I was packing my well-worn suitcase for a speaking engagement at yet another conference. Always remembering to rehearse Noah’s weekly schedule in my absence, I called him into my room as I packed. We went over which members of our church were providing respite for us each afternoon, what he could have for snack, and other essential items on the week’s agenda. After reciting the plans, Noah asked what I was going to be doing. He knows that I teach about “people like him” and how to include them in church and school. He understands that I tell stories about our life together and how autism impacted our life. But he surprised me when he asked, “Mom, you won’t forget me when you are gone will you?”
I chuckled as I placed more clothes and books in my suitcase. The idea that Noah is ever off my mind for more than five minutes is ludicrous. My entire life has become about telling our story so that others can find hope. I smiled and casually quipped, “Noah all I do is talk about you everyday in lectures while I am gone. How in this world could I forget you while I was gone – even if I wanted to? For heaven’s sake Noah, if it weren’t for you I wouldn’t even have a job.”
I turned to continue my task but was brought to full attention as Noah came around the bed and placed his hands on my shoulders. Looking me full in the face and straight in the eye, Noah imparted a wisdom that I can only see as more of our autism gospel.
“Oh, Mom. You say you wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for me, but I think you wouldn’t have a job if it weren’t for you because you were the one who always believed.”
Walking away satisfied, Noah went back to his room to continue building Legos. Completely humbled, I sat on the floor at my bedside and wept. I wept for all the days that I left therapy completely defeated because he wouldn’t cooperate with the therapist. I wept for the day I was told he was being moved to a behavioral unit at school because he was incapable of cognitive processes. I wept for all the times I came upon him sitting in the hallway outside a Sunday school classroom because the commotion and excitement of the lesson frightened him. I wept for all the moments over all these years when I had perceived that we had failed.
And I wept not because we have proved people wrong or in gratitude that we have come so far, but because Noah recognized all of those moments not as monuments to failure but rather as milestones in a journey of belief. Mainly, I think I believed because my other option was so dismal. I could either choose hope or desolation. I could continue to work on small, manageable solutions to our difficulties, or I could just stop and accept despair. Mostly, I just hoped there was more to us than it appeared.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. [1]
Noah sees our story as one of hope through a series of seeming defeats where someone chose to believe against all odds. Perhaps we should all take a page out of this autism gospel and choose to believe in the unseen in light of eternity. I think that is where we could find hope and peace. I know that Noah has.
The gospel of this autism moment tells us that someone needs you to believe in an unseen hope. There is probably someone who needs you to see past the defeat and unmet expectations. Believing in Noah didn’t look like tons of new therapy techniques or another medical solution to our crisis. Believing didn’t involve continual work to meet his IEP goals. We did those things, but that wasn’t the act of believing. Believing didn’t require me to have an immediate solution. Believing asked me to have hope in spite of the fact that I didn’t have a solution.
I offer no magic solutions on this Autism Awareness Day. I only propose that we choose to believe that all of us are more than our deficits. Noah taught me the value of just believing in the potential of what we cannot see. Maybe soon we’ll have Autism Acceptance Day where we celebrate how different and unalike we are.
But until then, just believe.
[1] The Holy Bible: New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984), 2 Co 4:16–18.
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