Child of God

I used to think that carnival sideshows were cruel. I believed they exploited those unfortunate people born with genetic and other defects. My views have tempered over the years. I now think there is some legitimacy in being made aware of those on the edges of the human condition. They have their stories to tell and those stories deserve to be heard.

I recently saw a show on the Discovery channel that focused on a young girl in Haiti. She was the victim of a horrible tumor that had so disfigured her face she no longer even appeared human. The program was about how a team of doctors set about to help this child. She had to undergo a series of operations to regain some semblance of a human being. After the first operation she looked into a mirror to see the results of what the doctors had done. She hadn't looked into one in over two years. I watched as a single tear streamed down her face. I was so touched by that moment that I thought about it for days.

I'm like most people, I am attracted to beautiful people. Like most men, I like to look at beautiful women. Some call that shallow...I don't know...it seems to me to be written into the genetic code somehow. What I know is that seeing this child made me want to turn away. At the same time my heart went out to her and I was again reminded of the words of John Donne: "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." You could just as easily substitute the words illness or disfigurement for death in that Donne quote. It was not her death but her condition that I felt connected to... We are all connected even though most of us turn away from those so afflicted.

None of us are free until all of us are free. None of us will be completely healthy until all of us are. My faith teaches me that we, human beings, are all a part of one family. This child of God, so horribly disfigured, is connected to me and I to her. My heart went out to her and I felt some small twinge of the pain that she has endured. My heart understands a part of what she has gone through because we are connected.

Perhaps only the strongest among us are called on to bear such burdens. Perhaps the very reason they are sick and broken is to teach the rest of us. Thinking thus keeps me from blaming God for such things. Sometimes things just happen. My faith helps me to understand that one day she, and all the sick and broken human beings...all the children of God...will be healed and made whole. That's what helps me to go on. Twenty-five million years from now their afflictions won't matter...what will matter is what we learned from them and how we responded to them. My faith helps me to understand that when I encounter the sick and the broken, those with afflictions I can see...and those with afflictions I can't see... I need to reach out to them as I would my own family...because they are my family.

But for the Grace of God...there go I.