Raising the Perfectly Imperfect Child

by Boris Vujicic

  Music was another strong interest for our son, who still sings and plays an electronic drum kit. He participated in a percussion band, playing drums and the xylophone in high school and in church. His high school jazz-band teacher, who was fond of Nick, allowed him to conduct the band during some performances. Nick even received a jazz merit award in high school, and he sometimes talked about pursuing a career in music.

  GENTLE GUIDANCE

  As his pragmatic father, I worried that the options for a well-paying, stable career were pretty limited in the music business, especially for someone who lacked limbs. I was trained as a business accountant, so I worked with him to build on his inherent talent for mathematics. We made learning multiplication tables a fun thing for him and Aaron. They competed to see who could correctly answer math problems first.

  I encouraged Nick in this area because some of the greatest job opportunities seemed to involve math and computer skills. Desktop computers and laptops were quickly becoming standard in many industries, and Nick, who was an avid video-game player, was adept at working with a computer keyboard, mouse, and joystick with his foot. In his final year of high school, he did an internship with the IT help desk at Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Hospital in Sunnybank, Brisbane. Nick answered calls and logged the jobs. He was paid well and received positive feedback, but he wasn’t thrilled about working at a desk all day.

  A GREATER VISION

  There is a saying that man makes plans and God laughs. The Almighty One must be highly amused at my plans to prepare Nick for a job as a numbers cruncher. There are no sure-fire or guaranteed plans for helping a disabled child attain self-sufficiency. Ultimately they have to make their own choices if they are capable adults. It takes incredible drive and determination for those with special challenges to succeed and thrive. All we can do as parents is support them and help them do the best they can.

  My son sometimes felt I was pushing him into tougher classes than he wanted to take. My dad, who was close to Nick and often picked him up from school, even stepped in to say he thought I was expecting too much of Nick. My father argued that I shouldn’t have the same expectations for Nick that fathers had for their “normal children” when it came to getting a job and supporting himself one day.

  I told my dad that we had watched Nick accomplish things we had never dreamed possible. In fact, Dushka and I developed something of an immunity to being shocked by Nick’s overachieving ways. We’d reached the point where his feats would just leave us shrugging and saying, “Yep, that’s Nick! There’s no stopping him.”

  As it turned out, Nick found his wings and a career path that he loved with a little help from an unlikely source—his high school janitor.

  A HELPING HEART

  When Nick transferred to Runcorn High School, he could no longer ride the bus home after school because we lived in a different district. As a result, he usually had to wait for us to come get him, and our work schedules often made us late.

  Nick usually had to hang out at school for an hour before we could come pick him up. He had managed to make a few friends by this time, but if they weren’t around, Nick would find himself talking to Mr. Arnold, the high school’s janitor. That job title does not capture either the spiritual nature or the contributions of this man who served as a mentor for our son and many of his classmates. Nick described Mr. Arnold as a person so at peace and filled with faith that “he glowed from within.”

  Mr. Arnold was also an observant and wise man. In the opening weeks of the school year, he noticed that Nick hadn’t made many friends and appeared withdrawn and sad. He reached out to Nick and befriended him. They often talked in the school lobby while Nick waited for his ride home.

  One day Mr. Arnold invited Nick to join a Christian youth group that he led during the lunch hour at school. Nick had not spent much time with the school’s Christian kids, but he liked Mr. Arnold so he agreed to go. For the first several meetings, Nick didn’t participate much, but Mr. Arnold kept encouraging him to talk about himself and his faith. “We want to know more about you, Nick,” he said.

  Finally Nick agreed to speak up at the next meeting. He’d been lonely and isolated. He saw this as an opportunity to let the other kids know that the guy in the wheelchair was no different from them. He was so nervous that he prepared note cards with talking points.

  Nick spoke from the heart at the meeting, sharing stories about what it was like to be a new kid in school who was so different physically but still had the same desire to be accepted and appreciated. Nick told them that some fellow students had shunned him because they assumed he was mentally handicapped on top of his physical disabilities. He confessed that he’d sometimes wondered how a loving God could create him without limbs. He’d questioned whether there was any purpose for his life. “I’m trying to have faith that I wasn’t just a mistake,” he said.

  His audience was moved by his story and inspired by his humanity, faith, and courage. I’ve often thought that Nick’s career as a public speaker began on that day. After his talk, Nick felt as though he’d released a burden he’d carried for a long time. He nearly broke down crying. He was surprised to see that the students in the group were emotional too. Many of them had tears in their eyes at the end of his talk.

  “Was I that bad?” he asked Mr. Arnold.

  “No, Nick, you were that good!”

  Nick thought his friend was just being nice, but then one of the students in the group invited Nick to speak to his church’s youth organization. Another one asked if he’d talk to his Sunday school class. Soon he was fielding requests to speak to church groups, youth organizations, and student clubs.

