At a recent hometown baseball game, played for charity, I happened to sit next to a man whose wife and two daughters were with him. One of his daughters who was moving around the stands animatedly, looked about twenty years old; the other, whom I will call Eleanor, seemed several years younger.

On being introduced to her, I quickly realized that Eleanor could not talk. She tried to, but could only make inarticulate noises. Sometimes she moaned and seemed to be in distress but her parents did not get upset. Throughout the evening, she sat next to her father and would occasionally rest her head on his shoulder.

In conversation with the father, I discovered from him that Eleanor has a rare disease that prevents some children from developing normally. She was born with this affliction and thus has had to live with it her whole life.

So have her parents. Clearly, they have given this daughter devoted attention. Her needs have been a priority for them and they have made her feel loved. I became convinced of this love when the father told me: “I would not trade her for the world.”

This statement struck me as evidence of a deep spirituality that has taken root in this man’s life. His words have stayed with me since that evening, three weeks ago, and have continued to impress me with their beauty. Though I do not know the man’s name and have failed in my efforts to trace him for an interview, I can imagine how Eleanor’s life has shaped his own and that of his wife.

At the beginning it must have come as a shock. For them to realize that this child was born with severe disabilities would have upset their expectations and made them wonder how this could have happened. If they were believers, their faith in God may have been shaken making them doubt, for a time, that God still cared for them. “Why us?” they probably asked. They may even have fantasized about exchanging their child for one that was whole.

They must have felt anxious for their child as they consulted medical specialists, experts in the disease, to discover what could be done. Surely, they must have thought, some new medical technique or wonder drugs might at least alleviate the effects of the ailment.

At a certain point, they would have accepted the inescapable fact that Eleanor would always be severely limited in what she could do. No matter what, this child would never be able to talk or to be independent. She would need her parents to take care of her as long as she, and they, lived.

One can imagine how this realization would have required a recasting of imagination and emotion. These parents would have been forced to think differently about their child’s future and their own. They would find themselves in spiritual crisis, needing to adjust their hopes and dreams to the reality thrust upon them.

From all appearances, they have met this crisis bravely and learned how to become different parents from what they must have expected to be. With courage, patience, and hope, they have apparently learned to face a transformed future as they have come to grips with a situation so different from what they ever thought possible.

Above all, they learned love in a new way. If a strong spirituality has taken root in these parents the way I believe, it is most of all because of their love. And though this love is directed toward their daughter Eleanor, it must have strengthened the bond between them as marriage partners and, indeed, the bonds with their whole family.

Again, the father’s statement reverberates in me: “I would not trade her for the world.” Those simple words carry a love that has been wrested out of severe reality. This line conveys a hard-won spiritual maturity that gives deep meaning to his life and that of his wife.

As a lay theologian writes in this week’s issue of Commonweal, “I am increasingly convinced that my relationship with my wife, and with our children, is the spiritual ‘place’ where I will work out my salvation.” The theologian’s language might strike Eleanor’s father as foreign but it may express something of the same spiritual reality that he, too, is living out.

Richard Griffin