When my husband and I found out our first child would be a
boy, we were thrilled. We created a magazine-worthy nursery, read What to Expect When You’re Expecting from
cover to cover, and practiced putting the pack-and-play together in less than
the two hours it took on our first try.
I’d known since I was a child myself that I wanted to have
kids, and lots of them. I imagined myself as the quintessential soccer mom with
four boys lined up in stair-step fashion like the dutiful kids in The Sound of Music. I hoped that my
coming boy would grow to be a strapping young man full of wit, sociability, and
athleticism like his father, and, most of all, a gentle warrior for Christ.
Babies don’t come with manuals, and I learned soon enough
that babies don’t go by the book, no matter how many we read and or how much we
research or how much we plan. No, babies don’t go by the book, and neither does
God. This also I learned soon enough.
When my little boy turned two, he had no words and we began
to worry. By the time he turned three, we knew something was atypical, beyond a
hearing issue or a developmental delay. At 3 ½, he was diagnosed with autism.
That night I saw my husband cry for the first time.
When I carefully laid out the nursery and prepared my birth
plan, the possibility of a disability hadn’t been even a thought in my mind. I
hadn’t considered that God might have different plans for me than I had for me,
for my son, and for our family. I also hadn’t considered that plans involving
pain, difficulty, and uncertainty might be one of the best things to happen to
me, because these very things would teach me about love and about God’s love.
But before I could understand lessons of love from pain, I
had to work through my unmet expectations with God. Autism challenged
everything I’d ever thought of Him. It challenged me to consider how He could
allow disability or, if I had done something to cause this, why He didn’t
intervene.
As I wrestled with God through tears, my little boy, only
capable of repeating movie lines verbatim, walked around constantly chanting
his memory verse: “Everything God made was very good” (Genesis 1:31). From the mouths of babes. Through that
simple child-sized memory verse, God spoke to me over and over: “This child is
not what you expected, but he is a beautiful gift to you from Me. Receive it.
Receive him.”
As I released my unmet expectations and opened my hands to
receive the reality of what God had given me, I began to learn about God’s love
for me. For most of my Christian life, I suspected God’s love for me was based
on what I could do for Him, and I performed for Him. I was the actor, He was
the observer. When my plates were spinning in succession, I assumed I’d earned
love. But when the plates were crashing on the stage, the condemnation assured
me that God couldn’t possibly love me.
My son could not “perform” in all the socially acceptable,
typically developing ways that other kids around him could. Because he
struggled to communicate, he grew frustrated easily, which led to public
meltdowns and awkward situations. Many, many people did not know what to do
with him or with me. This was extremely difficult for me, because as a
performer for love, his disability directly confronted the idea that he
reflected on me and my performance as a mother. Would I love him and value him
for who God created Him to be or be forever frustrated at his differences and
what others perceived as failures? Of course I would love him; he is my beloved
son.
This was my first lesson in God’s love, because He turned it
around to my own heart. In reality, He showed me, I have a disability as well,
and it’s called sin. I am unable to perform in order to earn God’s love and
reflect well on His holiness. He could be forever frustrated at my failures,
but He is my Father and He loves me apart from what I can or can’t do. Instead
of forever frustrated, because of Christ’s sacrifice, He is forever patient and
gracious with me. My son reflects back to me the depth of God’s love.
My son is now 11 and he's been more precisely diagnosed as
having Asperger's. Disability has released some of its grip but not all. There
are difficult moments still and, as now that he's entered the middle school years,
we pray fervently for him. I so want him to have a good friend and to find a
passion and to know the deep love of God.
But even in this quiet, pained sensitivity that remains, I
see a picture of how God loves. As a mother, I feel things for my son perhaps
deeper than what my son feels. I want the very best for him. I grieve when he
hurts or doesn’t understand the social cues that everyone else understands that
are causing him problems. But I carry those hurts for him even when it hurts me
too, because I love him.
Just the same, God the Father grieves when we grieve and
hurts when we are hurt. And perhaps most importantly, He doesn’t run from our
pain. He can handle it all. We can lay it all on Him and He carries it for us,
because He cares for us.
I don’t know what the future holds. I learned long ago to lay my perfectly-planned expectations aside and hold all things with open hands. But one thing I know: God was right when He whispered to me that this boy would be a gift. I received him as such, which has opened my eyes to see the complexity of God’s love. And I will continue to receive, enjoying these blessed mysteries that I have been invited in to as a parent of a child with a disability.
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Needing encouragement, Mom? Desiring God has recently published a book called Mom Enough: The Fearless Mother's Heart and Hope, to which I have contributed, alongside Gloria Furman, Trillia Newbell, Rachel Jankovic and others. You can get it for free in pdf form or purchase a paperback version. May it bless you in your mothering!
