Thanksgiving Ham

Sometimes I just hate myself.  

Generally,  I don't have time to wade around in my insecurities.  I have three children, a dog and a congregation full of people to lead and care for.  I'm 55 years old and have had plenty of time for God to help me to get over myself.  I've come to accept that I am not a compilation of accomplishments, abilities and actions.  I'm a person who has been profoundly shaped and transformed by the grace that I have found through Jesus Christ.  

But then I have a day like today and I just have a jag of DESPISING my weaknesses, my peccadillos, the stupid things that I have a tendency to do.  Today is Thanksgiving and I feel like I had almost ruined it.  I have roasted at least 40-50 turkeys in my life. It's not a big deal.  I can totally do it; just pick a recipe and make it happen. 

The New York Times Cooking recipe said to roast the dry brined turkey for 30 minutes at the unusually high temperature of 450 degrees.  I'm guessing that the purpose of this is to do something like a sear to lock the juices in. Then I was instructed to turn the temperature to 350 degrees for the remainder of the time.  It really was an elegantly simple recipe, something that an experienced cook, such as myself, could do quite easily while managing teen aged sous chefs, a hungry special needs young adult who kept emerging from his room demanding food and various side dishes.  

The problem was that when I turned the temperature on my oven down to 350 degrees, I had forgotten to push START! What that meant was that, after having been cooked for 30 minutes, my turkey had been hanging out in a slowly cooling oven for the next two hours.  By the time I checked on it, an hour before we were supposed to eat, I opened the oven door to a very comfortably cool oven.  The turkey might as well have smiled and greeted me with a hello for how uncooked it was.

This catastrophe, combined with the realization that I had forgotten to pick up a splurged order of various breads and baked goods at a local bakery until it was too late, drove me to my room to lay on my bed with the door closed, taking deep breaths. I hate that I am a forgetter. . . and a non-detail oriented person.  

One time, I was in charge of travel to a family cruise in Florida and I scheduled our return flights to be for the day before the cruise returned to port.  In college, I would schedule things so that I needed to be in three places at the same time.  This lack of organization is the thing that I am most tempted to judge about myself. 

Granted, I've come far from those organizationally out of control young adult days.  The years of being a full time mom of an incredibly medically and developmentally complicated child certainly gave me organizational and detail management muscles that I never dreamed that I would have.  I am also a pastor of a church where, together with a multi-talented team of staff members, we function pretty well as an intergenerational, multiethnic community of around 300 people who need to turn a middle school into a place of worship every Sunday.

But every once in a while, I still make mistakes out of my lack of detail orientation and organization especially when I am tired.  No matter how much I've grown and matured, I can't seem to escape this part of my personality.

Two things helped me to pull out of the vortex of self-chastisement.  The first is my amazing husband who did not share my hypercritical attitude.  He just told me that he loved me and drove to KFC and to the bakery to see if he could help save our dinner.  (KFC was out of chicken and the bakery was all closed up.).  Just as he came home, I realized that I had also purchased a small ham to serve at a later gathering.  I threw that into the oven to heat and serve with our stuffing, potatoes and veggies.  Fortunately, Thanksgiving dinner this year was just my nuclear family and my mother so it wasn't a huge deal.  The ham was barely warmed and rather boring but it was fine. 

In fact, the second thing that served to give me perspective and stop being so disappointed with myself was how much Josh loved the ham.  My son LOVED the ham.  He asked for more over and over again.  In fact, at one point, while I got up to get more from the kitchen, he grabbed a slice right off of his grandmother's plate.  My mom reflexes are still pretty fast so I grabbed it right off his plate before he could eat it and made him wait for his own piece acquired in a proper manner.  

At the end of this day, I am choosing to think not about what I did wrong or what didn't go well but about the things that I am grateful for.  The six of us were able to sit together for a nice meal.  We enjoyed the food, especially Josh.  My 83 year old mother was able to spend quality time with us.  We played a little game which had us ask each other interesting questions.  We laughed together about funny stories from our pasts. 

As much as I am a foodie, I have to remember that the food is not the point.  The most important part of any feast is the spirit, the love, the people and what or who you are celebrating.  I hope that I am able to keep this on the forefront of my brain as we enter into another season of food and celebrating.  

21

Last month Josh turned 21 to very little fanfare.  We had a family dinner with my mother and my sister's family.  Josh and his dad shared a birthday cake as is our custom since their birthdays are 8 days apart in August.  

It's strange to think that if he were a typically developing young man, he might be attending college or be in the military.  He would probably be driving and figuring out his relationship with alcohol.  He would be able to vote, gamble and earn a pilot's license.  Heck, in this country, he could even get a concealed weapon license (!) or adopt a child (!)

But most of those things are out of reach for my son and probably will be for his whole life.  Instead, Josh is diligently working on his tasks at his job at the Veterans Administration building such as breaking down cardboard boxes, wiping down tables and filling up salt and pepper shakers.  He enjoys his routine of going to his class at our school districts post-secondary classroom and doing his daily neighborhood walk.  We are still working on chores such as emptying the dishwasher and putting his clean laundry away. 