  Dushka and I weren’t all that aware of Nick’s early speaking engagements because he kept them to himself, but we did notice some changes. His attitude about school became more positive. He also began to show a much greater interest in going to church. Within a few months, Nick announced that he wanted to be a Christian and he committed his life to his faith.

  GOD’S STEALTHY WAYS

  I don’t want to say that God is sneaky, but He can be very subtle, like a chess master who is always six moves ahead of his opponent. I make that observation because around this same time in his school career, Nick heard his first live presentation by a motivational and inspirational speaker by the name of Reggie Dabbs, an American who speaks to young people all over the world.

  Reggie managed to captivate nearly fourteen hundred hot and restless high school kids that day at Nick’s school. He delivered a compelling message about the power of faith and the importance of the choices we make. Reggie told the students that he’d been born to an eighteen-year-old teen prostitute who had been living with her three children in a chicken coop before becoming pregnant with him. She considered having an abortion before turning to a kind high school English teacher who had helped her in the past.

  The teacher, Mrs. Dabbs, took in the pregnant teen, and then she and her husband eventually adopted Reggie and raised him, even though they’d already raised six children of their own. Reggie learned of his real mother when he was in grade school, and he spent many years feeling lost until a Christian minister told him that he was a child of God and would always be loved by his heavenly Father.

  I can’t speak for Reggie’s impact on the other kids, but he definitely inspired Nick with another straightforward message: “You can’t change your past, but you can change your future.”

  FINDING A PATH

  These are two very powerful points that every child should know, especially those with disabilities or special needs: they may have substantial challenges, but they also have the power to make the best of their lives, and they are never alone as long as they have faith and believe that anything is possible.

  I believe God brought Reggie into Nick’s life to show him a path. Nick had done very little public speaking before he heard Reggie, but his talk that day showed our son that people can have a powerful and positive impact by honestly sharing their life experien
ces. A short time later, Nick put that lesson into practice while speaking to one of his first big audiences, a group of nearly three hundred teens.

  Following Reggie’s example, Nick told his own story that day, sharing his experiences and feelings about being born without limbs and his struggle to win acceptance while searching for purpose and meaning. He explained that over time, with the help of his renewed faith and those who loved him, he realized that he had a purpose in life for which he was beautifully made.

  “And so are all of you,” he told the teens.

  At that point in his speech, a girl in the audience broke down sobbing. Nick stopped speaking out of concern for her, but he didn’t know what to do. To his surprise, she raised her hand and asked if she could come forward to give him a hug. This had never happened to Nick before.

  He invited her to come forward. She wiped her tears away, walked to the front of the room, and embraced him for several minutes. Nearly everyone in the audience, teachers and students included, was teary eyed by then. Nick was close to falling apart himself when the girl whispered in his ear, “Nobody has ever told me that I’m beautiful the way I am. No one has ever said they love me,” she said. “You’ve changed my life, and you are a beautiful person too.”

  In his speeches and books, Nick often talks about this as a life-changing moment for him. He’d seen Reggie Dabbs move an audience to tears while also inspiring them, but when the teenage girl hugged him and said that Nick had changed her life, my son realized that he could have that same powerful impact.

  Nick had found his purpose in life, the path God had meant for him to follow on this earth. Suddenly everything made sense to him—even his lack of limbs. He realized that God had given him a body that made a powerful statement before anyone even heard him speak.

  When people see Nick for the first time, they know immediately that he has dealt with incredible challenges in life. Then when they see him smile, radiating strength, warmth, and optimism, they know Nick has risen above those challenges. They understand without hearing a word from his mouth that Nick has something of value to share.

  DOUBTING DAD

  Now it is time for me to confess that I was a little slow to jump on board with Nick’s plan to become an inspirational speaker. I couldn’t see how my son would ever be able to support himself in that role. From what little I knew about Reggie Dabbs, it seemed that he had to travel all over the world to find work. I couldn’t imagine my son hauling his wheelchair onto airplanes, buses, and trains to do the same. Constant travel would just be too hard for him.

  I’m the dad, after all, and we can be notoriously slow on the uptake when it comes to our children and their ability to rise above our expectations. We tend to be more cautious and conservative because we don’t want our kids to struggle. When Nick said he wanted to be a professional speaker, my response was, “What will you speak about?”

  His answer didn’t exactly fill me with confidence: “I don’t know yet.”

  I didn’t want to pour water on the flames of his passion, but I couldn’t see how Nick could possibly line up enough paid speaking engagements to pay the bills as an adult. I didn’t scoff at his idea, but I did insist that he continue his education and earn a degree in business or accounting so he’d have a backup plan if his public-speaking dreams didn’t pan out.

  I was locked into the traditional way of thinking about finding a job. Nick had an aptitude for math, but he had a passion for speaking. We compromised. He agreed to pursue double degrees in financial planning and accounting while also speaking in his free time.

