enjoy
In the picture my friend sends me, Adam leaps, his long legs artfully bent, his face passionately focused. I imagine a crescendo, a bold, sweeping musical phrase building in Adam’s heart, exploding through his body. My son is a dancer. I am someone who dances for joy, often in worship, often poorly, laughing because I look undignified and I don’t care, but by contrast, the picture captures Adam co-creating beauty, soaring in sync with another dancer, his legs and arms in exactly the same position as hers. He looks like a lyric or some silent harmony, like an expression of something so real l can’t quite stop looking, but what I find most eye-catching of all is that tiny curve of a smile, that joy breaking on his chiseled face. My friend’s text says, just had to share, because those of us who love Adam trade discoveries like rare finds.
“He’s really good,” she says later, “really good.” Also a dancer, and one who has persisted in the art despite her own set of challenges, my friend tells the truth. She’s kind, but she’s also selective about other dancers the way I am selective about words. She gazes at me with still, dark eyes, waiting to see that I understand. “We watch Adam to relearn the choreography when we forget,” she says.
I search her expression for any sign of exaggeration for my sake, although I know she never speaks in hyperbole, especially about dance. I smile because her expression says, I’m dead serious, because I of the countless times I’ve asked God to bless Adam with the mercy of meaningful ministry.
Just a few weeks ago, another friend confessed that she had been praying for God to give Adam a gift he can use not just practically but to bless the lives of others. “Something he’s uniquely good at,” she had said, clasping her hands in front of her as she mentioned specific talents that represent grace in Riley’s life and grace to others. “I want something like that for Adam, too.”
I sat across from her feeling stunned, asking God to help me receive the kind of love that prays in ways I haven’t even thought to request, the kind of love that loves my children enough to dream holy dreams for them.
“So let me tell you how God has answered our prayers for Adam,” I say to her now, curling into my chair. Carefully, I pass on the discovery, holding a coffee cup in one hand, my feet tucked up beneath me. I sweep my open hand through the air, trying to mimic the movement in that leap. “Apparently, Adam helped choreograph a song for the school talent show,” I tell my friend, my face lit with wild, joyful disbelief. “His teacher had to do some linguistic gymnastics to be sure she understood what he wanted to do–by push, do you mean this? or this?–but the thing is, she did that for him. She was willing to do that.”
My friend nods, her listening-face open and intent, her eyes sparking with wonder. She shifts in her seat, leaning closer, silently waiting. What next; what else?
“Of all the things, you could never have convinced me it would be dance,” I say, “and I keep wondering, ‘Now what does God intend to do with this?'” I mean beyond the beauty, beyond the expression, which certainly qualifies as meaningful ministry, but my Autism-mama mind always measures everything in functional terms. I imagined that God’s first yes in answer to our prayers would involve some vocational skill, some job that would also amount to ministry. I often have solid ideas about how God should answer my prayers, and for that reason, He often surprises me.
Knowing this, my friend sits back and grins wide, watching my face. She waits, lets the moment come to full term in quiet, and says, “You know, maybe God just wants to give Adam a gift to enjoy.”
I think again of that picture, of that curve of a smile on Adam’s face. My friend has found the freedom to embrace the prodigal love of God, the reckless lavishness of His generosity, the truth that God wants more for us than what we do for Him, and so, she often gently reminds me to allow myself to do the same. Right now, leaning toward me as the sun begins to set behind her, she looks radiant with the truth.
“Every gift doesn’t need to be a new set of pots and pans,” she says, laughing, and I have to reach out and grip her arm with my hand, and she nods because she hears me, even though I haven’t spoken any words.
In the early days, Adam didn’t know how to play. We grieved this, that our two-year-old with the shining eyes even had to learn to have fun. I took him to play therapy twice a week, where a therapist stood in a knot of struggling toddlers trying to teach them the proper purpose of toys, the fun of reciprocal interaction. Sometimes all the tired mamas sat in the waiting room sharing war stories, other times, I strapped baby Zoe to my chest and spent the hour prayer-walking in the park. I asked God to help Adam grow, but even more, I just wanted Adam to find something to enjoy.
That word en-joy reaches for a filling, for joy that wells in empty places, for joy that spills and splashes.
I sit back now and shake my head, laughing with my friend as God begins to tease out another knot in my heart. Look, He says, drawing my mind back to that picture of Adam, frozen mid-air in a leap. Adam has learned to play. More than that, Adam’s whole body has become a means of expression. Finally, my handsome boy has found the fun in meaningful communication, and finally, he’s found something that fills him with joy.