Josh has a simple, small life but, I hope, a very good one.  He has people who know him and love him.  There are people who are helping him to learn new things.  He is a part of several communities in ways that are meaningful to him.  He enjoys different parts of God's creation such as water, the wind, music and many different types of foods.  He cries sometimes, yells sometimes, and laughs a lot. 

Josh is not like most 21 year olds but he is living a life full of his own kind of meaning and blessing.  I'm so proud of how far he has come and I am confident that he will continue to grow as he walks further into his young adulthood.  

Our Neighborhood Walk

Almost every day since the the pandemic started a year ago, we have been managing being homebound by taking a walk around the neighborhood with Josh and our dog.  On most days it's my husband, the dog and Josh.  Sometimes the girls and I go along.  Today, my sister's whole family and my mother came along, all of us masked and trying to walk with some amount of distance from one another.  

Our neighborhood is generally quite nice with small to mid-sized homes, decently attended yards and old trees overhead.  People express their friendliness by putting out boxes with extra fruit such as lemons or oranges for anyone to take.  We pass three of those "Little Free Libraries" during the course of our walk.  People are friendly in a "look at you and smile" kind of way not a "randomly start to talk to someone you don't know" kind of way.  No one seems to be weirded out by Josh.  

All in all the walk is about 1.1 miles or 6000 steps and takes between 20-30 minutes depending on how slowly Josh is walking.  Josh takes his time, clapping as he goes.  Sometimes he stops to enjoy the sun on his face or to look at a leaf and possibly taste it.  He knows the way but he has to be watched lest he get stalled or decide to eat some inappropriate item.  

It's always the same walk, down the same streets, on the same sidewalks, making turns at the same places. My husband and Josh take great comfort in the sameness of the walk.  To me, for a while, it felt boring and a little mind-numbing.  Why can't we ever explore other parts of the neighborhood?  Must we always go the exact same way?

A therapist friend of mine recently told me that humans find great comfort in routine, especially during times of stress.  This must be true about our walk especially to the more routine-loving members of our family.  Josh is very committed to the exact pattern of our walk.  If I try to walk on the side walk on the other side of the street from what he is used to or to cross the street in a slightly different way, he resists heartily.  He feels very strongly that there is a way to do this walk and it's a very good way . . . not to be messed with.

One time, a mom was coming down the sidewalk toward us herding twin preschoolers each with their own scooters plus she had an infant in a carrier on her front.  I could see even as she was further away that she was going to have a hard time moving to the other side of the street to avoid us.  I tried to get Josh to go around them on the street and he wasn't having it.  The more I insisted, the more Josh got upset and started screaming and hitting himself on the head.  I apologized profusely as we had to pass each other, uncomfortably close given the county health guidelines of remaining 6 feet apart from people who are not in your household.  She didn't say anything back to me, perhaps because her mask was in her hand, but her eyes told me that she understood and wasn't judging us.  

Since that time, we got help from Josh's Orientation and Mobility (O & M) instructor at school to work on having Josh practice going around a parked car in the street every now and then to practice "giving way" on the side walk.  At first Josh did it for goldfish crackers, then just for verbal praise.  Now he can do it whenever we ask him to.  Being flexible with his routine is not his favorite thing but he's gained some amount of elasticity over time.  

I realized today how blessed we are to have our little walk.  Having done it hundreds of times now, it feels like a comforting thing, a chance to notice simple pleasures like fresh air, trees, different flowers that bloom around the homes of our neighbors.  We know which house is being sold and which one is doing some remodeling.  We wonder where the little white dog has gone since we haven't seen him in his backyard for a while.  This routine has made our neighborhood more "ours" and has given Josh a safe way to engage with it.  

Morning Clapping

I have a seventeen year old son who wakes up happy on most mornings.  How's THAT for counting your blessings?  This is not to say that he's happy all the time.  When he's unhappy, you'll know it because he feels free to cry, yell and throw things.  But the kid loves to be alive most mornings.

For example, today is Saturday and, as we did not have anything going on in the morning, I slept in past our usual early morning family wake up time.  The first thing that I hear is the sound of jubilant clapping.  Joshua is drawing some of his favorite things on his magnadoodle toy (such as hairdryers and showerheads), putting the magnetic pen down and then clapping.  He can do this for hours.

Eventually he comes out to the kitchen and starts rummaging around for something to eat.  Without supervision his greatest interest, of course, is to find cookies.  Josh's sisters have been on a baking kick for quite a while now so he knows that they often hide containers full of baked goodies in various places in the kitchen, ostensibly to keep him from finding and eating them.  But, though he may have intellectual disability, he's not stupid so he can usually find any hidden sweets or baked goods.  Given further unsupervised time, he will eat the whole thing, leaving prodigious amounts of crumbs on the floor for our dog to clean up.

Alex even put a "baby proofing" clip on one cabinet in an attempt to keep Josh from accessing it but he figured out how to work it pretty quickly.  Finally, we ended up having to buy a plastic "lock box" to keep chips and granola bars in so that we could have some secure location in the kitchen.  Josh has not figured out how to open this yet but the problem is that the rest of us often forget to lock it up so Josh knows to check it first when he's hankering for a chocolate chip breakfast bar.

Hearing Josh in the kitchen is what finally got me out of bed.  I offered to make him some toast and he grinned broadly.

"Want butter on it," he said.

