To Sing Frogs Chapter 1b

Jack, Mike Cory and Steve a week after Jack's open heart surgery. At this point, we didn't think Jack would make it.

 

Amy is a “God Works in Mysterious Ways Believer.” Things don’t need to make sense for her to believe, they just have to “feel right.” Amy sees God’s hand in everything. I think such a deity would have too many hands, even in India. I chalk a lot more up to coincidence than my wife does.

Still, I tell people I’m a believer, too. Most who know me raise their eyebrows when I say that. Usually they allow me a conditional qualification. Because I think that religion needs to agree with proven science, I’m told that I’m a “believer of sorts.” It’s all an argument of semantics.



I do believe “God done it.” That doesn’t mean I don’t want to know how. I also believe everything is supposed to make sense if you put enough effort into trying to comprehend it. I’d like to find God’s memoir—an ancient dusty codex entitled Creating a Universe for Dummies—in some obscure forgotten bookstore.  Yes, I believe God created a universe for dummies. Look around.

I don’t want to hear that His creation manual is the Bible. I want numbers! Not numbers like three-in-one, or seven days, or forty days and forty nights. I want to see figures and formulas like Pi and Phi, A²+B²=C², and E=MC². Numbers don’t lie!

Religion and science, nurture and nature, Amy and me; somehow all the paradoxes must fit together despite the fact that we still haven’t found the Grand Unified Theory.

Even though my wife and I see things quite differently, we’re locked together like two rare earth magnets with north and south poles facing. Nothing gets between us when we’re focused on the same goal. Our relationship works.

On the ship of our family, I tend the anchor and she runs the sails. Of course we’re both needed, but we don’t serve the same purpose. We’re constantly trying to coordinate the proper times and situations when the appropriate personality should have the final say.

In July of 1994, that resulted in us adopting another boy to go with the three biological sons we already had. When doctors told us that Amy’s child-bearing days were over, we turned to adoption to add girls to our family, but Jack came available first. Amy just couldn’t say no when given a chance at the month-old baby.

Jack is one of those ever friendly, popular, Down syndrome kids. Like so many others with that bonus chromosome, he’s a little on the chunky side. It’s only enough to complement his larger than life personality. And underneath that baby fat is pure muscle. Jack could break a crowbar. Everybody knows him and loves him. In fact, most times I wonder if my name is really John, or if it’s “Jack’s dad.”

Jack was born with a heart condition, which is not unusual with Down syndrome. It resulted in open-heart surgery. That was the first time I questioned the correctness of my explanation of chance, odds, coincidence and logic against Amy’s declaration of a miracle. I still wasn’t completely comfortable with my wife’s definition, but I almost resented that she had caused me to question mine.

Jack’s situation was only the beginning of my inner struggle. It got worse when he was eight and we decided to jump back into the adoption world to get a girl.