connect
“Are you Adam’s mom?” Our young friend Becky asks me, lightly fingering a little-girl hairclip at the side of her head, looking up at me with wide, quiet eyes of fathomless blue. I feel touched by the hint of wonder in her expression.
Becky must be in the third grade. I had watched earlier as she knelt in front of Adam with a Connect 4 game and asked him if he would like to play, one kid out of a whole writhing sea who saw him and felt brave enough to try. She carefully tucked her seersucker dress beneath her knees, wrapping them in soft rainbows, and gathered her long hair in one hand to push it back behind her shoulders. I wasn’t far away, but I was welcoming more children into the room for worship, and I couldn’t hear exactly what she said to him. I have a God-given tender alertness to my son, the kind of watchfulness I know only very slightly mimics God’s watchfulness over me and you, and I just saw as Becky looked at him, turning those beautiful eyes, and as, ignoring the abstract way Adam held his hand in front of his mouth and the echolalia, she invited him to Connect with her.
Rebecca McLaughlin wrote that, “A person who looks lonely is an emergency.”
JD Greear will mention the quote this very morning, while exhorting us from the book of James about the kind of love we should have for people who are different than we are, for people in need, for people who have less, for people who tend to feel invisible; about how our natural response to the love we’ve received from God will always be to extend that love to others. When I hear this message, I will think about a young, fiercely talented Autistic man I had seen on American Idol this year who had, with tears, articulated that he had only ever wanted to be seen—really, truly seen and accepted. I will think about how, as recorded in the book of Acts, Peter and John stood before a disabled beggar and urged him to look at them—to see that he was seen—before they healed him. And I will also think of Becky, how she knelt on the carpet in front of Adam this morning, with her face wide open.
Adam had returned Becky’s gaze, had briefly removed his hand from where he held it curled over his lips, probably long enough to say, “yeah,” and then had gone back to coping with all the overstimulation in the room. Becky had faltered slightly; probably not quite sure what Adam had said. Adam’s “no’s” come across with startling forcefulness, but his affirmative responses always seem a bit tentative, as though he’s not entirely sure what he’s agreeing to do.
“Yes,” I tell her now, leaning down a little, smiling, watching her face change as she grapples with exactly how to ask her questions.
I’m used to questions about Adam, and not just from the kids in children’s worship. So many more people have heard of Autism now than during the early days just after our kids were diagnosed, but still it seems rare to meet people who have actually experienced the implications of the condition or who already know how to love someone like Adam. Even in medical facilities, I still end up explaining and interpreting and advocating while Adam sits beside me working through his anxiety and sensory overload. I prefer questions though, to the alternative, slightly repulsed looks I also see when people notice him.
“Adam has Autism,” I tell Becky after a moment, because I can see in her face that her curiosity comes from a genuine desire to understand and possibly, to make a friend.
When she sat in front of him with that Connect game, not quite knowing what to do, I had pulled myself away from the door long enough to get Adam’s attention and reinforce what she wanted. He had glanced at me and then reached for a stack of the plastic discs on the floor in front of him, the red ones that were scattered on his side of the board.
Becky had watched Adam’s face carefully then, the way she watches me now, thoughtful, listening, had slowly taken one of her own discs and slid it into a slot on the top of the board. I had watched as Adam copied her, thinking that he probably didn’t really even know how to play the game.
“You’ll have to show him how to play,” I had said to Becky, not really expecting that she could, smiling at them as I rushed back to the door to welcome more families.
So, I understand what she wants to know now and feel a little awed that, when she could be doing a thousand other things, she has stopped to ask me how to Connect with my son.
I glance over at Adam, who now stands in the back corner of the room, twisting invisibly back and forth on one foot, that same hand curled over his mouth as he talks to himself.
“He can’t talk very well, but he understands most of what you say,” I tell Becky. “Thank you for asking him to play Connect 4 with you this morning; it means a lot to me that you did that.” And then I wait, trying to give her time to ask what she wants to know.
“Does he point at things?” She asks, her voice gentle, and I understand that she’s really only looking for a language both of them can use proficiently, only looking for the level ground beneath their feet.
Later, I will decide that it’s Becky’s openness I want to achieve in my own attempts, her genuine desire to understand, her willingness to feel uncomfortable while she tries to build a relationship with someone who isn’t like her and who doesn’t quite know how to respond. I will remember how generously she gave up time she could have spent more easily elsewhere.
“If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself,’ you are doing well,” James wrote. “But if you show partiality, you sin.” Sometimes my partiality to certain kinds of people comes down, quite selfishly, to what makes me feel more at ease.
“Yes, sometimes he points,” I tell Becky slowly, “and sometimes, he uses words, but most of all, Adam likes things written down. It helps if he can see the words. And he likes pictures; he really understands pictures.”
She nods, taking this in, twisting slowly toward Adam’s corner. I watch her take a deep breath, gathering herself before she turns back to me.
“Okay,” she says simply, those bottomless eyes full of resolve. Then she sets off again toward him.