Josh also really enjoys what we call "frozen yogurt".  This is the leftovers of homemade fruit smoothies frozen into ice cube trays.  He won't eat it in liquid form but once frozen, he loves it.  He treats each cube like a little delectable piece of luxury, nibbling first on the edges then taking slightly larger bites, smiling as he does.

The house is really quiet this morning as Josh's sisters are away on a youth retreat.  I am listening to my son making happy noises while eating his breakfast.  Every once in a while, he will take a break from his voracious eating and express his joy through a few seconds of vigorous clapping.  I know that he might just be seeking sensory input.  But sometimes I imagine that Josh is giving thanks to God in his own way for his life.  And in my mind, I see God smiling back, very pleased at His son.

A Fable about a Table

**Friends, this post is longer than my average post.  Please give yourself a few extra minutes to read.  To help you, I've put in more than the average number of photos.  Thanks for engaging with my life and my thoughts!  


My husband tells me that his parents bought this table as a part of a big home redecorating project in the 70's.  That would explain how ugly the table was.  The legs to this table always made me think of furniture that might be in King Arthur's court; heavy, ornate and . . . medieval.  But it was also sturdy and free so we've had it in our dining room ever since Alex's dad passed away.  It is the only dining table that my kids had ever known.

Despite all of the effort that we put into rearranging so that they could have desks in their rooms, my girls do their homework almost exclusively on the dining table.  As soon as I come into the house I plop my computer bag and my purse onto a chair at the table.  Groceries are sorted at this table.  Almost all of our meals have been eaten at this table.  Many guests have been hosted.  Conflicts have been resolved.  Serious conversations have been had.  Many prayers have been prayed at this table.  Our dining table is, in many ways, the heart or the hearth of our family home.

Alex has always taken care of this table as a precious artifact from his family history.  When we have to move the table, it must be done with two people so that it can be lifted not dragged.  Expanding the table by adding additional leaves to it must be done with great care and attention lest it be jostled too much and things get out of joint.  I never knew if this was because the table was so important to him or because he's just a really meticulous dude.  It might be both.

For a long time we had these custom made cushiony cover thingies on the table at all times.  I don't know why.  They came with the table so we kept them on.  And because they were ugly, we always had a table cloth on the table.  And because we had kids, the table cloth was always getting disgustingly gross so we washed the tablecloths almost every day.

Two years ago I asked myself why we were putting so much effort into protecting a table that was almost 50 years old and far from my ideal table.  I made a big change to our lifestyle and decided that we would let our table be naked, come what may.

Well, what came was that one day, while his mom was watering plants in the backyard, Josh took a ball point pen and carved a significant number of shower heads, hairdryers and fans into the table top where he sat to have an after school snack.   Here are some pictures of his "designs".

My first thought was that my husband was going to have a cow.  My second thought was that the table top was already pretty old and worn.  I posted some of these pictures on Facebook and a friend suggested that I simply refinish it.  Another friend even suggested a specific place nearby who might do a great job.  But given the busyness of my life and my tremendous hostility to taking on household projects, I knew that this would never happen.  I just internally prepared myself to live the rest of my life with a dining table with some artwork on it.  Maybe it would just be a conversation piece.  Or we just never let any non-family member sit where Josh usually sits.  I contemplated returning to table cloths.

Alex did have a cow, but just a little one.  He had a calf.  He was upset but quickly submitted to the chaotic power of Josh.  We have an autistic child.  Whaddya gonna do?  Fight to have a semblance of order in our lives?  I think not.

I'm not sure how it happened but somehow my husband and a good friend of his were chatting about what happened to the table.  The friend happened to be a designer and inventor who knew how to work with wood.  And he happened to have a power sander.  I kept coming home from work to see them working on the table with great gusto.  I think they were actually having fun.  Alex was really enjoying learning a new skill, something that he always wanted to know how to do but never had the time or bandwidth.

This is a picture of them and the table before the final varnish.  It was an amazing transformation and resurrection.  I couldn't believe it.  It was a gorgeous color of reddish brown; shiny, gleaming, almost radiating a loving warmth to our home.

Here is a pic of the final work.  Beautiful, isn't it?

How I wish the story ended there but, alas, it does not because two nights ago, the girls had left a permanent marker on the other end of the table from where Josh sits.  As I was preparing his pills, in a split second Josh took the black permanent marker and did this.

I turned around to see him holding the marker in his hand.

"Josh, what are you doing?!!!"  I yelled.

"Josh, what are you doing?"  he replied, calmly, eating a tomato.  If he sensed my emotion, he gave no indication.  It occurred to me that even our dog knows when he is in trouble.  Luther knows when to avert his eyes and get out of the way when I find that he's ripped up a stuffed animal or has peed on the carpet.  But my son acted like it was no big deal, like he was the one who knew some peaceful, deep wisdom that I could not yet fathom.  I just stood in the kitchen with my mouth open, silent, fuming and flummoxed.  Our beautiful, refinished table, was ruined once again.  After a few minutes of silence Josh said to me, "Want more toast".  Sigh.

