I’m sure everyone in recent weeks feels like they are living “a life we never expected.” But this work by Andrew and Rachel Wilson, a couple from England where Andrew is pastor of King’s Church in London is not about the coronavirus. As the subtitle notes, it is the story of a couple who found themselves parents of two children with regressive autism. It would be difficult to overstate just how much I think you should read this book. My worry is that my appeal may fall on deaf ears. Perhaps you don’t think this kind of book is your cup of tea. You may not have children, or your children don’t have special needs. Or you think a book dealing with such topics would be a bit of a downer. Or maybe you just have so much going on right now to read a book. Or maybe you don’t read books. (That’s a problem!)
Let me give you a brief excerpt from a chapter titled The Orange.
You’re sitting with a group of friends in a restaurant. You’ve just finished a decent main course and are about to consider the dessert menu when one of your friends gets up, taps his glass with a spoon, and announces that he has bought desserts for everyone as a gift. He disappears around the corner and returns a minute later with an armful of round objects about the size of tennis balls, each beautifully wrapped with a bow on top. As he begins distributing the mysterious desserts, everyone starts to open them in excitement, and one by one, they discover that they have each been given a chocolate orange. Twenty segments of rich, smooth, lightly flavored milk chocolate—a perfect conclusion to a fine meal and a very sociable way of topping off an enjoyable evening. The table is filled with chatter, expressions of gratitude between mouthfuls, and that odd mixture of squelching sound and intermittent silence that you always get when a large group is filling their faces.
Then you open your present. You’ve been given an orange. Not a chocolate orange; an actual orange. Eleven segments of erratically sized, pith-covered pulp . . .
As Andrew Wilson goes on to write, you may understand that a real orange is better for you. But “A nice meal has taken an unexpected turn, and you suddenly feel isolated, disappointed, frustrated, even alone.” All of us have felt like that at one point or another. What do you do? How do you go on? How do you pray to God who could have worked things out differently?
I had first become aware of Andrew Wilson from reading a blog Think Theology where he is one of the primary contributors. I have always found his writing clear and thoughtful. Only more recently did I learn about his family situation and the impact it has had in shaping him. Andrew and Racheal (they write alternate chapters) write movingly of what it means to be the parents of two children with special needs, struggling to navigate life knowing that around every corner is a struggle that other parents don’t have. And they continue to seek after a God who planned this turn of events in their lives.
There are so many topics that are deftly handled in this relatively short (160 pages) work. These include sadness, lament, grief, the fight for joy, unanswered prayer and others. The perspective is not one of triumph but one of lessons learned while in the trenches. But the subtitle is so true, these are “Hopeful reflections on the challenges . . . “
This is a work of hard-earned wisdom from people who know real disappointment. They have been, to use Paul’s words “struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Cor. 4:9). But it is not a journal of grit and determination, but a testimony of hope in our gracious Father God, who loves his children perfectly.