Rick Devereux
Faith is a strange thing.
Most people have it when it is useless and lose it when they are
in most need of it.
No one needs faith when things are going well, it might seem. But
despair sets in once the tide shifts and faith is gone.
But not Bob Lussier.
He has faith even when Job of the Bible would start to have
doubts.
Lussier, 42, grew up in Fountain Valley and was on the high school
football and track and field teams. He played in some park softball
leagues after graduating and enjoyed riding his bicycle.
He was a model of health and well-being.
He found it hard to meet the right kind of woman, so a friend set
him up on a blind date. Ten months later he and Debbie were married.
Their faith was tested after a miscarriage, but the two stuck
together and eventually had a daughter, Emily.
Two years later Bob and Debbie had twin sons, Keith and Kyle.
Their faith was tested again.
When the twins were about 1 1/2 years old, the Lussiers
suspected something was different about their sons.
"Their language skills were not coming quick," Debbie said.
A speech pathologist told the couple the twins exhibited autistic
traits.
"We were in denial," Debbie said. "When they were 3 years old we
sent them to the Orange County Regional Center in Santa Ana. They
told us in three minutes it was autism."
Autism is a developmental disease that falls on a spectrum scale.
The more severely affected individuals are dependent on others for
nearly everything. Those less affected are able to live independent
lives but still lack social skills.
Keith and Kyle have mild autism, but still require special
attention.
"The best description is that they receive all of the stimulus of
what is going on in a room," Bob said. "The music playing, the people
talking, the cars in the street. But it is all coming in and they
can't focus on one thing. All of it is hitting them as hard as
everything else. They have an inability to sit still and focus."
The disease is so hard to deal with, marriages usually fall apart.
"Over 80% of marriages with one autistic child end in divorce,"
Debbie said. "We made a decision that we would not let that happen to
us."
Debbie was a stay-at-home mom while Bob worked as a salesman.
The day-to-day grind got to be overwhelming, but the couple stayed
supportive of one another.
Then their faith was tested.
Bob was admitted into a hospital for a heart attack. He had an
angioplasty -- a procedure designed to reduce or eliminate blockage
of the coronary arteries.