Years ago, a wise mentor once taught us that we have to remember that the many things that we work to build in our lives are like sandcastles.  We work hard to build something and we want them to be beautiful, excellent, impactful, and lasting.  But in the end, like sand castles, the things we build are ultimately washed away.  Organizations, churches, ministries, institutions, programs, careers, wonderful as they may be, they all have their ends, often sooner than we expect.  Even expensive dining tables don't last forever.  None of the things in my house will last forever.  Even my house will not last forever.  From a Christian perspective, the only things that lasts forever are people and God (and maybe animals, I'm not sure about that one yet).

A few weeks ago while we were on vacation at the beach, we ran into a pair of brothers who were hard at work on a super-duper sand castle.  They had roped off a section of the beach and were building a replica of an actual European castle that they had researched.  Both were engineers who grew up at the beach making sand creations in their childhood. They spent quality  time together once a year by spending a whole day making something beautiful out of sand.  This project took them over 13 hours.  They arrived with their many tools and buckets before dawn and we helped them pack everything up using our flashlights on our phones.  As we chatted at the end of the day, I asked them why they did this and wasn't it a bummer that their creation would be washed away by the next morning?  Exhausted but happy, they said that it's all part of the process.  They did not expect it to last forever.  That was not the point.  Their wives let them take a whole Saturday away from their families not to build the sandcastle but to invest in their relationship as brothers.

I've been thinking about this sandcastle ever since that day.  The beautiful, valuable things in our lives are but a reflection of that which is ultimately lasting beauty.  We will enjoy our lives, our relationships and even our things better if we accept that and just give ourselves to the process of life in this temporal world.

What I've Learned from Josh (A Guest Post from "Auntie Rachel")

I've known Josh almost since the day he was born. Susan and Alex lived upstairs from me and my roommate for Josh's first year of life. In light of his heath issues and my night owl tendencies, I had many middle of the night shifts feeding him very specific amounts since his body didn't give him appropriate signals regarding when to eat or the necessary amount. I don't know how much of it is because he was the son of my very good friends who had wanted him so badly and how much of it is because of that year of helping him to live, but I know that I've always loved Josh.

Yet it's tricky to know how to communicate that to Josh or how to have a meaningful relationship with him.

I no longer live in the same area as his family and, at best, I only get to see him twice a year. Generally, I'm good at figuring out how people work and how to build a relationship with them. With people who are important to me, I figure out how to care for them well, how to be a good friend to them, and how to help them know that they are loved.

I have no idea how to do that with Josh.

Some of that has to do with how little time I spend with Josh. Some of that has to do with how little time I spend around people with special needs, particularly autism. Some of that is just Josh and the ways that it can be difficult for anyone to fully figure out how to relate to him, communicate with him, or know what's going on for him.

Perfectionism is a struggle for me and it comes out in my relationships. I work at them. I'm thoughtful with people. I'll go over interactions to figure out what I would have liked to have done or said differently - sometimes intentionally, sometimes compulsively. The more that I care about the person, the more I work. And usually I can see the pay off for that work in strong relationships and people who feel cared for by me.

But with Josh, I don't even know what work would really look like. Despite all of my relational skills, I don't think that I could ever reach the place of feeling like I'm competent and confident at how to relate to him or how to communicate to him how much I love him.

I found myself thinking about Josh recently and aching a bit about how much I love him and how incapable I feel to really communicate that to him. But then God made me take pause. "Oh, Rachel. What's reality here?"

The last couple of times that I've visited Josh and his family, Josh has clearly wanted to spend time with me. The visit before last, it came up just a couple times. Josh likes to spend quite a bit of time by himself in his room. Most of the time others are not welcome. But he very specifically wanted me to hang out with him. "Sit, please." Josh is often polite while being rather insistent. So, I sat on the end of his bed while he drew or listened to his radio for a while. After a stretch of feeling like 'is this really doing something for him?' I got up and immediately received, "Sit, please." So, I sat.

Several months later on my most recent visit last spring, I was washing dishes on the first night and Josh came to get me and took my arm to pull me toward his room with 'Sit, please.' So we hung out. I played some ukulele for him, but I feel like it just gave me something to do. Josh just liked me being present. During the days that I was there he initiated with me so much that it stood out to the rest of the family as atypical Josh behavior. And it was often enough that there was no way to interpret it as random. We couldn't understand it, but it wasn't random. My last dinner with them, Josh was his usually quiet self while I chatted with his otherwise very talkative family. But when I got up to leave the table, there it was again. "Sit, please."

I don't know why Josh likes hanging out with me. Susan, Alex, and I have speculated about what it is about my personality or demeanor that he finds appealing. But in Josh's way, we're friends. And because I love him, that means a lot to me.

But more than that, my relationship with Josh is now a reminder that I don't have to have it all figured out in my friendships for them to become what I want them to be. 

I do think that it's good to work at relationships. They deserve and require that. But I'm never going to need to be reminded of that. I need to be reminded that my relationships aren't as dependent on my work and abilities as I think that they are. Josh is that reminder to me.

Dead Hummingbird

Tough morning. Daddy is out of town. Mom forgot to set the alarm. We woke up just as Josh's bus was about to pull up at our house.  I tried to keep my voice mellow and subdued but I think I ended up sounding serious and intense.  "Girls, Mommy made a mistake and forgot to set the alarm.  I really, really need your help right now!"

