About the Author: My name is Rik Mets, 29 years old, happily married, cat-daddy and living in Bunschoten, The Netherlands. I work as a history teacher, mentor and coach at a secondary Montessori school in Almere. My spare time I try to fill with reading, writing and occasionally playing the guitar.

For as long as I can remember, I have stuttered. So long in fact, that it has become a part of who I am. In my teenage years, I was struggling to get rid of it, doing speech therapy and generally feeling embarrassed by it. Back then, I saw it as a goal to become a fluent, aka ‘normal’ speaker. As I got older, and coming to terms with the way I speak, I saw it as my goal to show others that there is no such thing as ‘normal’ speech and I was actively trying to convince others not to take speech therapy. Time, and meeting other people who stutter, has taught me that there is no straightforward way of dealing with a speech impediment. With this year’s ISAD theme being ‘one does not fit all’, I want to share a story about two very opposing views on dealing with stuttering.

As people who stutter, we have daily encounters with others that involve our stuttering. Some are funny, some are awkward, some are downright annoying. Back in 2019, I had one that just blew my mind. Here’s what happened. This was when I was living in Gouda, known to most non-Dutch, and quite a few Dutch, people mainly for its cheese. It being Easter, the weather was lovely, and I was walking through the town centre, when I came upon a group of evangelists. They were handing out pamphlets and talking to people about God. Now, I have great respect for the work these people do, however, although I am a Christian, it’s not something I see myself doing. So I still do what most of us do: I try to avoid them. Walk around them in a big circle. That didn’t work this time. 

One of them, a man in his forties-something, came up, stood in front of me, thus blocking my outflanking maneuver, and started asking me about what kind of day it was (you know, Easter) and if I knew what the importance of the day was, et cetera. I was not in the mood for a conversation, but I indulged him and answered some of his questions. At that point, he heard my stutter and jumped on it like a lion on it’s prey. 

– ‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘that God can cure you of your stutter?’
– For sure, I said, but it’s not a question of what God can do, but what I want Him to do.
– ‘But you have a defect, you are not perfect. God wants people to be perfect.’
– So you don’t think I’m perfect because of my stutter? Well, that puts a smile on my face….
– ‘No no, I didn’t mean it like that. But why won’t you let God help you cure your stutter? If you pray, God will answer.’
– Let me just say that I don’t see stuttering as a disease that needs a cure. And yes, maybe He will answer my prayers. But again, in my opinion it’s not about whether God has the power to cure me or not. The real question is, do I want to get rid of my stutter? Because if I would want that, I could go to speech therapy or pray to God and who knows, in a couple of months or years my stutter might have disappeared. But who says that’s what I want?
– The guy looked at me flabbergasted.
– ‘So, you would settle for a 9, when God gives you the opportunity to go for a 10?’
– Okay, dude, now you are just being rude. You do not know me, you don’t know anything about my life, but based on this one conversation you are saying that my life is not perfect because of this little impediment they call stuttering.
– ‘Yes, because haven’t you ever had people laughing at you because of your handicap?’
– First of all, I’m not sure if you can really call it a handicap. I can speak, you know, it just takes a bit more time. Secondly, of course people have laughed and still laugh sometimes at the way I speak. But it doesn’t stop me from doing what I like to do. No, my life is not a 10, it is not even a 9. But it has nothing to do with my stuttering.
– ‘But God can cure you of it. Wouldn’t that be a miracle?’
– You want to know what a miracle is? I teach History to over two hundred teenagers weekly. I show my students and my colleagues daily that it is possible for someone with a speech impediment to have a voice and to be able to use it. I have been on national radio and television talking about it. That’s a miracle and I’m grateful to God for that.
Now, you might say I am not perfect. Indeed, I am not, but this is the way God created me. I could hide in a corner and never talk to anyone, and I would be miserable. Instead, I go out there every day and teach, because God gave me a talent and I’m not going to waste that.
Good day, sir.