blessed reassurance
Caught up, as usual, in a morning flurry, I pause to hug Adam on my way out the door, to tell him I hope he enjoys his overnight field trip. Most years, the staff at the school Adam attends arranges a stay in the lodge at a nearby park, where the school community does both education and life together for a few days. This experience comes closest for Adam to summer camp, only for an amount of time that’s more manageable for people with easily overwhelmed sensory systems, with the benefit of the kind of structure and safety uniquely provided by this staff, loving these young people. This staff, who, at the end of the project, will smile at me from tired eyes and laugh, commenting that after just the smallest break for rest, they’ll already be looking forward to the next time.
I lean in before I leave the house, lightly touching the sharp ridge of Adam’s shoulder blade with the tips of my fingers, warmed as he offers me his raspy cheek for a kiss.
“Yes, good,” Adam says, voice deep, strong, ready.
It hasn’t escaped my attention that of all the words we humans choose to embellish our enthusiasm, Adam relies on the one God favored when He sculpted the stunning harmony of the natural world. Everything God made was good and all of it together was very good because He himself is supremely good, and so, the word Adam chooses to describe his peace is good or pleasing to the senses. If anyone understands Adam’s lifelong quest for sensory harmony, if anyone keeps bringing Adam peace as a generous gift, it’s God.
Adam loves this trip, has anticipated it, in fact, for days, but as he leans away from my hug, he also says, “Friday morning, Mom pick you up.”
We can feel ready for a thing, enthusiastic, even, and still feel needy for some reassurance. Here’s what I’m learning, though: Seeking re-assurance can be an act of faith.
Because of challenges related to Autism, Adam stumbles over words, often finding the wrong ones when he reaches into the jumbled closet of his mind to jerk out what he needs. He switches pronouns like mismatched socks, you instead of me. He drops verbs, leaving them crumpled on the floor, that will like a forgotten accessory, but when it’s important, he manages to pick up the most essential words to get his point across. This is me in prayer, trying to talk to God of heavenly things, not eloquent, but determined. I always feel grateful that God has never needed my words to know me, and I’ve not needed Adam’s, not really, being able, by way of intimate knowledge, to see in him most of what I need to know.
What I see now, as my eyes trace the strong lines of brow and cheekbone and jaw, is that this is not really a question, because Adam already knows, has memorized, in fact, from my planner, that I will come to the park on Friday morning to retrieve him. He’s looking for reassurance on the edge of a pilgrimage, establishing shelter to set his watchfulness, his hope, by the truth.
I understand this well, because I can memorize all the scripture my mind can hold, but apart from actually communicating with God about His truth, apart from knowing Him face-to-face and hearing Him speak, that reliance on my mind falls flat. My heart and my flesh may fail, as the Psalmist once wrote, but God is the strength of my heart.
It isn’t the planner Adam trusts so much as the one who made the plan.
“Friday morning, Mom pick you up,” Adam says again, touching his forehead to mine, drilling me with his eyes while waiting to hear my reply.
At the end of all this, you’re picking me up, right?
Reassurance-seekers know their weaknesses, the potential for the failure of the heart, the flesh, and keep returning to hear God repeat His promises. I’ve never known God to rebuff a child who keeps coming back to wait, to listen, to press their tiny, mortal forehead right into the vast and faithful love of the Ancient of Days.
Immediately, I think of Moses, how he once argued unnecessarily for the Presence of God to go with the Israelites into the land God had promised to give them. If you’re not going with us, Moses had said, even after God had clearly promised in the affirmative to go, don’t send us up.
I think of Gideon, laying his fleece on the ground yet again, smoothing out the edges before sitting back on his heels. If you’ll really do what you promised, this time, let the fleece be wet and the grass be dry.
Adam touches my ear, leans in again to look more deeply into my eyes, and listens, grin growing, as I tell him that yes, I will pick him up early Friday morning. Then he leans away from me, returning to his pacing and echolalia, to what amounts to obsessive internal decluttering, in preparation for the experience ahead. It helps to know what you need and also to know how to reject everything else.
When the Bible speaks of assurance, as when the Hebrew writer says, “faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance of what we do not see,” it speaks of standing under a guaranteed agreement, to be sheltered by a promise, even without any visible evidence of its integrity. To be reassured, then, is to ask to hear the promise repeated, to have it affirmed, to want to watch the love-roof form again in the air above our heads, protective and broad, because we know that the builder is good.
For Adam, looking for reassurance has become a better substitute for parting words like see ya later, tweaked for specificity and productivity, because words are work, and Adam doesn’t say them unnecessarily. See ya later leaves too much unspecified, and so, every day when I drop Adam off at school, he pushes open the car door and announces aloud, while gathering backpack and phone and whatever else he needs to carry, his interpretation of the guaranteed agreement regarding who will bring him home, laying it out for me to confirm or correct.
We both know how I’m getting home, right?
It’s not a bad strategy, really, for a pilgrim looking toward home.
I know this because my own day changes when it begins with my living hope, with me speaking it back, right out loud into the ear of God, with me going still to listen for His voice, always returning to the solid shelter of the Truth. For my part, this sounds like a borrowed line from an old hymn. Blessed assurance: Jesus is mine. And just like that, a love-roof, a crown, the shadow of God’s mighty arm, appears as a testimony in my soul, reminding me again of the strength of my heart, of who will be my inheritance forever.