The girls picked up on Mom's stressed out tone of voice and scrambled out of bed.  They were very impressive in this mini crisis getting themselves (and even helping Josh) to get ready. Someone got Josh a glass of water.  The other one gave him a very crispy piece of toast. Teeth were not brushed thoroughly and we all had crazy hair but we were only 5 minutes late heading out the door with breakfast in our hands. It was a miracle of morning productivity yet it was clear that we were all adrenalinized and on the brink of snapping at each other any minute if anything were to go wrong.

Do you know what gave me the most energy in the midst of this flurry of activity?  It was the fact that Josh smiled through the whole thing.  My son's super power is that he does not pick up on other people's emotions.  Yes, that's often a downside in social interactions but in moments like these, when negative or stressful emotions are swirling around, it can be so helpful.  Josh woke up happy and was blissfully clueless that others were not.  He was glad to be awake and no one was going to take that away from him.

Unfortunately, we opened the front door and found a dead hummingbird at our doorstep.  I think one of the girls might have even stepped on it's little dead wing as she went out. Weeping ensued. It was like a little handful of cuteness and beauty had been crushed right in front of us.  They demanded that we give it a proper burial right then and there. We three females all felt the spike of sad, negative energy in the moment.  Aya.  What to do?

"Girls, girls, please.  I am begging you.  Can we deal with this later?"  I gently placed the hummingbird's corpse in what I called a "special resting place" under a purple bush in my front  yard.

By some miracle, the girls were both able to choose to be redirected.  Josh was already in the car, munching on an apple and smiling broadly for some unknown reason.  At this point in my life it is such a beautiful thing that at least one of my children is pleasantly resistant to being infected by the negative energy or emotions of others.  He does not get pulled into the panic or anger or sadness of the people around him.  He is just where he is at.  I find that sort of wonderful.  

I want to be someone who can smile and remain happy even when people around me are not.  What is the secret to not getting sucked into other people's stress or negative emotions?  Short of having autism, my guess is that the answer is to become a person who is deeply rooted in peace.  I don't even know what that would look like but I want it.  I want to have a spiritual and emotional force field to the destructive and dark vibes that swirl all around me in my day.  

Sometimes life hands you a dead hummingbird on your front door on a day when you are already running late.  Some days are just like that.  The next time I have one of those days, I am going to picture my happy, apple eating, emotionally unfettered son and try to remember that I do not have to sink into heaviness and despair.  It is possible to be free and happy even on chaotic, dead hummingbird days.  

I'm Having a Very Good Life

One of my favorite movies in the world is a little known film called Mi Familia (or My Family).  I love it because it’s a beautiful snapshot of Los Angeles, a city that I deeply love, and about three generations of a Mexican family, a culture that I love.

I saw this movie when it first came out 21 years ago and since then, at least every couple of months I think about the final scene of the movie.  The matriarch and patriarch of the story, Jose and Maria, are sitting together in their golden years reminiscing about their past and they say, “God has been good to us, we've been very lucky, and our life it has been very...very good.” 

I remember being totally shocked by that scene because in their lives, Jose and Maria have endured many horrible, difficult things such as illegal deportation, the LAPD gunning down one son in front of another, several children going to jail, gang violence, the death of a daughter-in-law as she gave birth to a grandson, all kinds of racism, poverty, back-breaking work etc.  But somehow, near the end of their lives, they are grateful people.  They are grateful to God.  I remember thinking that it was some sort of miracle or parable --- to have a very difficult life but to be able to see it as good.  To have a glad and grateful heart even after having endured so much sadness and evil is shockingly striking.  The memory of this scene has been deeply planted in my mind.

I want to be like Jose and Maria. 

As someone on the journey of parenting a child with special needs, it is easy to see your life as less than good.  There are difficulties, isolation and so many things that you just can’t do.  I find myself wondering, “What is the next crisis that will come along?”, "Will I find poop in random places in my house?", "Do I have the strength today to battle with various systems that seem take a pound of flesh from me before giving me the meds that my son needs?"

It is still so easy to fall into comparison with other people, other families.  And then there is the future.  What will Josh do when he is booted from the school system?  Who will take care of Josh when we are no longer able to?  Will I ever not be parenting someone who functions as a toddler?  Anxiety, discontentment, bitterness:  these things offer themselves to me daily like shiny fruits from the forbidden tree in the middle of the garden of my life. 

But I am beginning to get a glimpse of what it might mean to be like Jose and Maria.  On some days, I look at my beautiful son and I find myself thinking about how lucky I am to get to be his mom.  I see him as the overwhelming gift that he is to me.  Through Josh I have learned compassion, servanthood, slowing down, being needy, waiting, the blessed state of being a dependent child.  I would not trade these lessons for anything.  I imagine myself, at the end of my life, thanking God and giving him unending praise for having the wisdom to give me a child like Josh for the sake of my own sanctification.  I picture God laughing that I could share His joy in the great gift of my son. 

As my mind stretches out to meditate on contentment, I remember a book that I read years ago called The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment. This "rare jewel" of a book, written almost 400 years ago, addresses the basic problem of human discontent and suffering. True contentment, argues the author, is achieved by surrender to God.  I feel the hardness of my heart and the smallness of my brain whenever I approach this book.  But I also feel the warmth of the truth in it's contents and I am strangely attracted to it.  

