amazing
“How was your day?” I ask Riley as she slides into the car after work, and what I really mean is how were the last few hours, and what astounds me when I ask is that, as usual, she seems as peaceful as the ocean at low tide, still, like glass.
“Work was amazing,” she says significantly, as she always does, settling her iced coffee carefully into a cup holder, and I get caught up recognizing the inferential steps it took Riley, who has Autism, to get from how was your day to work was amazing. She used to struggle to say words, and then, to make sentences, and then, to understand that almost nothing, especially not language, follows a literal line.
“Amazing,” I repeat slowly, smiling broadly. “That’s good.”
Funny, that word –amazing, when wielded by the Word Himself in Old Testament scripture, is the Hebrew word pala, and it refers to accomplishments so difficult as to be beyond human power or to thoughts so profound as to be beyond human understanding. Because of this, the word is almost always used to describe what God has done. His ways and His thoughts are higher, the prophet Isaiah wrote, and this was not meant to convey some disdain He feels toward us for our smallness but rather that to us He just always will be pala, amazing, beyond our understanding or ability, and, in the context of the passage, especially so with regard to love and mercy and forgiveness.
I wonder if Riley even thinks of it consciously, that the use of that word evokes the perspective that the work isn’t hers at all, but God’s.
I sit back, watching as she carefully clips her seatbelt into place, thinking that her always amazing assessment always fits, because in him we live and move and have our being. But a day can be amazing without feeling or even looking peaceful though, so where does that peace of hers come from?
The afternoon had not been peaceful for me at all, and, in fact, the upheaval I felt began right here, at the coffee shop where Riley works. When I dropped her off this afternoon, I had purchased a cup of coffee and drifted out to the patio, hoping to squeeze in a few minutes of inspired creativity before heading on to an afternoon meeting. My problem maybe began with the squeeze, which naturally throws everything into a frenzy.
While Riley started her work, I sat out at a tall table with the sun warming the backs of my hands as I typed. Across the street, dump trucks lumbered through a construction site where a group in bright hard hats has been building townhomes. On the unit directly across from me, I noticed stickers on rows of blank windows, some open to allow in the breeze. Gravel poured from one of the dump trucks, a waterfall of broken rock chinking and clattering to the ground, and a fog of rusty dust rose from bare ground. Behind me, I heard the gentle cadenced mumble of a couple talking and laughing. Their louder, clearer words dropped like syncopated beats. To one side, from the shade, a baby cried, chronically unhappy, a mother’s weary voice dimly soothing. The coffee shop had piped in jazzy elevator music, just loud enough to be noticeable as background noise and generic enough not to anchor my thoughts to any specific feelings or lyrics.
Meanwhile, I tried to focus on a still, small voice.
I wondered why an amazing God would speak not in a great, strong wind, nor in an earthquake, nor in a fire, but in a whisper.
My son Adam, who also has Autism, doesn’t like it when I whisper. He’ll touch my cheeks even though he shies away from touch; he’ll look into my eyes even though he doesn’t like to make eye contact; he’ll gently but firmly plead, “No whisper.” I admit it: Sometimes I whisper just because it makes him do those things, because the rare connection with him absolutely delights me, and because for me, it’s even more about the connection than what I’m saying.
This afternoon while I sipped my coffee, which had suddenly seemed too hot to suit the sun, I began to pray. I was grasping; my time here was short, too short probably, and what else could I do? I felt too fractured to work, so overwhelmed, in fact, by the atmosphere that even my prayer came out as only the calling of His name, Lord—before my thoughts were again interrupted.
The shop sits at the corner of an intersection, across the street from an elementary school. I heard the children on the playground at recess, calling out to each other, squealing as they flitted fast across the grassy lawn like wild birds plumed in riotous color. Cars and trucks buzzed by on the roads, and the driver of a pickup truck honked his horn when another driver failed to acknowledge his right of way at a four-way stop. A lovely tree beside me, just on the edge of my peripheral vision, swayed languidly, in time with the wind’s rhythmic caress. All this, and I had only just begun to consciously process the sensory information flooding the patio.
