Most people in the world learn to speak just once, a single lifetime learning. For them it is exciting and dramatic in the early years, and slowly flattens out as their time in this world runs its course. But for some there is a second. Sometimes it appears as the overcoming of a periodic blockage or stutter, or a lisp. Sometimes it is a more general difficulty with communication. Today, there is an army of excellent people set forth in compassion for those who must struggle so. But even today’s allied forces are lacking any practical theory by which they may deliver immediate help. Over my forty-plus years, some theory has been powerfully proven for me, who am one of we who do suffer the second learning. I would like to share it with you. I will have to give a bit of background.

I was born and raised in a comfortable, happy, and whole family, including a very loving father and mother who are happily married to this day, and quite soon a younger sister and brother. I remember, and my mother has in the past concurred, that as a very little boy I was often extremely intent and concentrating, often taking joy in pondering how things worked together, like large plastic toy gear-sets, and blocks, and the parts of my N-gauge toy train set. My earliest memories of speech are from age 3; at this time, the only oddity of speech in evidence, was an occasional unusual slurring of consonants. This remained until I was approximately eleven years of age, at which time something new began: the “block”.

For some readers the concept of speech “block” will be obvious; for others, an explanation: See if you can imagine that you are trying to say a sentence whose words and pronunciations you know very well, but mysteriously, with no known or conceivable cause, your tongue will be locked to the roof of your mouth or to the edge of one of your lips, right in the middle of a word, a word which you know very well in every way. The lock will not dissolve by any known or conceivable force inside or outside of you. The only thing you can do, is wait.

For some sufferers, the wait is a matter of a second or less, and is basically and predominantly embarrassing. For others, and for me, the wait was a matter of many seconds, sometimes minutes, occasionally ten or twenty minutes, and it was both profound and terrible. It happened when ordering food at McDonald’s; it happened in the middle of the happiest of private conversations. It was (and is) not a problem with breathing, or eating. When the moment shifts to talking about a different subject, or eating or drinking commences, or if simple breath is needed, the lock immediately dissolves for as long as necessary for the basic needs. Sometimes if the same subject is brought up much later, the lock does not come back…but sometimes it does, and not predictably.

I have met sufferers with additional symptoms; there are many. Sufferers of this often build up other behaviors on top. I have seen, read, and experienced in myself odd and unusual tongue-thrusts, twisting of lips, barking noises, and other items. The characteristic of all of these, according to both my own experiences and many first- and second-hand reports, is that the secondary behaviors all “work” for a short time to end or prevent blockages, but within a few weeks stop working…but by that time the sufferer has gotten deeply into the secondaries, as vain but hopeful and persistent habits. Much of the practical therapy is in the form of helping us see that secondaries are unhelpful. Sometimes, when a sufferer lays down his or her secondaries, the blockage pattern is sufficiently reduced as to be manageable. But in many cases the blockage pattern gets worse after all secondaries are laid down. This was my situation.

I was gifted, thankfully, with profoundly loving parents and therapists, who tried immensely hard to help me every way they could. They gave hours and hours of their patience and compassion far off of any clocks, over quite a number of years. The first input I received came from my father, beginning when I was quite young; he made sure I heard, “Wait until you can say it, if you can; and then say it.” It turns out that he had suffered too. Unfortunately, it was only much later when I became able to understand this. But it could not be forgotten, I could tell it was very important.

Starting at about thirteen years of age, the pressure mounted. I was miserable, and mostly wanted to crawl under a rock and read one of my books. But wiser heads around me knew something had to be done. I was somewhat relieved that the help they found for me, were always in the form of wonderful people who had interesting ideas. I learned method after method, technique after technique — dozens of them — by which many other people had succeeded in overcoming their speech impediments. I met some others too, observed their struggles and their progress, and desired their progress for myself.

And the first technique I learned — I don’t remember it at all anymore — seemed to work. I was ecstatic. I was talking all over the school, surprising people by the dozens, having loads of fun. This lasted for perhaps six weeks. And then I learned a meaning of terror: it all came back, and worse. No known cause. No known effect. No defense, no way to do anything better. I was smashed down into the earth and did not know what to do.

Thus began the pattern I lived from roughly thirteen through sixteen years of age. Each method I learned worked beautifully…for a few days at least, a few months at most. Misery I knew much; joy, very little.

The only forces I knew keeping me going, were the love and patience of my parents, together with the unbelievable persistence of one amazing lady therapist I was given in my public school, whose name was Marty Malone. Mrs. Malone (as I knew her) never stopped trying, never stopped saving a smile for me at the beginning and ending of every day, never stopped seeking a better way for me to live whatever life was available. Even on the day her father died, though she could not explain much of either faith or loss to me, she handed me a big orange lollipop, the largest lollipop I had ever contemplated for myself, and shared a smile on what for was clearly a sad day of all days for her. I kept that lollipop in my locker, ate it in pieces over the next three weeks, and pondered.