I might be a complaining, entitled, cranky person tomorrow or even an hour from now but right now, I see and I submit to the reality that God knows what He is doing.  He loves me and wants more for me than I can even dare to imagine.  I am having a very, very good life.  

A Rich Tangle of Emotions

Yesterday I dropped Josh off at his winter day camp at his autism therapy center.  We walked into the waiting room where kids were meeting up with their one on one therapists for the day.  As I took in the sights and sounds, I was inundated by a rich tangle of emotions all at once.  These are a few of them:

Empathy.  One tall, well dressed Asian dad with an ID card from a well known local high-tech company pleaded with his child.  His clearly autistic son, about 5 years old, was not happy about being transferred to his therapist for the day.  As the boy escalated into a full blown tantrum, I could feel the rising desperation of the father. "Please.  Please Jacob."  He begged his son.  "Please don't do this.  You'll be ok.  Mommy will pick you up soon.  Please, sweetie.  Daddy has to go to work.  Please."  Compassion cut through me like a hot knife through butter.  How many times have I experienced this very same "bad transition" moment?  I could almost read this man's mind.  He was probably thinking about what they could have, should have done to prep his son for the transition, knowing that it might not have mattered anyway.  He was already dreading the costs that they might have to pay in the evening if his son had a bad day at the program.  He was probably already late to work but couldn't wait to get there so he could feel like a normal person again with the possibility of experiencing competence and productivity.  I offered a knowing smile but stayed out of the way and said a quick, silent prayer.  

Pride.  The whole time while this was happening, my own son was choosing to behave with shocking maturity. He chose a spot on a couch as far away as possible from the upset child.  He stuck one finger in an ear then focused his attention on eating his apple.  Oh, how far we've come on the journey of auditory sensitivity.  There was a time when a situation like this could have resulted in hours of crying.  Now, Josh is clearly not happy or relaxed but he is dealing with it.  I'm filled with admiration for this kid who has had to work so hard to overcome so much. Over the past thirteen years, we have come so very, very, very far.

Anger.  I could see in an instant that the younger sibling of another autistic child was typically developing.  The three-ish year old girl had the intuitive sense that her brother was struggling and she knew to keep quiet and out of the way.  She contented herself with reading some of the books which were available in the waiting room yet ignored by all of the autistic kids.  She found a picture in a book that excited her and had an immediate impulse to share her discovery through pointing and eye contact.  I watched her and saw how her brain was a meteor of learning, making cognitive and social connections by the second.  I was gripped by the thought that it's so unfair that some kids get to have brains that almost seem to self-develop.  Other kids, like my son, have brains that are so slow that they never learn their ABCs.  Some kids are able to integrate the world around them and make growing sense of it.  To others, the world is a places of constant threats and chaos.  Why?  How is that fair?  It's not and sometimes it makes me so mad that I want to shake my fist at God.

A few minutes later I sat in my car, zombie like.  These and other emotions swirled in my head, preventing me from driving to work and moving on with my day.  How are you supposed to transition into being a centered, productive adult when moments like this assault you with such a barrage of emotions?  How can I walk into my day without wearing all of these feelings on my person like heavy jewelry?  

As I took a few slow breaths I sensed the ever-present invitation of Jesus:  "Give me all of your thoughts and emotions.  I will keep them safe."  

Safe. Oh, yes.  I closed my eyes and remembered the safety of the One who can handle every whirlwind.  Jesus, He is not overwhelmed, even when I am.  He always sees us with eyes of love, with attentive ears.  

One by one, I let go of these disparate feelings and laid them at His feet.  I felt my spine lighten as I shared my emotional load with the one who offers to yoke Himself with me.  

How do you walk through life when you face intense moments of varied emotions?  You must let the One who is your constant companion lead you. You accept that you are never alone and never left to carry even your momentary burdens by yourself.  

Grace and Stress: A Day in the Life of a Mom

Sometimes I feel like my life is so chock full of moments of profound grace sprinkled with immense stress that I can't process either one.  Today was an especially demanding, full day because my husband is out of town so I'm single parenting this week.  Here is a brief description of the mixture of grace and stress in one day.

6:33 am       I wake up to a small, formerly unfriendly dog licking my toes.  We are dog sitting Frankie who was very anxious when his owners dropped him off.  I guess sleeping at the foot of my bed has made him decide that I am worth his affection.  This is a small but welcome little grace.   I get up out of bed to let Frankie out for his morning pee.

6:58 am       I discover that Frankie has elected to take his morning poo on the carpet immediately outside of our family bathroom.  The poops are lined up very neatly, almost like Morse code.  Is he trying to tell me something?  I fly into a whirlwind of deep cleaning my carpet with a variety of chemical cleaners and two different vacuums.  Stress.

7:30 am       I coax my the girls out of bed and encourage them to get ready for the day.  They are unusually compliant.  Small but significant grace.  We need to leave the house by 8:10 so I can drop the girls off at their respective summer day camps and get Josh to his doctor's appointment.

