Parenthood is never simple. No school truly prepares you for it. Think about it: caring for another human being, a small child, for the first time—it's dizzying. Yet there is trust, there is love, there is hope. Most couples become parents almost naturally, without too much difficulty, though that hardly prevents the everyday mistakes born of inexperience.
It is different for those who, without any special strength or preparation, suddenly find themselves the father or mother of a child marked by physical or mental handicap—whether from illness or accident. The reactions that follow such a painful awakening vary. But one temptation nearly always comes: feeling less responsible for a child who will in fact demand both greater sacrifice and greater competence. It comes at a moment when you feel wounded in your hopes and cheated of the joy you had imagined—a child like you, perhaps even better than you.
Feeling less responsible! Situations that demand more of us than we can give usually stir this sense of partial revolt. It is as if God had given us too little for too large a task. As if Providence had placed us in an unjust situation, and in rebelling against that injustice, we tell ourselves we are less truly a mother, less truly a father.
Then we try to escape. Discreet escapes, sometimes hidden from our own conscience.
Then we try to escape. Discreet escapes, sometimes hidden from our own conscience. Soon enough we become acutely aware of our own limits, our tiredness, our incompetence, and we find excuses to avoid seeing, to forget, to withdraw at least partly from the daily struggle. Soon we tend to overestimate the competence of others—especially the "specialists": the doctor, the psychologist, the educator, the priest—and we ask more of them than they can give. Up and down, up and down. And underneath it all, never quite silent: discouragement.There are no miracle cures. But every testimony, every conversation, every letter that fills the treasure house of Ombres et Lumière's archives agrees on this: the true education of the handicapped child begins when parents, with great simplicity, accept full responsibility for their son or daughter.
From that moment—once they reach this inner turning point—they begin to concentrate on what they can do themselves, what they can learn to do, what they can teach their child to do.
But it is a turning point one cannot reach alone. With the support of God, with his grace, we become capable of the effort that frightens us. So the first step toward responsibility is not a hardening of the will or a turning inward, but an opening to the Other above all—the most distant yet also the closest, closer to our true self than we are ourselves.
This opening to the Other demands, in a way, an opening to all others—even if, as sometimes happens, it is the love of a small child that teaches us about our Father's love. An open heart to God's tenderness means an open heart to family, to friendship, to the Christian community.
Besides, those who struggle with courage are helped more easily than those who lose heart quickly. The full responsibility of parents attracts—you might say it "calls forth"—true friendship. It is not a calculation to be made; it is a fruit to be awaited with trust.
To be awaited with trust... always remembering that one does not assume so great a responsibility once and for all, without setbacks, without moments of inner emptiness, without periods of discouragement, without pedagogical mistakes. "It hardly matters if you fall, so long as you fall climbing upward."
Moreover, responsibility freely assumed increases the effectiveness of working with specialists—doctors, psychologists, educators. They will behave differently with parents determined to learn, to study, to act than with parents too tired or too passive. Here again, one must find the right balance: asking neither more of the specialist than he can give, nor less.
At the moment when parents accept full responsibility for their child, paradoxically, they discover how much the other—all others—can offer them.
—Marie Hélène Mathieu, 1984 (from Ombres et lumière No. 24)