I left that school at fifteen, to go to high school; I saw Marty only occasionally after that. And it was at sixteen that my ability to speak was most severely compromised. But then mercies became involved. Through parents and new friends of mine among them, I was given an unpaid internship at a nearby government research lab, and this improved my situation. Very mysteriously, I noticed that my struggles diminished a bit, both day by day and month by month. I didn’t understand it, but was very glad for it. In the second half of senior year the internship went paid, and the reduction in struggles was tremendous, though still completely inexplicable to me.

In large part thanks to the internships, I graduated high school with a grade point average of 2.65 (out of 4.0 in that district), a medium-high C average, really quite surprisingly high to me. But because of all of the reading (and one tenth-grade English teacher more smilingly stubborn than any woman I have ever met except my wife Lori), I had quite high SAT scores, and was accepted into both universities to which I applied. I had a theory at the time that it would be better for me to live further away from my parents, so I chose a university in Teaneck, N.J. I was to study Physics, with the intent towards the practical, this being what appeared to be my areas of best success in high school.

But a few weeks into college, drums of doom began to beat in the back of my brain: the worst of my struggles began. This time there was no Marty Malone who understood, and no friendly quiet parental home to which I could return and sit and read quietly in my own little world. I knew I had to do something different. I tried lots of different things, at least five very different social groups of students, and tried to find elders who would understand and give good counsel. I also tried for many months to build an (in retrospect) ridiculously incompetent quasi-marriage (after the girl visibly, powerfully, but very lovingly and wisely prevented herself from laughing her pretty head off when I eagerly suggested a real marriage). After that ended I worked for eight months trying to form as socially and parentally acceptable a pre-marital relationship as I could manage; after it finally began, it lasted three weeks.

In November of my junior year of college, after all the above had occurred, I was at a loss. For about a week I wandered the paths and the halls of my school, visiting every department, reading the literature, trying to find any career to which I should devote myself. I found none.

The next several years were partly self-inflicted evil, part therapy, part survival. After hospitalization ended, I found myself with a part-time job in retail sales, which almost (but not quite) gave me enough money for rent, food, and occasional small entertainments. Things were such that the decline was very slow but quite steady, and eventually I found myself living in a basement owned by a married friend I had met the year before. This friend was a rather unusual man, who with a another friend who lived upstairs, quickly exhibited an ability to help me learn to see less evil in myself and in my environment, to seek out the good and not the evil wherever I went, in whatever I was trying to ponder or discuss. I learned as much as I was able, in large part because as I learned, my struggles reduced: at first just a bit, and later by leaps and bounds. This time, the reductions stuck.

And just as these lessons were reaching a plateau, still living in the basement, I met my sweet Lori. Lori is a friend of the then co-owner of the basement. Our meeting and its aftermath was epic: I hugged her in a line with the rest of the group (we met for a birthday party), but I was shocked at the profoundness of our hug, and I went to the back of the line for seconds! It was not a fluke, Lori is quite real. And quite soon, Lori asked me to marry her. I found it very nearly unbelievable…but she is true. So I said Yes absolutely positively yes!!!! Our pair-bond is strong, then and now, and I am grateful. The learning grew again.

Not long after our engagement was made, my basement-benefactor wisely encouraged me to move with Lori to her abode, which I did. At this time two more friendships amplified, two people from whom I occasionally demanded explanation as to why in the world I was not able to communicate effectively with Lori. I learned from them what I had already discovered myself: I realized that men and women of a single culture will use the same sets of words, but often with entirely different sets of meanings. Being the stubbornly counterconventional creature I am, I immediately decided to embark on a lifelong mission to learn ‘womanese’. Now writing thirteen years later, my wife and certain others report that I sometimes exhibit a fair measure of success.

But the question is, what really happened? What has really caused the reduction in blockages? A sense of purpose? A growth of self-esteem? What?

Well, for starters, it is not self-esteem which did the job. Self-esteem used to be called a swelled head, and I testify that when my head gets swelled, my struggles get worse and not better, in the past and and to this day.

And sense of purpose cannot be credited either. I knew myself profoundly and powerfully driven, during some of my worst times; I had some great and terrible senses of purpose, and sometimes, the more I drove myself at them, the worse I became.

It was only when I accepted purposes given to me by others, and only certain particular purposes in that large category, when the struggles reduced. There have been transitions, devotions, rejections, educations, many different changes. This one pattern has never ceased.

I have had many years of this, an effort to learn the particular purposes I need to serve in order to be functional, healthy, and sometimes joyful. After quite a bit now, the conclusion is simple: I need to serve the Kingdom of God.

The King of that Kingdom has asked that we devote ourselves to the well-being of our neighbors and our enemies. He has asked that we serve His kingdom far above all others, and all else. If we ask Him to change us in order to become more able to do these things, He will do so, just as when there was no light, He said “Let there be light!”, and there was. And now after many years and many changes, He has made me considerably more able to serve the purposes for which I was made.

Quite rarely today, do I err in the particular ways for which He created my struggles. And when I do, sooner or later, I am taught what is wrong, and I begin correction. I am very happy with His work, although it can be very scary sometimes, because He is always watching, everywhere in the world, no matter what is going on; there is no stopping Him or slowing Him down, from achieving everything He decides to do.

© 2010 Jonathan E. Brickman