7:45 am     I pull Josh out of bed and he is one grumpy pre-teen.  He is standing at the toilet screaming the words which I usually say to him every morning, "Aim for the middle, Josh!  Aim for the middle!" He is not aiming for the middle.  The combination of autism and visual impairment usually means that I have to clean the bathroom after every morning pee.  Today is no exception.   Stress.

8:25 am       We finally pull out of our driveway after 7 separate trips back into the house to bring out various forgotten items which are necessary for the day; sunscreen, swimsuit, snack, can of pink hair color spray.  Stress.

9:18 am    Josh and I arrive at his endocrinology appointment only three minutes late.  This is a minor miracle.  Despite my having made the appointment as early as I could in the day, they are already running late.  Clearly, these people do not understand that most autistic children are seriously not good at waiting.  Josh inhales all of the snacks that I have brought with me and has moved on to wanting to eat breath mints, the only food-like items left in my purse.  I let my son eat 13 vanilla mints, spaced out for as long as I could.  Josh and I spend some time taking selfies on my phone.  Finally, an administrator walks into our room to try to work out a complication that we are having getting Josh's growth hormone covered by insurance. Without coverage, growth hormone is several thousand dollars per month.  This lady talks to me with a mix of cloyingly sweet words and a strong undercurrent of hostility and blame. She reminds me three separate times that this complication is due to my missing an appointment six months ago.  She also tells me that I should be grateful because other patients of hers have it much worse.  Stress.  I resist the urge to talk back to her with full snark or to slap her upside the head. Grace.

10:52 am     I meet up with Josh's summer school class at at the Magical Bridge Playground where they are on a field trip.  This is a place that has just opened in our town after a number of moms with special needs kids raised many millions of dollars.  It's an amazing, inspirational, inclusive space that is designed to help kids of all abilities to play alongside typically developing kids.  Today, there is some sort of event going on with a band, free pizza and about 50 kids with special needs and their caregivers having a blast.  I drop off Josh and watch him head to his favorite sensorily safe play structure.  The kids in his class are excited that Josh has arrived and head toward him to greet him with high gives.  Big grace.

11:11 am   I arrive at my work place only eleven minutes late for our staff meeting.  My colleagues greet me with friendly, empathetic faces.  I love my job.  I love that I have a place to work and belong that uses parts of my brain that have nothing to do with taking care of children or managing their needs.  After eight years of being a full time mom, I have recently started to work part time.  I cannot express what a blessed grace this is to me.

7:54 pm    The children have been picked up from their various camps, fed, and bathed.  Medications have been given.  At evening prayer time I have to tell the girls the news that the dog of some dear family friends was hit by a car yesterday and died.  Molly was the first dog that has ever stayed with us.  She was our introduction to becoming dog lovers and dog sitters.  Hope and Anna respond with loud wailing and big, fat droplets of tears.  I imagine that this is how the wailers at funerals in the biblical times sounded except that, I think a lot of those folks where hired.  My daughters' sadness comes straight from the heart.  Out of our lamentation comes a conversation about heaven, grief and the purpose of pets in our lives.  During our prayer time, while I am praying, one of them starts to make vague whispering noises.  When we stop to ask her what she was doing she tells us that she was "praying in tongues" because someone has told her that sometimes he prayed in tongues when he was overwhelmed by a situation and didn't have the words to pray but still wanted to pray.  We decide that this was fine.  In that moment, I conclude for the millionth time that parenting is wonderful and worth all of the nonsense.

8:52 pm     I have my first moment alone all day.  I am thinking about how life is so full of  beauty, ugliness, life, death, kindness, rudeness, stress and grace all in a big, fat jumble.  Contrary to what reading Facebook might make you think, life is not a constant stream of joyful, sweet, picturesque, insightful moments.  It's more of a tangle of the good, the bad and the mind numbingly boring stuff in between.  But I thank God for His gift of reflection for it is one of the things in life that help us to digest it and make sense of it all  it.  As I process and pray about my day, Grace wins over stress.

How is My Son Different From a Dog?

A few months ago, my husband saw a request for a dog sitter on a neighborhood email list.  It was Christmas break so we thought it might be a good opportunity for our girls to learn responsibility and to see if Josh was at the place where he might enjoy or benefit from a dog.  Well, one thing has led to another and we are now on our ninth canine guest in our home having become official dog sitters on Rover.com.  Hope and Anna have become quite the savvy internet business gals, updating our website regularly and passing out our business cards to anyone with a dog at the neighborhood park. The girls are saving up to buy Kindles and thanks to our dog sitting business, they are pretty close to their goal.

One of our favorite guests was Molly (the black dog in the photos above).  We really bonded with her because she stayed with us for four nights.  She's a passionately relational family dog from a household with three energetic kids.  Molly was a long-suffering angel with Josh, snuggling in his bed for hours at a time patiently abiding his awkward pats and obsession with her tail.  We all bonded quickly and deeply with her.

During Molly's visit, I was running errands with the kids and the dog when Hope astutely observed, "Hey, Molly is like Josh in a lot of ways.  She doesn't talk, she has black hair and she has to be taken on walks, just like Joshie."

I smiled because Hope was tapping into a conversation that Alex and I have been having.  Don't tell anyone but sometimes we (sort of, semi-jokingly) ask each other "What is the difference between having Josh and having a dog?"

