Doug has taught me much about God and His perspective on our relationships, with Him and with one another. I’d like to share some of these insights with you, but first, you need to meet Doug. You may think you know him, and you may know him in part, but only God and I actually know this person we call Doug. If you chose to shake hands with him, it could take a while. That’s because Doug is a composite of more than 30 people over the encounters of my lifetime, and some of them have been granted their new eternal bodies.

Doug has Down’s Syndrome, or Autism, or Cerebral Palsy, or Alzheimer’s, or a form of fetal poisoning, or some undefined mental limitation. He’s the woman beaten so badly by her husband that her mind no longer works right, the man who doesn’t trust his umbrella, the stranger who hugged my date and I on our way to the ball, the people you pass every day who are just a card or two shy of a full deck, and the person who is slowly losing their wits because they are alone in caring for a loved one with some form of progressive dementia.

Sometimes Doug is inconsolably grumpy, and sometimes he is unconditionally loving. It’s tough to reason with him without resorting to a power play, because his reasoning is simple, straightforward, and now. His mind is that of a child, so he will either train you in dealing with your children, or he will cause you to employ every strategy you ever learned or heard of. Likely some of each. It may be simple to find rewards for him, like a smile or a “thanks for helping”, or it could be nearly impossible because nothing can give him that heart-lift that we’d all like to experience from time to time.

I’ve known Doug all my life, literally, and I love him. Make no mistake, he has the capacity to make me want to throw myself into heavy traffic at times, but I know there’s no menace or manipulation behind it. That’s just Doug, and he is precious to me, and to God.

Corrie Ten-Boom knew Doug. When WWII broke out and Poland was invaded, Corrie was teaching Doug and his friends about Jesus. During an interrogation before an SS Lieutenant, she was asked about her work and the officer sneered something about one ‘whole’ convert being worth a dozen ‘half-wits’ (his words). I love her response – “In God’s eyes, one of these may be worth more than their teacher, or a Lieutenant.”

Just one more note – as you read of Doug, you may be inclined to start believing that all ‘Doug’s are difficult – not so!! Doug, like the rest of us, has his good moments and not-so-good moments. Most importantly, remember that the stories I tell of Doug are based on the observation of many people and Divine whispers of how my relationship with God looks much the same from His perspective.