You Were Always to Be More

The other day, while researching a project, I stubbled upon an old article I’d written about my youngest son (who happens to have Down Syndrome) and the blow to support for kids like him when those in roles of leadership, reveal themselves to be injured, sinful, and corruptible creatures (like we all are).   I thought of the words, “you must be perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect), and realized the reason we need to be better, is not because God will love us if we are, but that the world can’t see God’s love if we don’t.   One of the comments confirmed this thought with the words, “You must do more.”  

My first reaction was shall we say, less than enthusiastic.  “Lord what now? What was that more? How could there be more to do?”  But the comment resonated deep.  It was a reminder to me, that nothing happens without God’s consent, without God’s permission, and that He sometimes puts things and people in front of us, to help us see what we must confront.  The comment felt like a commission.  I am a mom of a son with special needs. He turned twelve yesterday.  We’ve begun discussing with his teachers what happens next, when he no longer looks like a child, when he isn’t a child, when he needs to live somewhere other than with us.  I thought about how he will need friends other than his family to provide the stuff of life that makes life something beyond the ordinary, the routine and the mundane.  He will need us to start on this hard list of things to do now, if they are to be there for him in the future. Hard things to face in ordinary time, harder in these days.

 “You must do more.” What was the more? My brain rattled off what I saw as being needs in my other children as they grappled with the trials of adulthood.  He would need hobbies. He would need meaningful work. He would need income. He would need a network of support to get him to the doctor or the dentist, or haircuts and to weekly mass. He would need friends.  He would need all these things to be not imposed upon his life but grown into/grafted into it.  His family would be part of this but could not be all or only.

Why did he need all of this more?  Because Covid-19 revealed what happens when he gets the more of company, of peers, of daily interactions and meaningful work.  He’d learned to make his bed, wash the dishes and fold towels. During this time of Covid-19, my son learned how to ride a bike without training wheels, how to pull up Disney on the television for a quick Muppet break in between Zooms, to set and test a shower and take it on his own, and to make his own sandwich –ketchup and Oscar Meyer bologna on white bread, cut into triangles. (I wouldn’t advise it, but he eats every crumb). Part of why he learned all of this, was the gift of extra time having no place to go in particular allowed. Part of why he learned this, was his siblings expected more of him than his mother. His mom would make him breakfast. It was a form of love and service and habit with no ill will intended, but he needed to master more skills. Here was the more.  His older brothers and sisters would say, “Make it yourself, like us.” And didn’t stress if he poured cinnamon toast crunch more full than I would have as long as he finished it.

One of them even taught him how to scoop it with a measuring cup to have better portions. He learned to pour the milk too, even when it’s full. (Though some of us hold our breath when he does the same way I do when a teen practicing driving gets too close to a mailbox).   They wanted him to be twelve, to be like them, more independent. It would make him better than he was, more perfect by letting him do things imperfectly. 

 Every step toward his independence came for me with a list of worries…would he remember each time to do what he needed to do?  Free will and freedom, growing up is hard to do, and I suspect, harder on this grown up.  The more was as much about taking on, as it was about surrendering, dying to the self that gave love through service that now was no longer required so that new service could be given.

“You must do more.”  Seemed like a motto to embrace in this time when all our enjoyments, education, work and ordinary efforts take extra effort.  Willing to do the more requires we both will to do and do so willingly.  When we’re sent from the mass, whether we’ve watched it on television or been in person, we’re sent, commissioned to do this very thing, the more.  We aren’t merely to receive passively, but to respond actively in our hearts and allow Christ to transform our lives.  We will go from being men who fish to fishers of men. We will go from being water to being the better vintage of wine. We will go from five loaves and two fishes to twelve baskets left over after feeding five thousand.  I thought about all the ways in which we sometimes get used to things we should not. Covid-19 taught this through big and little ways.  We shouldn’t have become used to long hours and not having dinner together whenever possible.  We shouldn’t have traded in time in commutes where we served work rather than our families.   The time home also showed me other ways we shouldn’t have, which Paul’s siblings corrected via natural intervention. 

Trisomy 21 means the child has a little extra, a little more.  His needs mean we need to do the little extra, the more his siblings have done with and for him, helped him to do more with and without them.   He could do more.  I should do more.  We should do more. Why? Because it has always been God’s will for all of us, for each of us, to be more than we planned, and do become more perfect even as we go about the business of living this life imperfectly.