My environment turned out to be a great distraction, and at the time, this came as a surprise to me.
From Latin, the word distraction comes from dis, meaning ‘apart’, and trahere, meaning ‘to drag.’ Distraction literally drags me away, and of course, life brims full of all sorts of distractions, not just sensory ones. Emotions distract me; busy-ness distracts me; pain distracts me. I could make an endless list. All distractions make it harder for me to hear.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it.
The word distraction appears in the New Testament in the familiar story of Mary and Martha, used to describe a sister drawn away from listening to the Lord by her many tasks. She draws a contrast to the other sister, who sits at Christ’s feet, transfixed, while He teaches. Jesus said that this sister, the listening one, had chosen the better thing. I have always imagined her so captivated by His words, so completely focused on His voice, that all the activity in that room fell away. But maybe it wasn’t that way for her at all.
One of the most helpful things I learned early on in our journey with Autism is that most individuals with Autism don’t find it difficult to pay attention but rather find it difficult not to. Lacking the ability to prioritize or ignore sensory information, their minds receive all stimuli at equal volume, such that the world, such that life itself, represents a cacophony. They don’t have the ability to let the activity around them fall away. As a result, my young adults with Autism struggle against overwhelm and overstimulation continually and every day, though the problem expresses itself differently for each of them. Riley will sometimes begin a sentence multiple times, pausing mid-thought to start again until, in tears, she finally says, “I just can’t talk because of all the noise,” while Adam copes by using an almost continual stream of echolalia—phrases he’s memorized and constantly repeats–and music to give his mind the equivalent of sensory guardrails to hold on to as he navigates a wild stream of information that is beyond his control. For those of us described as neurotypical, this challenge, which takes distraction to an extreme, is almost impossible to imagine. For them, following and interpreting the expression of a single voice represents a process of amazing difficulty, which is probably why Adam doesn’t like me to whisper. To discern a whisper amidst an endless list of distractions requires an amazing effort.
“Today I got to take a few orders,” Riley says placidly now, reaching for her seatbelt, chopping the air expressively with her free hand. “For Mr. Steve and Mr. Pat.” Probably, if I asked, she could even remember what they ordered. Certainly, she will always remember Mr. Steve and Mr. Pat. I’d like to be a fly on the wall the next time those two men encounter Riley in the coffee shop, but as we pull away, I’m still wondering how she manages it all and finds any peace. And then suddenly I remember she said, it was amazing.
She’s not managing anything at all.
In an encouraging and oft quoted passage from his letter to the Philippians, Paul wrote,
Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Paul wrote this letter while in prison, and from that outward context, which would certainly have been spiritually distracting, he urged one solid action—prayer and petition, with thanksgiving–in response to all anxiety.
The word we translate anxiety in that passage is merimnao in the Greek, which can also be translated distracted. It means “drawn in opposite directions,” or “(figuratively) ‘to go to pieces’ because pulled apart.” Paul knows that when an extremely distracted, anxious, or fearful person, a person in Christ who has trouble paying attention–or not, prays, the peace of God–which is amazing—guards that person’s heart and mind, freeing them to think carefully about unending goodness, or, to listen wholeheartedly to the still, small voice of Christ. In other words, even our ability to focus on Christ is part of His amazing work.
It’s amazing that, living in this uber-distracting world with no ability to let anything fall away, my two young adults with Autism should be two of the most peaceful people I know, and yet, if I had to sum up Riley’s spiritual life in two words, it would be these, she prays, and Adam’s would be, he worships.
“You got to take orders today. That’s amazing,” I say to Riley now, reaching to pat her knee with my free hand. “Really, really good.”
“Yes, it is, Mom Jones,” she agrees, giving back the grin as we drive away from the coffee shop. “It is amazing.”
