My Mom heart hurt…

“Lonely” was the word that touched his soul and allowed me to see inside his heart for a moment that morning…

A few weeks ago, our almost 7 yr old son was having a rough morning.  We couldn’t get him to go into his Sunday school class.  This had happened a few times before, but with his autism, sometimes it is a really hard guessing game to see what is going on, or what might be triggering resistance on a particular morning.  Since it had been the holidays, we had not gone to Sunday school for the last several weeks, making it already fade from the routines in his little mind.  Changing routines always makes things harder.  But this morning, it seemed like something more.  We coaxed and pleaded and tried to get him to go in, trying all of the usual tricks–asking him if he wanted to hold a car in his hand, or bring in one of his favorite car magazines; telling him his brothers were going to their classes, and mommy and daddy were too.  This morning, nothing was working.  His sad, splotchy tear stained face, would not relax and allow us to peer inside.  And we soon discovered, that he has now reached an age when it is no longer appropriate to force him into the classroom, knowing that he would continue to whimper and cry for most of the class, disrupting the other children and likely unnerving his teacher too.  My husband and I exchanged glances and looks that said, “What do we do here?”  As with many other meltdown moments, we needed to decide, is this regular 7 yr old boy behavior?  Or is this autism?  Do we need to be firm, and use discipline type words, “if you don’t go to Sunday school, you will not…”? Or do we need to allow him to not have this stress this morning, and try to use some of the calming techniques we have used before?  To be honest, we tried a little bit of both, but he was not budging.  So, we let him sit, by himself, on the floor in the middle of the split level stairs, to think and look out the window at the falling snow that morning, to see if he would calm down enough to eventually go in.

That sounds easier and cleaner than it was.  In those moments, the usual parenting confusion, frustration, and impatience erupts, as expected, frequently causing my husband and I to too easily shoot each other hurtful glares, or words under our breath, implying that somehow one of us knows better what to do here.  But in reality, as we tried to walk away, all the while continuing to check back on our boy to make sure he was safe and ok, each of our own hearts were breaking.  It is these moments that sometimes take your breath away, when everything has seemingly been “fine”, and then all of a sudden, we remember the challenges and the pain that autism can bring…the unknown, the wonder, the inability to express, the world that we just can’t always break into, and we fight back tears and try to avoid looking at each other, since we know that truly underneath the hostility, our hearts are united in grieving what we can’t fix in our little boy…

I tried to go into my class for a little bit, but the Holy Spirit kept calling me back to my boy.  That still small voice was calling me this morning to just go be with him–to be soft instead of reprimanding, to be present and to just love him.  So, I went back, and just sat on the floor with him.  He climbed onto my lap and we looked out at the different cars in the parking lot underneath the falling snow.  He told me their makes/models, and we watched carefully as neighbor cars backed out of their driveways, all while he was telling me details his eyes were amazingly drawn to in each of these vehicles.  This was comfort to him.  This brings order and peace somehow to the rhythm of his life.

But, my mom heart wanted to see inside of him.  I wanted to try to understand.  So, I tried to gently enter in.  I tried to talk about friends he would see in his Sunday school classroom.  As the words were coming out of my mouth, however, I quickly realized that I wasn’t exactly sure who his friends were in his classroom this year.  There had been a lot of change in our church, and I couldn’t readily name very many kids he would know well.  Somehow even these first questions triggered him to talk about his upcoming birthday.  “I want to have a ‘Pump It Up’ birthday, Mom!”, he told me excitedly, as he was familiar with this fun place where there are giant blow ups to jump on and lots of fun attention for the birthday boy.  He had seen both of his brothers have parties there.  “Ok, buddy, who should we invite?”  I asked innocently, and then proceeded to name several names of kids in his classroom that I knew from volunteering there on several Wednesday mornings this year.  But, one by one, he would think of their faces and then sadly say, “No.”  I tried a different tactic, and asked, “What about kids you play with at recess? Or at Kids & Company? Or who do you sit with at lunch?”  And then again, I tried to name a few names, as sometimes he has a hard time coming up with the names, even if he can see their faces in his mind… But, his sweet little body was getting softer and softer as he sat on my lap, and quieter, and more cautious, but still very much present in the conversation.  And as my mom heart was breaking, I somehow dared to ask, “Do you feel , buddy?”

