Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 4: Wonderfully Made

This is the fourth in a daily series celebrating the blessings I'm thankful for, leading up to Thanksgiving. While they will portray some of the many -- and random -- things I have to be thankful for, they will not be presented in any particular order by degree of thankfulness. Skewed priorities should not be implied.


You may find this shocking, but I'm going to confess it anyway.  Ready?

I'm thankful for a child with autism.

Don't get me wrong - I long for a world in which parents no longer have to sit in a room full of experts who pronounce their child "defective" and hash out the best route to the brightest possible future.  It's agonizing to be told your child is autistic, wondering if your child will ever converse, have friends, hold a job, marry.

But for me, that happened 13 years ago, and in the 13 years since, I've realized a lot of things about her autism.

Realizations like austism makes her who she is, the girl that I love; without it, she would not be "her."  I simply cannot imagine her any other way. She was fearfully and wonderfully made; all her days were planned out for her before any of them came to be (Ps. 139).  THIS is who she was meant to be for our today and her future.

It gives her an innocence that I treasure.  She has an encouraging, forgiving, trusting sense of personal grace I envy.

Autism is responsible for a certain brilliance to her memory I find sometimes fearsome and most often awesome.  As a young child who could not yet read, she could hear music played from a page and still know, months later, what song was from what page.  She saw Fantasia 2000 once and afterward could listen to the soundtrack and describe what was happening in the movie at that point in the music; she'd stare at the picture window like it was a movie screen, enjoying the movie again as it played realistically in her head.  She's a steel trap for every factoid on whatever topic she currently enjoys.

Because of her autism, we've perhaps lost a lot.  But, oh, I've gained so much, too, and that's what I prefer to focus on.

It introduced us to an amazing woman who, through dance, has transformed my daughter from a shy little girl to this confident solo performer.

It's afforded her access to amazing opportunities.  She designed art in a special program that ended up being that year's gala theme, auctioned off for hundreds of dollars and made into a custom rug for thousands.

Autism exposed us to amazing teachers and aides who genuinely loved her, pushed her and taught her necessary skills beyond classroom academics; they've continued to cheer her progress long after she's left their instruction.

It makes the ordinary milestones extraordinary. I cried the first time she called me mom. I celebrated seeing her go from having to use pictures to tell me what she did that day to a fully mainstreamed high school student with her own set of peer friends.  Your kids have no doubt made friends among their peers; it's the most normal thing in the world.  For an autistic child, it's a monumental achievement. The moment I got to exit her from special ed because she'd achieved all the goals they could set for her -- normal things like how to ask for help and converse with friends -- was worth every. single. tear. shed over the years.

It's made her work hard.  She's pushed herself to go on long youth trips, tackling whitewater rafting and working in inner-city missions because she wanted to go beyond her comfort zone.  I don't think watching her do these things would be nearly as amazing had she been "normal."

I do wonder about her future.  I don't know what college -- just two short years away -- and career will hold for her.  Marriage and family?  Who knows?

Well, God knows.  I might not, but I can rest in knowing He does and that whatever her future is, it will be what it is supposed to be.  He's made her - wonderfully.

Countdown to Thanksgiving Day 3: LOL

This is the third in a daily series celebrating the blessings I'm thankful for, leading up to Thanksgiving. While they will portray some of the many -- and random -- things I have to be thankful for, they will not be presented in any particular order by degree of thankfulness. Skewed priorities should not be implied.

A day without laughter is a day wasted. - Charlie Chaplin

Indeed.  

Fortunately, I have a pretty crazy household.  I get this stuff all the time.

Usually, it involves the middle Ms. Hat.

One day, I heard her say behind me, "Look, Mom!  I'm Mulan!" 

 Yeah, I gasped so audibly the neighbors probably heard me.  And then I laughed my head off.

Then there was the time she thought my blemish (makeup) stick was lipstick.

She frequently says the funniest things, too.  I have a whole log I'll spare you, but here's a select few:

Last year's note to Santa: 

 "Santa - Merry Christmas from Gracie. I am very, very sorry with my attitude this year. 

Please don't give me coal. Please, please don't give me give me coal." 

 [Here, I interrupted: "Well, he'll probably say, 'Then watch your attitude.'" So she went and finished her note.] 

 "Please don't say 'Don't give me attitude." Please, please don't write that. Merry Christmas."

On the way home one day - 

RADIO: "Is your child defiant? Is back-talking a problem? 

You can change your child's behavior. Call 1-800-blah...." 

GRACE: "Mom, don't call that number."

After school, Gracie told me she'd spent a large part of the day sneezing, 

so much so they had the school nurse evaluate her. 

"I'm allergic to boys," she said, very seriously. "Whenever I sit by boys, I start sneezing. Except for Jessie..." 

[Jessie is the teen-aged brother of her best friend who Gracie had a serious crush on.] 

"He doesn't have dust."

On the Fourth of July after kindergarten, Grace wanted to demonstrate her ability to say the Pledge of Allegiance. 

She rattled it off perfectly, ending with "...with liberty and justice for all. You may now be seated." 

After I got done laughing, I told her that "you may now be seated" wasn't part of the pledge. 

"Well, that's the way my principal says it!!"

On the way to school, Gracie asked, "What's 'prind'?" "Prind?!" "Yeah, P-R-N-D." "That's not a word." "Well, what is that in front of you?" I gasped out between fits of laughter: "Those are letters for Park, Reverse, Neutral and Drive."

Then there's the ham to all her cheese:

Yep, even the cat is not immune:

I'm telling you, it's crazy over here.

There's humor in the things I find myself saying, funny simply because it's just. so. ridiculous that a situation is occurring that requires it to be said.  Things like "stop sucking on the cat" and "don't whip your siblings with your hair" just aren't normal.  OK, they are normal HERE, but you probably won't hear them elsewhere; there, you'll find other moms saying equally silly things.

I even find humor at the grocery store, which is good because I find a whole lot of "grrrr" there, too.  

But I laugh every time I pass the sign over a frozen aisle that says "Frozen Ice Cream" as though there's another aisle where you can find melted ice cream.  This week, I approached one aisle from a different direction than usual and laughed when I saw the small "sensible snacks" sign hanging over potato chips and fried pork rinds.  And there's that time my husband brought home their cash register-generated coupon for "Tyson Frozen Breasts. No thawing required." 

Laughter is what keeps me sane.  Finding that little nugget of funny in any form from slap-stick to error to witty irony and responding with laughter is like releasing the cork on the bottle containing all the 

yuck in life.

Humor is everywhere you look for it.  

Thank goodness, because as Charlie knows, it'd be a wasted life without it.

So, laugh today.  And then come back and tell me how humor saved your day.