The Orphan Keeper

I remember in high school one of my favorite history teachers made the comment that the real stories of history are far better than any stories of fiction.  I thought of this quote today as I finished listening to the new book The Orphan Keeper.  It tells the incredible true story of an Indian boy who was kidnapped around the age of 7, sold to an orphanage, and ultimately sent to American parents in Mapleton, Utah.   The book tells the unbelievable account of how this boy—renamed Taj—ultimately found his real family again about nineteen years later.  I would have described it as “too much to believe” if it were simply a story someone made up; only the hand of God could have made things happen as they did.  And though we can see some meaning as we have the whole story of Taj, it is still difficult to understand why God would have let the kidnapping and terrible suffering happen in the first place.  As I once wrote about based upon a line from C.S. Lewis’s book The Horse and His Boy, apart from getting direction revelation from God I don’t think we can know all the reasons why difficult and even tragic events in other people’s lives.  As Isaiah said, “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9).  Paul likewise emphasized the difficult of knowing the ways of God: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33)  We cannot “find out all his ways” in this life and understand why tragedy strikes others, but certainly we can and should seek to learn from what happens to those who, against all odds and like Taj, triumph over tragedy.     

                There are two general lessons I take away from this story of Taj.  The first is simply that suffering comes sometimes with no apparent reason and God will not always take it away even with our most earnest pleadings.  God will sometimes allow great heartache and pain to come into our lives in ways that it may take years to even begin to understand.  Taj’s mother did nothing to “deserve” what happened to her as we would judge it, and despite her endless efforts to find her son and pleadings with higher powers, she found no trace of him.  It was simply not God’s will that her boy be returned to her then.  Sometimes despite our greatest faith and exertion, things that we want are simply not in God’s plan or timing.  Suffering is not a sign of spiritual defects or weaknesses, and seemingly unanswered prayers do not mean they are unheard.  Taj’s mother’s prayers were answered—it just took nineteen years.  Surely Zacharias and Elisabeth wondered over and over why they could not have a child as they earnestly prayed for one and tried to live as God wanted them to.  It was many years later when their son John was born and they found out that their prayers from long before had indeed been heard and marvelously answered.  The second lesson that I take from this story is that though God will let trials come upon even the righteous, He can also work mighty personal miracles for us.  The way that Taj’s life came full circle back to his family was surely evidence of the hand of God leading him.  We must believe that God can work miracles in our own life; even if it doesn’t mean taking away the trials we want to disappear, He can do “wonders” among us if we “first believe in the Son of God” (Joshua 3:5, Ether 12:18).  We must have the “faith to believe” for our own personal Liahona to work for us (Alma 37:40).  We have His promise that “he manifesteth himself unto all those who believe in Him” and though we may not get trials and difficult removed like we want, we can still “see God moving in his majesty and power” in our lives (2 Nephi 26:13, D&C 88:47).  The question is not what God is able to do, but rather whether we have enough faith for miracles to occur.  With the kind of faith that Taj and his mother had that ultimately brought them back together, the story of our lives can indeed be better than the greatest stories of fiction.