, that I am not omnipotent. But this doesn't mean I can convince myself of it intellectually, because that brings no peace. For life to flourish, I need to live this renunciation in a spiritual journey. I see that intellectual inquiry will not find me humility. I need to rediscover the sweetness of God so I don't wander in powerlessness alone. I need the care and consolation of my God. I continue searching for balance. I need to find how to live suffering without self-pity and without rage. The trap of guilt, with its taste of death, hides in both extremes. I have learned that in a simple acceptance of suffering—what I call self-pity—I harm myself. I have also seen that in rebellion, reasons for living are swept away like straw, and sadness and the flavor of death invade everything. Recent tragedies of mothers who have killed their severely handicapped children shook me to my core. They showed me a mirror of myself twenty years ahead. They put before me the challenge of seeking and finding balance—of turning my back on the instinct toward death, on guilt, and choosing life despite everything. And I must accept that all this inner work takes time, because it is subtle and existential.Recovering a truer motherhood
The days pass. It takes time to calm down, to be silent, to listen again, to see. At the heart of all this inner struggle over evil and guilt lies my mother's heart, which is being put to the test. Guilt has led me into a love that was no longer right. How painful to admit it. It is so natural to want to give everything to a child in difficulty—you think that by loving him so much, he will suffer less. Without realizing it, you slip into a fused love. You try to save your child from harm and end up hurting yourself, and you repair nothing. Liberation begins only when I accept again to distinguish my life from Philippine's, my calling from her calling. I accept again that my life is what it is, with Philippine's difficulties that are not mine, with her secret that makes her beautiful. I try to see the beautiful things she creates around her, not only the difficulties she bears. I look at her unique and irreplaceable place in this world, independent of me. This perspective is so much wider and lovelier than the tight cage of harm that distorts everything. Already I breathe better. Liberation continues in understanding what true motherhood really is—stripped of fear, of fusion, of omnipotence. I know the way out lies in a purified love that lets the other be himself, have his own life, his own beautiful path that is not mine. I am such a bad mother that I asked myself: "Where do I find good advice, a model, a guide?" Recently I prayed the Rosary, watching how Mary in each mystery accepts calmly to be separated from Jesus. The Good Mother has taught me much. About love. Sophie Lutz, 2010(Ombres et Lumière n.167)
