“Dad, I’m not good at talking."

We were laying side by side in Josh’s bed and I asked him if he wanted to pray.  Usually, he jumped at the opportunity.  Granted, he would stutter a good bit and stumble over words, but the gist of what he wanted to say would get through and he always seemed satisfied even if I had to help him along with some prompters.

But when I asked him this time, he hesitated and said, “No.”  I asked him why and he said…

“Dad, I’m not good at talking.”

It’s tough when you’re up against developmental delays that make forming words out of thoughts an unusual labor.  We knew when we first adopted him that he struggled with talking and his caretakers told us that he didn’t even speak his own language, so we knew something had occurred to create this impediment.  We were hoping it was something that a little love, security, and consistency could jump start.

We took him to get a brain scan when his eye doctor said that he noticed a few things that caused him to wonder if he had suffered some sort of brain damage.  We were afraid of something like this especially because he was almost 3 and had experienced quite a bit of trauma before he was taken in at the orphanage.  But our fears was misplaced a little bit.

After they did a brain scan, they did discover scarring on the part of his brain that affected two things in particular that we noticed…drooling and difficulty putting words together.  He would understand perfectly, but when it came time to respond…he labored to express himself.  You could tell as time went on, he was frustrated that he couldn’t get out what he felt inside.

A lot of times, when someone struggles with mental delays, they struggle to understand and to be understood, but it can’t imagine having complete awareness of your surroundings and what is being communicated without the ability to keep up with the dialogue yourself.  To be trapped inside your mind with so much to say and scar tissue preventing you from accessing the part of your brain needed to articulate your emotions and thoughts.  It’s a prison…and your can see when he feels like a prisoner.

My heart went out to him as he shared something I’d never heard him admit before.  It wasn’t that he didn’t want to pray, it’s that he didn’t want to go through the gauntlet of fighting for language to string together words and sentences.  It was too late and he was too tired.  Too tired from trying to keep up with the flurry of words all day long at school.  Exhausted from the labor of wrestling with his mind to get it to perform even the simplest task. 

“Dad, I’m not good at talking.”

“Buddy, I love to hear you talk and you might think you’re not good at talking, but I love to hear you pray and God loves to hear you pray.  I didn’t need you to talk fast or good…I love to hear you talk and I’ll listen as long as it takes for you to say what you want to.  You’re a good talker, buddy.”

Sometimes you speak things into your kids because they did a good job, other times you speak things into your kids so that they believe they can do a good job.  I wanted him to know that he was young and that he was still developing and that more than anything…anything at all…I didn’t want him to give up, to just stop trying. 

He’s making strides, but it breaks my heart that he knows that he’s aware at some level that something in his wiring is not firing correctly…at least not yet.  We are praying that God will bring healing to his mind and that his brain will find ways to reroute so that he can both appreciate and articulate everything he is experiencing.  I would had for him to experience deeply without the ability to express freely.

But God knows his every thought, and we are putting his little hear thing care of His Heavenly Father.  Cause God knows that this father can’t handle the resignation I heard in his voice tonight.  I just can’t.