There have only been a few moments in his 7 years, when he has been completely fluent, initiating his own full sentences, with complete dialogue, instead of his usual broken, often copied phrases, he has learned to use in speaking.  They are always when we are quiet like this, and have also been when we are not using our eyes, but instead our bodies are close, but we are not face to face.  Sadly, they have also been the times when he has vividly opened up and described something painful and very real for him. This was one of those moments, when the word seemed to forge an entrance for him to clearly tell me about how these kids all play with their own friends at recess, or at lunch or at Kids & Co.  He even went as far as saying, dejectedly, “No one likes me.”  And then as I almost couldn’t handle anymore, he said in a quiet, defeated voice, “I don’t want to have a Pump It Up party, Mom.”

My heart physically hurt as I realized he had just walked through all of that and made the connections as we talked, that he really didn’t feel close enough to anyone to invite them to his birthday party.  Or he may have even feared they wouldn’t come.

I have heard it said that being a parent is like walking around with your heart unprotected on the outside of your body.  I couldn’t hold back the tears for the next few hours as my mom heart ached, and as often happens, the ever present, “mom guilt” also poured in.  How could we have missed this? So often, this sweet boy is our “easy one.” His personality is soft and loving and observant and patient, and he likes to sit back and watch his crazy brothers as they run the show, sometimes daring to join in.  The Lord has also given us, especially me, a unique filter with which to see this boy.  In my office, if a boy like him walked in, I would see in a heartbeat all of the things that screamed “autism” about him.  I would love him and want to get to know him, and I would want to help his parents get to know the beautiful things about him, but the autism would be so obvious to my trained pediatrician eye.  But, at home, with my boy, the Lord has graciously turned that part of my brain off most of the time, and all I see are the beautiful gifts the Lord has given him…the way that he studies the world, and scans and memorizes the details of the things (mostly cars and vehicles) and the characters he loves…the way he freely moves his body as he worships and dances, even on this Sunday morning as we listened to the beautiful praise music the band was playing during the service.  He instantly jumped up and started to dance and move, with a quick glance back toward me to make sure it was ok, before he let himself completely be free to move and jump and smile with the music, holding his arms up in praise.

And a million thoughts go through my mind, crossing over each other all at once as I process this whole morning…

–pediatrician brain thought–“That glance back to me showed me ‘joint attention’, what a gain if he is able to use that now…”

–my grown up brain, with thoughts that so many of our friends share as they watch him and love him– “What a beautiful thing to see him dancing and worshiping so purely”, as we smile and love him “Oh, sweet Jude!”

–and then mom brain, angrily and fearfully–“But this is how we’ve gotten here, to this moment…We have this false sense of security because ‘everyone’ loves Jude.  But it’s not everyone…it’s the grown ups in his life, who are able to overlook the quirks, and the half-sentences, and his obsession with cars, and his funny movements and habits.  It’s the family friends, our friends from church, his brother’s friends and their siblings…IT IS NOT HIS PEERS!  His peers think all of this is weird.  How have we not noticed that???  How have we forgotten that his best friend from preschool went to another school to start kindergarten, and his best friend from kindergarten moved to a new school for first grade?  Here it is the middle of the school year and how have we not seen that he doesn’t have any close friends??”

These thoughts are screaming through my mind as the tears become uncontrollable in the middle of this beautiful worship song…

And then my husband, in the midst of his own hurt, knowing and understanding all that is in my head and heart, whispers to me the truth that MUST guide our path, our thoughts, our actions, and our words…

“” ()

We know that we have been given this beautiful boy.  He is our gift.  He has many of his own gifts that we will never fully understand.  We are allowed glimpses in moments like this.  We know that the Lord uses him, and loves him even more than we do.  We know that somehow, He will guide us in these next steps, of redirecting our focus, to help this sweet boy make these connections his heart longs for, even when his outward actions make it seem like he prefers to be alone.  The Lord will guide us as we try to help him navigate the hard moments of putting yourself out there and building friendships, and experiencing hurt and rejection sometimes along the way.  And I know, this is hard for ALL parents, I know that I am not alone in this hurt.  But in these moments, sometimes the autism glares, and it is hard to see how he will overcome the difficulties he has in expressing himself and in picking up those subtle social cues.  It is hard to know that many times, his peers will just see him as weird and will not know what to do with his quirky, frequently awkward ways.

But we will carry on, and “.  We will treasure these moments of seeing inside his soul, and we will hope and pray, that someday as time goes on, and he learns and grows in his communication and his ability to relate to others, that sometimes these moments of clarity will include sweet moments of rejoicing with him for happy feelings or sweet moments of loving friendships!  We know they can be there.  They just look a little bit different from our own.  We are thankful he is here to help us see the unique ways in which he is , and the ways in which the Lord uses him to show us more about Himself,