A Child's Prayer Answered

Adapted from an article that first appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Used here with permission of the author.

Happiness, for Constance Wall, is sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee as her music-loving children practice their instruments. A jumble of notes, scales, and song fragments wafts in from every corner of the family's Bucks County house.

Wall finds it a heavenly cacophony because each of her three children--even the youngest--takes part.

When the children were very small, Wall, a faithful Catholic, began a custom of gathering them together for late-afternoon prayer. They took time to discuss what they should pray for and presented the intentions to God.

They added another custom as well. Wall, like her grandmother before her, was an admirer of Blessed Katharine Drexel, the Philadelphia socialite-turned-missionary nun. So she often had the children ask, "Blessed Katharine, please intercede for us."

They always ended with an Our Father, placing special emphasis on the phrase, "Thy will be done."

The prayer time also allowed mother and children to regroup, to talk about their feelings and concerns. The days found them scattered in many directions, with Wall usually out on a hunt for medical and educational help for her youngest child, Amy.

The girl, now 7, was in the process of being diagnosed as incurably deaf.

During that period, Jack, now 14, never knew whether his mother would be there when he got home from school. Jeanette, now 11, was often shuttled off to a baby-sitter.

In their little circle, Constance Wall prayed to do well at her unusual calling and asked that her children accept God's will for their deaf sister. She and the children prayed to be able to communicate with Amy and to find her the best schooling possible.

"I was determined to be the best 'deaf mother' I could be," said Wall. "We said grace in sign. Sign language letters were all around my kitchen." Her husband, John, a real estate developer, was even seeking a new job in Washington so the family could move close to Gallaudet University, an institution of higher learning for the deaf and hard of hearing, where they planned to send Amy to school.

Though the medical experts were unanimous in advising the family to accept Amy's condition as permanent, young Jack insisted they pray for a cure. Wall's instinct was to shield Jack from the disappointment of a prayer unanswered.

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