help me
The most effective training is hard. That’s what I tell myself as, on the exhale, I blow away the stray hairs that have slipped from my ponytail. Every other morning, I groan through a series of exercises meant to strengthen my core, which feels important to me as more and more natural “fairy hair” appears on my head and my muscles randomly spasm into temper tantrums, and as I more often feel like one enormous bruise by the end of a strenuous weak. My friends and I sometimes laugh over how our physical goals have changed as we age, how these days standing up straight and being able to move and having strength to “do the things” trumps the desires we used to have for peak physical fitness. We want to be as healthy as we can be, despite the quick passing of time and the increasingly more difficult requirements of life. So, most of us push through various kinds of exercise with this goal in mind. In the process, I need constant reminders that strengthening of every kind comes through the hard things. Routinely, mid-groan, lifting my hands to offer my tired legs just one second of extra support, I wonder if all this effort really makes a difference. In those moments, I have a hard time calculating what I seem to only see when removed from the struggle, that slowly, painfully, I am getting stronger.
Of course, what happens when I exercise my body happens as I go through spiritual formation as well. I used to think of the latter transformation as something wholly separate from the pressing and perseverance of my physical body, but I’ve come to believe that God designed the two–the physical and the spiritual—inextricably linked, that He intends to redeem both and does.
The author of the book of Hebrews wrote that even though Christ is the son of God, He learned obedience by what He suffered. In fact, the writer even says that Jesus, “offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission (Hebrews 5:7).” It’s comforting to me to know that Christ had to learn, often with cries and tears and fervent prayers, just like I do. It hardly suffices to compare my shaky, lifted hands to Christ’s pierced ones, except that Jesus created the comparison himself when He told us to take up our own crosses. He chooses to tell His story in ordinary things and in ordinary people, not just in epics, so if Christ himself learned obedience through what he suffered, why do I keep looking for learning in comfortable places? We have an ongoing conversation, God and I, about the difficulty of life and what it becomes in God’s hands, and so all this is still on my mind, resting in the background as these spiritual conversations do, when our family sits in communion over a generous meal and Kevin begins to draw Adam into conversation.
Help me, that’s what I see in Adam’s expression, as he slides his eyes toward me. Please. These exercises in community make for groan-worthy training, as far as Adam is concerned. He would also rather look for learning in comfortable spaces. For Adam, talking takes a significant amount of hard work, and in the moment, he can’t see how the effort could possibly make any difference.
If we define communication the way people with Autism do, my son, whose situation presents classically, is multiloquent and multilingual. He communicates, just usually not with words, and in these non-verbal communications, he’s not long-winded, certainly not verbose, but he’s forcefully expressive, particularly when it comes to me. God doesn’t need my words to understand me, and I don’t need Adam’s. That’s an administration of grace for which both of us feel exceedingly grateful, but of course, that’s not to say that communication is easy for us, because it never is easy.
Help me, his eyes plead, and immediately I want to rescue him or at least make things easier, but then I remember: the most effective training is hard. I lay my hand over his, and I offer him what I mean to be a reassuring smile: You’re okay; you can do this.
I’ve seen this expression so many times over the years–while Adam thrashed for freedom at the dentist’s office years ago; every single time before the needle prick for annual bloodwork; during his first COVID test. I see it when Riley insists on “fixing” Adam’s hair in the mornings, and he stands silently in front of her, swaying back and forth on his feet. I see it when Kevin pretends to steal Adam’s ice cream, or just before Adam walks out the door, when he’s been called outside to help collect fallen leaves or trim the bushes. Certainly every parent has seen this expression, the incredulity that anything good could come from pain, the surprise that you-who-love-me would allow such an assault on my comfort, the look that says, stop this, stop this, please. Right now, I see it volubly, sliding my way right over a steamy bowl of butternut squash soup. The soup, which tastes like Fall, lingers sweet on my tongue, hinting of cinnamon and nutmeg.
“Adam, tell me about school today,” Kevin says.
“Recess, basketball.” Adam says hurriedly, having, as we humans often so easily do, boiled verbal conversation down into a series of predictable exchanges. The words come out of his mouth with a hard edge, indicating his resistance to further discussion.
“What did you learn today?” Kevin persists, ignoring what for Adam has become like a rote prayer, searching instead for a genuine response.
Adam blurts out a name, one of the friends with whom he plays basketball, bending his head, not without exaggeration, over his soup bowl. His spoon tinks against the porcelain as he tries to scrape out the last drops of soup. I imagine Kevin’s words, virtually unprocessed, jumbled in a heap in Adam’s mind, like the demolished cars of a train that hurdled into a break in the track. What Adam resists right now, as he adjusts his body to wall off the conversation, is the effort it takes to sort out all that debris. I empathize; I feel like much of life amounts to that kind of project.
“No, not who,” Kevin says, “what.” Interrogative words and phrases cause Adam the most confusion in conversation. As a result, Adam doesn’t use wh-words himself, but if he did, the glare I’m getting over the table from Adam right now would silently ask, why? Why is this necessary? I know what Adam can’t comprehend, especially not right now: Kevin not only initiates but allows this difficulty for love, not because of any desire to withhold peace and comfort. Kevin knows that Adam’s life will be more abundant, in ways Adam can’t begin to imagine, if Adam does the hard work that potentially builds new pathways for communication, however slowly.
And of course, Adam can’t begin to understand that this effort to talk to him is hard for us too. I have a tiny and tender appreciation for the restraint of God, for what it must require for Him to redeem our burdens instead of taking them away, because I have to press my lips closed to stop myself from answering for Adam or offering a list of ideas. As far as I’m concerned, his discomfort and frustration are my own, his resistance a pricking thorn.
Affronted, Adam makes a show of getting up from the table, taking his empty dishes with him. He blurts the friend’s name again, jerking the freezer door open to look for ice cream for dessert. As far from reverent submission as Adam’s behavior may be, his petulance falls shy of disobedience and disrespect. He’s trying, if reluctantly, not to shut his father out.
Kevin laughs, grinning widely at me, and then picks up his phone. Opening the notes app, Kevin types, “What did you learn at school today?” Leaning over to look, I realize that prizing connection over the exercise, Kevin has decided to try a different approach. I can’t help but return the grin, recognizing this as a reflection of deep truth, that the good Father wants to be close to us, that this, in the end, is always the goal of spiritual training. When Adam returns to the table with his ice cream, Kevin holds out the phone so that Adam can read the note. I watch Adam’s face, which stills momentarily as he reads. Adam glances at Kevin and reaches for the phone, then begins, silently, to type. When he finishes, Kevin glances down at the note and immediately erupts in hearty, affectionate laughter. He turns the phone to me, and below Kevin’s question, I see, cursor blinking beside,
Connor.
Another thing about training is that it takes a long time, and although for the one being trained that fact can be arduous and unwelcome, it occurs to me presently that for the one doing the training, the reality of slowness requires an even greater sacrifice.
“You know,” I say to Kevin, “a long time ago, one of our speech therapists gave me a game that’s meant to help with deciphering interrogative words. Maybe we should play it.”
Kevin nods, agreeing,
Adam pauses, ice cream bite in mid-air, and quietly pleads, “No.”