  I was happy to have Nick enrolled in university. I knew he was doing some speaking too, but I didn’t realize he was really serious about it until a gentleman, John Hyman, who identified himself as my son’s speaking coach, showed up at our house. I have to admit this was a wise move on Nick’s part. If you’ve ever watched a typical topnotch veteran speaker deliver a speech, you’ve noticed there is a lot of movement—walking around the stage, waving the arms, and hand gestures. Nick had to learn to hold the attention of his audience with only his tone of voice and his almost superhuman ability to make eye contact with nearly everyone in the audience during his speeches.

  GROWING AMBITIONS

  Parents often fail to recognize the blossoming ambitions within their children. This is probably because we spent years dragging them out of bed on school days and then nagging them to finish their homework. Moms and dads get it in their heads that they have to do everything for their kids, and they hold on to that notion even as their children mature and begin to find their own motivations. I’ve heard other parents say they were surprised to discover that their slacker kids had grown into hardworking, driven, and highly focused adults. They didn’t know their kids had it in them!

  We’d always said that once Nick started talking as a baby, there was no stopping him, and that proved true in his speaking career as well. Nick surprised me with his ambition and drive to become a polished speaker. He took every speaking engagement he could find. He also invited himself to speak whether people wanted to hear him or not. In the early days Nick did not get paid for most of his speaking engagements. He wasn’t interested in making money. His goal was to gain experience, hone his skills, and learn his craft. During his university days, he did manage to pick up more and more paid speaking engagements, and we encouraged him to save his earnings so that he could buy a house one day.

  Just before he turned twenty, Nick managed to put together a down payment on a small rental property. He even had twenty thousand dollars remaining. We were proud of him because he’d worked hard for that money, booking appearances all over the country.

  One of the primary reasons I thought a speaking career wasn’t a good choice for Nick was the fact that he would not be able to drive himself to engagements. Dushka and I were busy with jobs and taking care of family matters. I didn’t see how Nick would get about, but he figured it out.

  I don’t recall how long it took me to realize that as soon as Aaron obtained his driver’s license, Nick put him on the payroll as his driver. Actually, I’m not sure Nick even paid Aaron, but there must have been some payoff for all the miles he drove, because they ended up going all over Australia together. Little did I know that my sons had hatched even bigger travel plans. As Nick approached his twentieth birthday, he announced one day that he was going to South Africa, where he intended to use the twenty thousand dollars in his savings account to buy supplies for needy children in orphanages. And if that wasn’t stunning enough, Nick told us that he was taking his younger brother with him.

  Life with Nick had never been dull, but this was one whopper of a surprise, a triple-header in fact.

  South Africa?

  All your savings?

  Your little brother?

  Dushka and I had friends who had lived in South Africa, and we knew it wasn’t the most hospitable place in the world. At that point Nelson Mandela had been freed and negotiations to end apartheid were beginning, but there was still a great amount of turmoil, including violent gun battles between protestors and the authorities.

  “Why South Africa?” we asked Nick.

  Again, his answer did not do much to ease our alarm. Nick said he was answering the call of someone he had never met—a man who said South Africa needed to hear his message. This South African fellow, John Pingo, had contacted Nick on the Internet after seeing one of his videos online. John was active in a Christian ministry in his native country. He was inspired by Nick’s video and offered to set up a South Africa speaking tour for him. Most of the engagements were in churches, schools, and orphanages, but some were in prisons!

  A GIVING HEART

  Nick had agreed to do the speaking tour without consulting us. He and John had been communicating online for several weeks, and Nick was so touched by John’s stories of needy orphans that he’d decided to use all his savings to help them.

  “Do you have to give all of it away?” I asked.

  “Wel
l, Dad, you and Mum always taught us that it’s better to give than to receive, so that’s what I’m going to do,” he said.

  Oh boy! There are many Bible lessons you want your children to take to heart, but sometimes you’d like to tack on an addendum just as a matter of practicality. For instance, I wished we’d taught Nick that it is better to give than receive—as long as you also stash away enough to live on.

  We tried to instill kindness and charity as values in all our children. We stressed that they needed to build solid foundations so they could freely share their blessings with others. We wanted them to be responsible citizens and generous spirits. True to his dynamic nature, Nick took this and ran with it.

  We were grateful that Nick had a charitable heart and wanted to help others, but we didn’t want him to put his own financial stability in jeopardy. Nick reminded me, of course, that I’d often talked about Jesus the Giver, who had given up His own life for us.

  “I’m just doing what you taught me to do,” he said.

  Dushka and I tried to convince Nick that we were all for him being charitable, but he also had a responsibility to cover his own living expenses and support himself.

  “You don’t want to end up needing charity yourself, Nick. Even if you sell the rental property and give everything you own, you will never satisfy all the need in the world, so it would be better and wiser to use a few thousand dollars of your savings to help the orphans, while keeping enough to help yourself.”

  I tried to convince Nick that the Christian thing to do was to contribute to others while making sure you could carry your own weight so you didn’t become a burden on society. I pointed out that in the Scriptures, the apostle Paul said we should work to give to others while making sure we have enough for ourselves.