It was Christmas—and there I was
on my hands and knees in the bathroom, cleaning up urine…again.
“I’m getting too old for
this.”
The scrubbing becomes more
fervent as a wallowing sigh of “Why me?” escapes from my heart and a few self-pitying
tears fall to the floor mixing with the mess from my teenage son’s latest
“accomplishment.”
Suddenly, I’m caught off
guard by the unexpected, comforting presence of the Almighty. My mood changes,
my heart warms, and the hard tile floor become soft under my knees. I close my
eyes, smile and whisper a verbal surrender, “Thank You.”
The smell of urine is
miraculously transformed into the sweet aroma of God’s mercy and grace.
Weeping and talking to God while
soaking up a urine-puddled floor with fragments of disintegrating toilet paper
could be mistaken for mild hysteria, unless I took you back about nineteen
years into the life of my disabled son.
That’s when I changed my
first diaper as a new dad. I can still remember the smell of baby powder and Desitin
as I gingerly picked Jake’s two little feet off the changing table with one
hand, nervously lifting them into the air and wiping while my wife coached me
through the entire event, “Your doing
fine.” She encouraged. “You’re not
going to break him. Get every crease and crevice, you don’t want him to get a
rash.”
I was like a medical intern nervously
fidgeting over my first patient as the doctor observed and instructed.
After a while I got used to
it. I even became good at it.
Sometimes I would play a game
with Jake where I set a timer and acted like a calf-roper at a rodeo, “GO! And the diaper is OFF! And the butt is
CLEANED! And the new diaper is ON!” I would throw my hands into the air
when I completed the cinch and yell, “TIME!”
Jake would always grin at my diaper wrangling antics.
As the months went by I
considered myself a professional diaper changer—if there were such a thing. I
could literally change my son’s diaper with one hand while talking on the phone
and flipping through the channels with the remote between cartoons and kid’s
shows.
Then the months turned into
years and we eventually began the tedious process of toilet training. But Jake
didn’t get it. His cerebral palsy left him with little control and autism stole
away any personal concern for soiling his pants. To make matters worse Jake
suffered from a terrible sensory integration issue that made him fearful of
bathrooms, running water or being naked.
As the years passed, Jake’s
disabilities became more and more profound and the daily, hourly fight to
toilet train was eventually abandoned for bigger diapers and boxes upon boxes
of baby wipes. The house took on the smell of an unkempt care facility and
accidents became more and more graphic from urine stained pants, socks and
shoes to fecal matter smeared on walls and in hair.
Jake became less cooperative
and more violent with every birthday—he hated being cleaned.
Diaper changing became a time
of prayer and pleading with God, “You don’t have to heal every disability of my
son, but could you just let him be able to use the bathroom in the toilet? I
can take the non-verbal autism, PDD, OCD and cerebral palsy, but I don’t think
I can change another diaper!”
But I was wrong. I could
change many more—thousands more.
And then, through a rather
miraculous turn of events, after years and years of changing thousands and
thousands of diapers, God answered our prayers. Jake was seventeen years old
when he first used the toilet, and by the time he turned 18 he could go on his
own. Accidents were still common, but he got it. He finally got it!
I remember well the first
time he signed “potty” in public. We were in a Wal-Mart Superstore. I rushed
him to the men’s room and he pulled down his pants on his own and began peeing.
He peed all over the seat, the wall and the stall. He was laughing and jumping
up and down while urine streamed like water from a lawn sprinkler. I was
laughing and crying and praising God. Not one drop went into the toilet, but Jake
wore underwear that day and his pants stayed dry.
So here I am. It’s Christmas.
Jake is Nineteen years old. The entire extended family is gathered around the
table eating a Christmas feast and talking about their kid’s amazing
accomplishments and events, from scholarships to dean’s lists to upcoming
weddings.
And I’m on my hands and knees
on the bathroom floor—cleaning up urine again…and praising God.