After all, life with Josh is still based on primarily non-verbal communication.  We still have to help facilitate his toileting, manage his food needs, and make sure that Josh gets proper exercise.  Josh communicates his love and affection for us primarily by snuggling, just being around and being himself.   Honestly, having Josh is not unlike having a pet.

And a part of me realizes that this is not entirely an insult to Josh's humanity.  Having had a number of dogs in my house recently, I've come to realize how precious and profound animal companions can be.  When one of  my daughters found out that she didn't get into a play that she had auditioned for, the first thing that she asked me was whether we had a dog at our house that day.  She wanted some unconditional love and connection to comfort her.

I also read an article from a local psychologist who was commenting about what parents can do to help our stressed out adolescents to grow up with good mental health.  (Our town has had a disturbing number of teen suicides in the past couple of years.)  One of his suggestions was to have a pet.  The role of pets in enhancing human well being is both well-documented and intuitive.

Some theologians such as Andrew Linzey have written about a "theology of animals" exploring what the Bible may have to say about a compassionate, respectful relationship between Christians and animals.

We live in a country that clearly values our pets, even to the degree that we are projected to spend $80 billion on our pets this year.  This is remarkable given the fact that the United Nations estimates that the cost to end world hunger (for people) would be about $30 billion.

Yet, the reality is that although Josh is like a pet in some ways, Josh is not our pet.  He is our son. Genesis 1:24-31 illustrates God's intention that people are the pinnacle of God's intent for His creation.  People alone, of all of God's creation, are created in the image of God.  Despite Josh's limitations in communication, productivity, and independence, he still embodies a special reflection of who God is.  Even in his brokenness, he has a place among those of us who, as people, have a unique, though not exclusive, role in the history of God's redemption of the world. Furthermore, I'm not sure what the eternal destination of animals or pets will be.  I do know that all people, no matter our physical or intellectual abilities, have set before us the invitation to eternal communion with God.

It's hard to explain these thoughts to my nine year old daughter.  To her, I simply said, "Yes, Hope, Josh is like a dog in many ways.  But he's not just a member of our family like I dog might be if we had one.  He's your brother and our son.  And that's very, very special."  She smiled and said, "I know, Mommy."

Why I am Grateful for Josh Today

While on a pre-Thanksgiving walk with me yesterday morning, Josh began to sing a muffled version of "I Don't Need Anything But You" from the Annie soundtrack.  He knows the song because his sisters uploaded it on his ipad and he listens to all of the music on that device constantly.   I decided to join in and we sang a silly little "Josh style" duet.  I would sing most of the line and he would sing the last couple of words.

 It went like this:

Susan:  "Together at..."

Josh:  "last."

Susan:  "Together for..."

Josh:  "ever."

Susan:   "We're tyin' a knot, they never can..."

Josh:  "sever."

Susan:  "I don't need sunshine now to turn my skies to..."

Josh:  "blue."

Susan:   "I don't need anything but..."

Josh:  "you."  

Josh had no affect in his voice as he "sang" but I could tell that he was having a good time. We walked for a while like that in the woods near the little town where we have come for a few days of Thanksgiving vacation.  Josh vacillated between wanting to sing and just stopping to clap for a while, making happy vocalizations.  No one was around so just let him do whatever he wanted.  He seemed extraordinarily content.

Inspired by my son's joy and detached from the many needs of my family, my house and my life, I began to count the things that I am grateful for in my son's life.  Here are a few of them:

1.     I am grateful to be able to go on a walk with Josh.  When we were first told of his diagnosis, our doctor told us that it was questionable whether he'd be able to walk at all in his life.

2.     I am grateful for how far Josh has come in his behavior management.  He rarely bites himself or others anymore.  He has outgrown his tantrums and has only cried a handful of times at school this year.   This is amazing given where we have come from.

3.     I am grateful for the variety of foods which Josh is able to eat.  So many kids with special needs also have dietary limitations or allergies.  Josh loves to eat a huge variety of fresh fruits and vegetables.  He is my my most flexible child when it comes to food.  

4.     We have come so far in Josh's toilet training.  I'd say that we are 97% there and if we could just get him to commit to a higher level of quality control with wiping, we'd be done!  It's taken about 10 years but this is not easy stuff for a kid like Josh and we've had to divide it up into about 40 different steps which each had to be mastered.  I'm also so grateful for the dozens of therapists, aides and specialists who have helped us in his process of learning.

5.     I'm grateful for the parable that Josh is in many so people's lives.  Tim Shriver, the CEO of the Special Olympics and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy said of his intellectually disabled aunt, Rosemary Kennedy, "She walked in the house and she didn't have to do anything. Everybody loved her," Shriver recalls. "And you didn't have to do anything for her. She'd sit with you and talk to you. Play games. Swim. Walk. No earned love."   Like many people with intellectual disabilities,  Josh is my constant reminder of the intrinsic worthiness of any person.  It's the love and touch of God which gives us value, not what we can do or accomplish.  Therefore, we are free to rest, just be together and work hard since our identity is wrapped up in none of these.  

Have you taken a few moments in the past couple of days to reflect upon the things that you are most grateful for?  If not, I strongly suggest that you take time to take a slow walk by yourself or with someone that you love.  It's a great gift in making space to savor the good things of your life and to give God some applause.