ears to hear
The day Fear lays my friend flat, pressing her back, her head on the hood of my car, the day her tears dot the pavement at our feet, Adam is the only one who knows what to do.
And it has nothing whatsoever to do with what he lacks.
Adam and I have a routine for after school. He gets in and we talk. I wave hello and wait to hear his voice. I wait for his blue eyes, bright, trained on my face. I ask about his day and watch his brow furrow in concentration. I see him search for words, looking back, back in his own mind. And I wait. And most days, I have to turn down the music so that he can reach far enough back to find words for me, so that he can pull his eyes from the stereo, his mind from the listening, long enough to see and hear me. I think he understands in this order: first, numbers–math, music (first the rhythms, the notes, then the lyrics); then, written words; finally, spoken words. He misses no details. When he seems least attentive, really he’s only lost in processing so much at once.
After school, Adam knows I will have his attention first, and then I will allow him to rest in the music. But this particular day, Adam climbs in the van and reaches first for the CD case, driven, purpose strengthening his gaze. He pulls out a CD and offers it to me, making eye contact, speaking to me before I can require it of him. “Brandon Heath, Leaving Eden,” he says, and it isn’t a question.
When Adam initiates communication, I work hard to reward his efforts. When I can, I respond immediately. This behavior falls so far outside of normal for us that it doesn’t even require consideration on my part. I switch the CD, the first beats pulse, and only then does Adam put down his book bag and settle in, content.
Adam’s mind may be cluttered with sensory information and he may struggle with inhibited neural networks, but our years with our son have taught us this truth: his heart remains open and unstained, unhindered by all the complexities of motive.
Adam hears. He hears when we won’t. And he acts when we would question.
My dear friend, precious to me, opens the van door this day and sits next to Adam. It has been weeks since I’ve seen her. She has entered perhaps her most difficult season in some time, and weeks of physical illness and treatment have spun into a confusing tangle of still more symptoms that plague her daily. Days before, she spent the day in the emergency room, unable to breathe, hives rising angry red on her chest.
I feel overjoyed just to see her again. “You look good—better,” I say to her, smiling as she sits.
She smiles, but weakly. “Well, I think I am—a little,” she says tentatively, shaking her head. “It’s been rough, E, and I’m still not sure exactly what’s going on. We think it’s the medicine, but I have to come off of it slowly, and we’ve still got at least one more dose.”
I notice her face looks pale, but all in all, she appears to be slowly repairing.
We talk to Adam’s teacher for a few minutes, laughing, catching up on the day, and then I turn back to my friend. And that’s when she puts a hand out, on the seat in front of her, and says, “Wait.”
I wait, watching her breathe carefully, purposefully, in, out. “Are you okay?”
She nods, but doesn’t speak, still holding the seat in front of her. Finally, she settles back. “It’s these dizzy spells,” she says, sadness dulling her eyes. “They come and go. But E,” her voice wavers, and I hear the helplessness and pain, “I can’t even function right now. I can’t even take care of my family.” It’s these last words that make her break, and I break with her, feeling the bruise of this truth, feeling how much she wants to be able to do simple things—make dinner, wash clothes, pull her boys onto her lap.
“I know. I know it’s hard,” I tell her, reaching back to touch her knee. But her hand is on the seat in front of her again, and she shakes her head. Dizzy.
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive home?” I wonder what she will do if she’s in the middle of a busy intersection and all the straight lines melt away.
But she nods, recovering. “I think so.” I am still not sure, still wavering upon insisting against it, but she says, “I’d better go now, though, while I can. But let me hug you first.”
She gets out of the van and begins the short walk around the front of it to my side. And just as I open the door to get out and hug her properly, she stops. She stands maybe three feet away from me, but she can walk no further. She lays her body back, flat against the hood of my van, my van hot from the afternoon sun, hot because it’s running, hot because it idles, ready. I move quickly to her side, alarm stealing every word I have, save her name, and this I call like a jagged question.
Tears now streaming down her cheeks, she says, “I can’t even walk, E. I can’t even walk.”
In moments, the dizziness passes and she can stand, but I won’t take my arm from around her shoulders. She says she’s tingling all over. And I am guiding her back around the van, back to the passenger seat beside me, when she says, “I can’t drive like this.”
