In many respects, our family is a typical, small town, American family. There are four of us: my wife, Lyn, our two sons, Todd and Ian, and myself. I am a full professor in the Mathematical Sciences Department of Huntington College, a small Christian liberal arts college located in Huntington, Indiana. We also have three cats, including a Maine Coon cat.
We live in a large, old, yellow house on West Park Drive, across from Huntington Tractor Sales. We have nearly an acre of land on which we like to plant and maintain a fairly large garden.
Our older son, Todd, a student at Anderson University, has red hair, is over six feet tall, was a National Merit Scholarship finalist, and was the first tenor sax in his high school jazz band. He is a bright, funny and popular kid, even though he came home from his first year in college with an outrageous haircut and sporting an earring.
Our second son, Ian, at fifteen, is now the tallest member of the family. He has very dark hair, a large athletic frame, and a great sense of humor. But this is where our normal American family comparison ends, for unfortunately, Ian is autistic. He has been considered severely mentally impaired since being diagnosed as autistic nearly thirteen years ago. Only until recently, Ian was placed in school in a special education class for severely and profoundly mentally and physically handicapped children. He attended these classes for seven years with the grim prognosis that things were not likely to improve much.
Several years ago I was painting our home, a job taking most of one summer. Lyn and Todd were away for about two weeks at a church work camp in Texas, helping to build a church for a Hispanic community. Ian and I stayed home. Ian was attending summer school several hours a day, freeing me to paint. As I worked, I struggled over thoughts about Ian's handicap and Ian's eternal destiny, and about Biblical teachings concerning healing. I prayed as I painted and pondered. In one Biblical passage, Jesus admonished his disciples for not being able to heal someone due to their insufficient faith. In yet another case, God tells the apostle Paul that God's grace is sufficient for him to live with a problem from which he was seeking healing. Was our lack of faith keeping Ian from being healed? Or should we even continue praying for healing for Ian? Maybe we should be satisfied that God's grace was sufficient to help us live with Ian's autism.
We had always prayed that Ian's life would somehow glorify God. Nevertheless, questions about Ian's eternal salvation lingered in my mind. Ian hadn't been able to talk to us or communicate in any significant fashion since shortly past his second birthday, and I had no idea what thoughts, if any, he held about God or church. He had always attended Sunday school and church, but appeared to pay little or no attention to anything but to the music and to snack time.
Finally, as I continued painting, thinking, and praying on my ladder, I felt a sense of peace envelop me as I experienced an answer to my anxious questioning. "Don't worry, Ian will be fine." The words formed in my head as God spoke to my heart. "Your prayers have been heard. Don't worry. Ian is in My hands." Incredibly, only a few years later, Ian prayed a prayer of confession and invited Jesus into his heart! And that was only the beginning!
In what follows, I have written a running commentary about the answers to prayer in our lives between August, 1991 and September, 1992. Ian has added italicized responses periodically throughout the commentary. Some short essays, poems, or other things Ian has written have also been added. In addition, Lyn and others who are a part of this unfolding drama have shared their thoughts. The story is unfolded in loosely chronological order, but I would urge you, the reader, not to get too hung up on the exact timing of what we have written. Rather, savor with us Ian's escape from his own silent world. Enjoy Ian's italicized comments, an unedited, chronological record of how his skill at communicating changed over one year. We are all being transformed by The Miracle of Ian, a story that is, even now, continuing.
--Winfield Wetherbee
Huntington, Indiana
July, 1993
Lyn: I was never really angry at God about Ian's autism, but I had a lot of questions. Why Ian? Why us? Why would God allow this to happen? At first I couldn't understand what good could possibly come from it. It was like I was mourning for the child Ian used to be before the autism showed itself, and it took me a long time to get past that. When we first learned Ian's diagnosis, there was only one bright spot we could see--that God has a purpose in all things. Ian was given to us specially, and God could use our tragedy in a beneficial way if we could trust him. This was our faith, and it gave us strength. |
Win: When Lyn and I discovered for certain in late 1980 that Ian was autistic, we read everything we could find about this handicap. Most writings presented a dreary picture indeed, sharing long hard times of suffering interspersed with small triumphs. A less than promising prognosis for autistic persons was generally presented. For example, two-thirds of all autistic people require care at home or in an institution for the rest of their lives. We found the same responses in discussions with professionals familiar with autism, believed to be the result of brain damage that somehow interrupts the brain's messages to the body, prohibiting the body from doing what the brain instructs.
And what about Ian, we always wondered? Did he fit among the group of autism's victims for which there was so little hope?
A noted exception to the gloomy pattern was a book called SONRISE. It was about a family who managed to bring their son out of his autism. A couple of years later, we read a follow up book by the same author called A MIRACLE TO BELIEVE IN. In this book, the same family accomplished some great things with another autistic child. In each book, the accomplishments were largely due to a tremendous investment of time by the author and his family in working with the children involved, a commitment of time so great that a whole crew of dedicated family and friends were required in shifts around the clock, at the expense of many other commitments in their lives.
We were shocked at the antagonism we found towards these books and their author within the community of parents of autistic children. But the reason for this antagonism has become easier for us to comprehend as the years have passed. The method used within the books would require a twenty-four-hour commitment of time by a family, and also by an entire bevy of assistants. For many families, survival as a family from day-to-day would be hard enough to achieve in the normal course of events, much less while trying to make the expenditure of time and effort needed for these suggested techniques.
Additionally, an acceptance of the validity of the methods presented in these books could sow seeds of guilt in any family of an autistic child, especially if they chose not to disrupt the rest of their lifestyle in an effort to follow this demanding way of dealing with autism.
For us as well, a nagging feeling of guilt recurred faintly time to time. Could we have done the same for our child?
| Lyn: There wasn't only guilt to be dealt with; there was also fear for Ian's safety and future. Sometimes when my fear would overwhelm me (often at night), I would go into his room and kneel beside his bed, hold his hand in mine, and pray--for his safety, for my peace of mind, and for God's protection over both of us. Sometimes I still do this. Pouring my fears out to God seems to be the only way my mind will let go of the intensiveness of that overwhelming fear. |
Win: In July of 1991, the national meeting of the Autism Society of America was held in Indianapolis, Indiana, not far from our home. Lyn and I were able to attend this meeting, where, at two different workshops on communication techniques with autistic persons, we found a miracle, not only to believe in, but also to PARTICIPATE in! We found a way that can so simply and feasibly fit into any family's lifestyle that parents and professionals at first often have trouble grasping its reality. We found through the reports of professionals and enthusiastic parents a way into the mind of our son. It is a technique called facilitated communication--a long name for a very simple process. Through facilitated communication, we found our son.
I seeing Christ in you. I might not have recovered anyhow. Perhaps things worked out better this way anyhow. Know that my gratitude is great. You have been good parents to me. Really some day I will be healed in Heaven!