The day had finally arrived. It was a briskly cold day in December, and I had to drive a family
and their son nearly a hundred miles to pick up their little boy's hearing aids. The weather
forecast was ominous. Snow, snow and more snow. Disconcerting, but we had
no choice. If we postponed our appointment now, this first grader wouldn't get his hearing
aids until after the New Year.
"When are you going to get this boy some hearing aids?" the lad's teacher demanded. "I can't
go on shouting at him forever."
This Christian teacher was concerned and rightly so. Simple testing had shown the boy to
have a severe hearing loss that affected his classroom work and classroom communication.
The hearing loss was substantial enough to cause a severe speech defect. Unable to
hear soft sounds such as the "s" and "m", these sounds were substituted by guttural noises
which made the boys speech hard to understand.
I had worked on trying to get this hearing-handicapped student aids since September. His
teacher was soft spoken and not in the habit of raising her voice at all. But with this
student, a teacher had to talk loudly and constantly do a lot of touching to keep his attention.
Even front-of-the-room seating did little to help the child's hearing acuity. The youngster's
hearing loss was agravated by low income.
The hearing loss had been unaddressed by two previous schools and by his parents who
could not afford the high price of professional help or expensive hearing aids. I talked to our
administration who gladly footed the cost of the specialist. In October the lad's hearing was
tested with over 50% loss in one ear and nearly 50% in the other ear. With classroom distractions
his loss would be more like 80%. Hearing aids were more than justified in this situation.
"Where are his hearing aids!" the teacher whispered when I brought her student back from
his initial, professional hearing test. The teacher was not happy about the report especially when
she saw the extent of his loss and the cost of new hearing aids.
"Surely you can find some way to pay for those because if nyone needs them, my student does.
How will he ever learn to to read without hearing aids? He can't hear the sounds!" was the
softly, demanding instructions from this professional educator. The pressure was on me to find a
way to pay for a $1400 pair of hearing aids. My initial attempts to find payment was met
with dismal and depressingly little success. The parents made too much for public assistance.
With public assistance they still had to pay over $800 which they nor I could afford. I tried to
steer-clear of the teacher's room because every day she saw me shewanted a progress report.
And my progress reports were not very progressive.
After about four days of dead ends, out of frustration I called the boy's hearing specialist in the
city and cried on his shoulder about my failure to get adequate funding. At this point
my thoughts and disposition were negative. They had been for the last two days. My prayers
and the teacher's prayers were just not being answered.
"Let me try something" the specialist responded after hearing my plaintive explanation of
my failure to find needed funding. "I have an almost new pair here, and I know some of the
people at Crippled Children's. Maybe they could pick up part of the cost, and then I could
absorb the rest of it myself."
I was elated at the prospects and somewhat fuzzy headed. Could it really be true? I had
ultimately given up hope on hearing aids for the boy. I slept easier the next few nights.
That next Monday I received a call from a lady at Crippled Children's. Yes, they would cover
the cost! The arrangement had been made and all I had to do was set up an oppointment to
pick up the hearing aids and have them fitted on the boy's ears.
The trip to the city was hazardous. The snow collected on the sides of the roads to give a
"Christmasy" aura around the scenery that we passed. The boy's parents were excited about
the possibility of hearing aids and gave thanks to the school system that allowed their prayers
to be answered.
The parents thoughts gravitated to religious convictions, and I just listened intently only
responding when I had to. My thoughts went back to Jesus' resurrection of Lazarus. "Take the
stone away!" Jesus ordered.(Today's English Version) Jesus had expected those present to
do what they could do before He did what He was going to do. I thought about the demanding
teacher who was part of the answered prayer and the specialist whose input was
indespensable. I gave a silent prayer for suchorganizations as Crippled Children's and
March of Dimes that met the needs of low-income handicapped people.
The specialist fitted our boy with only one hearing aid and gave him a temporary mold to wear
until his regular ear-molds came back from the manufacturers. The parents were excited about
the hearing aids and examined the extra one as we pulled out of the snow-slick parking lot
into traffic. The snow was coming down heavier now, and I flipped on the windshield wippers
to aid my vision. The boy sat beside me and smiled at his mother who sat beside him and
then turned and gave his dad a big grin.
"Mother, listen." he said excitedly. "I can hear the windshield wipers! Can you hear them?"
Yes, God still answers prayers. Maybe not the same way that Jesus answered Martha's prayers,
but He still answers prayers. The neat thing is that we can be a part of God's answered prayers. I
marvelled as this almost-deaf child experienced the tingling sensation of hearing never-heard
sounds. I gave a silent prayer of thanks for God's answered prayers. I explored ideas about how
these small "miracles of sound" might change this boy's life. And I gave thanks to God that
there are those whose knowledge can help people overcome human imperfections and human errors.
Published April 5, 1987 in THE LOOKOUT, with a lead-in front page teaser "Helping Them Hear". Again, the publication did a wonderful job with a picture of the cutest little boy with the article. Funny thing, this boy grew up, graduated from high school, and now works at Wal-Mart, and he is proud of it. The family, a few years after this article, moved not far from us, where they live today. The boy, Lee, remains a good friend of the family. The teacher! She still teaches and she still cares about her kids.