“No, you can’t,” I tell her, buckling her in. I gather her boys, her purse, shutting off her car and handing her the keys. “Let’s get you home.”
“My car’s still running,” she says in a panic, and I press her arm lightly with my fingers.
“No. It’s okay. I just gave you your keys.”
Her shoulders shake with grief, her tears still falling, and I hand her a tissue. I don’t know what to do. She needs, and I am faced only with my lack. I want to tuck a blanket around her legs, but I have nothing even to stand in for soft. I want to hug her tight, but I need to drive. I want to press a cool cloth against her forehead, but I have no water, no cloth. I’m not sure whether to take her home or straight to the emergency room. I want to tell her it’ll be okay, but I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening to her.
And that’s when the song begins.
We back out of the parking space, and she catches her tears in her hands, and she looks at me, stunned, as Brandon Heath’s voice fills the car.
Tiny boat on an angry sea, sails torn and tattered/How could Jesus be fast asleep, like it doesn’t matter/Soon as He opens His eyes, the storm just dies/It’s alright, everything’ll be okay/Just hold tight, I’ll be with you the whole way/when you’re weak, I’ll be strong/Keep going, we’re almost home/it’s alright, everything’ll be okay…
“E, what is this song? Who is singing this song?” She breaks apart, shattering, the words falling, broken with her voice, broken with her heart. “It’s exactly what I need, just this.”
And somehow I know she can’t hear me just now, can hardly even think, but I want to tell her how the song came to be playing at just the moment when she needed to hear it. I want to tell her that God anticipates our heartbreak, that He hurts before we do, that He prepares to catch us when everything falls apart.
But I couldn’t have spoken. His love, His timing, His abundance—it all overwhelms me, it leaves me speechless, breathless. I drive, smiling, patting her leg, knowing that later, I will tell my friend how God knew, how He spoke to Adam first because Adam’s so much more yielded than the rest of us.
It’s not the first time.
Before Adam could talk, he prayed the chorus to the Casting Crowns song, East to West. Another dear friend of ours likes to say that Adam always seems to know exactly the music that fits her mood when she’s around him. It’s as though he feels what has gone unexpressed.
Just a few Sundays ago, while Adam spent part of his vacation with Mom and Dad, they shared worship with a couple visiting the beach. Mom can hardly sing, overwhelmed by Adam’s worship. He sings in worship as though nothing hinders his ability to communicate.
And as soon as services end, Adam opens up his growing collection of music and selects a CD. Mom stands talking to the visiting man, welcoming him and trying to make him comfortable, not attending to the music flooding the room. The visitor gasps.
“That’s Dolly Parton,” he says, surprised, incredulous. (And when I heard the story, I thought, “Dolly Parton? Where did Adam get a Dolly Parton CD?”)
So Mom turns her attention to the music. “Yes. I think it is Dolly Parton,”she says, smiling at Adam’s eccentricity, loving him for it.
“No, you don’t understand. Dolly Parton is my all time favorite,” the man says, astounded, I suppose, that Adam has selected just that, just then. Mom sees just the hint of shine in his eyes, and she nods toward Adam. “He knew.”
Mom tells this man about my friend and her Fear, about the day Adam knew just what to do. And the man stands weeping over Love and a God who uses a little boy with a pure heart to choose his favorite and set him at ease, just then.
Call it coincidence if it makes you feel more comfortable. But these days, I’ve come to see that comfortable is overrated. And comfortable falls too short. Comfort falls far, far too short of the God I love, the God who can do “more than all I ask or imagine according to the power that is at work within us (Ephesians 3:20).” Don’t you see that this is nothing for a God who can feed thousands with a little boy’s lunch?
I look around at so much pain, so much need, so much that’s “torn and tattered,” and I don’t know what to do. The day my dear friend’s hurt stung, searing, ripping through the afternoon, I desperately wanted to tuck and touch and soothe. And in those moments, I came face to face with my lack, when she needed His abundance. But Adam knew just what to do at just the right time, because
he was listening.
He who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says…
As it is written:
‘No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him’—10 but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:9-11).
