just take it {that time you need}
Morning quiet, the day all new, and as Kevin and I sit eating breakfast in small savored bites, sipping coffee hot and steaming, Adam comes, carrying his notebook.
He lays it out purposefully on the table next to Kevin’s place, spreading flat the pages of favorite finished worksheets, pressing his finger into the paper, pointing at a word. He looks at Kevin, then back at the worksheet, waiting. His finger presses harder into the paper, making a tiny crease. He waits, anxiously, holding his breath for his father’s voice.
Kevin reads the word, smiling, understanding. “Swim.”
Adam’s voice punctuates the air with a gleeful lilt, the sound an exclamation point on the moment. One side of his body, the one not focused on the pointing, radiates with excitement. He stands on tip toe, the untasked hand flapping, undulating, his fingers curling and straightening.
Adam moves his finger down to another word, giggling, his eyes lit with joy. This time Kevin waits, intentionally broadening the interaction with our son. Adam’s eyes dart back and forth from the word to his dad. I catch the flash of a wrinkle just over the bridge of Adam’s nose. Surprise. Does Dad not know that word? Adam tilts his head, looking again to Kevin, holding his eyes. He is poised, ready. Kevin shrugs, making the gesture bigger than words might have required. The father waits for the beautiful, meaningful sound, the effort,
the son’s voice.
“Uh swimmin’ in a uhmm WAter,” Adam trills, his voice rising and falling in self-imposed rhythm, his finger pressing into the word water on the page. The sentence took great effort, but Adam’s face registers no frustration.
“You like swimming in the water, don’t you?” Kevin says, smiling at our son, ruffling his hair with one hand.
“Yea,” Adam says, grabbing the notebook with both hands, turning it until it is directly in front of Kevin. Adam’s finger glides down, finding a new word. Kevin smiles. “Bus,” he says, but the word is boat. Adam’s laughter rolls full and loud, his smile so big it collapses into shrieks of joy. “No!” Adam says, his tone incredulous. “Boat! Boat inuhm the WAter.”
Adam backs up, sitting awkwardly on the side of Kevin’s leg. Without hesitation, Kevin pushes back from the table, making room for our son. Adam wiggles backward until he finds a comfortable position, his eyes never leaving the notebook, his finger pressing into a new word. I can see this communication will take some time. Adam seems particularly focused.
“That’s just beautiful,” I say to Kevin, getting up to take our plates to the kitchen.
Adam does not know how to say, “Dad, I need some time with you.” Not like the girls, long fingers reaching, clutching his arm, pleading, “Dad, please. Can you sit? I just need some time.” When Adam needs time with his dad, he just takes it, grabbing up the attention like treasures with which to stuff his pockets.
For at least twenty minutes, the two of them go on this way, father and son in unconventional conversation, the communication between them all joy. I rinse dishes, dancing through my work on the happy rhythm of their voices.
At least for now, the effort neither frustrates nor disappoints, and no hurry threatens to steal the time away like a thief. Perhaps only the recognition of need offers us the permission we need to slow down and savor the talking. I notice this especially because Adam hurries through almost everything these days. And hurry robs effort of quality.
In the same notebook, Adam pauses on a page where his teacher has written in red, just below the directions: Slow down. Write neatly. Next to it, Adam has scribbled something hot, quick. Kevin points to the illegible mess, the marks of explosive emotion. “What does that say?”
Adam looks at Kevin, his eyes bright, his lips curving with the knowledge. “No slow down. Slow down is finished,” he says calmly, his expression registering…rebellion?
“Oh, how he hates to slow down,” I’m thinking, my hands in soapy water, my thoughts traveling to dozens of prayers at the table and before bed, Adam blurting memorized words so quickly the sounds all roll into each other, a derailed train of verbiage, the rush destroying the meaning. Adam, Adam. Slow. Down. The instruction has grown so repetitive that we don’t even have to say the words any more. A disapproving sound, issued from the throat, and Adam begins again, too slowly, the syllables enunciated too long, every intonation a dramatic effort, until by the time he says amen, the sounds slide out as part of a wail. He’s just saying the same words, over and over and over, I think, touching his arm. The prayer has no meaning for him. It’s just a bunch of words he has to say.
Honestly, sometimes I have wondered if Adam understands prayer at all, all this talking to someone seen through the fruit of experience, the shape of His hands pressed cleanly into everything He’s touched; His glory, not His face the thing that human eyes can bear to look upon (Exodus 33:18-23). Adam does, after all, have a communication disorder. And talking to someone unseen in any human form is anything but concrete. The conversation would be difficult for Adam if Christ Himself were sitting in the recliner in our living room.
And yet, no one worships like Adam does, the praise falling easily from his lips, his expression intense and concentrated. I watch him and I can hardly breathe. All my singing comes out choked with emotion.
Before Adam could even say a sentence, before he would pray at all except as we prompted him word for word, a night came when he bowed his head and said this, clearly, softly:
Jesus, You know just how far the east is from the west
I don’t have to see the man I’ve been come rising up in me again
In the arms of Your mercy I find rest
’cause You know just how far the east is from the west
From one scarred hand to the other.
(~the final chorus of East to West by Casting Crowns)
That night, Kevin left Adam’s room weeping, the tears falling from his cheeks. “He gets it,” Kevin said to me, “better than all the rest of us.”
I think Adam knows God in ways I never will.
Nonetheless, it takes me a long time, years, to realize that I am the one who doesn’t understand prayer, that I am really the one with the communication disorder. I am the one who thinks prayer is about sitting down and saying some orderly things, beginning properly with salutation dear God, ending carefully in Jesus’ name, amen. I am the one who doesn’t see that prayer is about needing time with Dad, about wanting it so desperately that I take it, stuffing all the treasures in my pockets. I am the one who thinks I’m living in relationship when I remember to say all the right names and match them to the proper needs, when I think that if I forget to mention something, He won’t know. I am the one who thinks praying is sometimes a rushed have to instead of a slow, unhurried, oh, how I want to talk to you.
Over so many years, I have tried building the box for my son, the walls merely an empty prison. I have imposed structure on the one relationship which for him requires neither my traditional rendering nor my aid.
“Adam, what are you thankful for?” I ask him one night as we sit there together, one night when once again he has thundered through a litany of meaningless, garbled, wailing sounds during our prayer time.
“Ummmm, Xbox.”
“So say, ‘Thank you for the Xbox.'”
“Thank you FOR the X-box.” He sing-songs the sentence. It is a clue I miss.
“Adam, what are you thankful you got to do today?”
“uhhm…playing a-bowLING.” Adam routinely uses sounds to slide words through, as though without rhythm, the sounds just can’t quite make it past his lips.
“So say, ‘Thank you I got to play bowling today.'”
“Uhh, THANK you FOR the a-BOWLing.”
“What else?”
“In Jesus name I pray, AMEN!” He says the last quickly, with a ping sound from his throat for emphasis. He wants me to know he finds this frustrating, an interruption. What does that last part mean to him anyway?
And then I hear it, the question: Why is it not enough for him to sing to me? Thank you, LORD, for loving me…
All this time, and I’ve been the rigid one. I’m the one who thinks this has to happen the same way every time. I’m the one so busy and hurried, the one who needs to be reminded to slow down because I need time with God.
When Adam needs time with his Dad, he just takes it. He walks around singing,
Lift up your face, lift up your face
Salvation is calling, salvation is calling
You have fallen so far now
You don’t even know how, you are going to survive
(But) Just above the horizon
A new light is shining, breaking through the darkest night
Love is coming and it’s calling out your name…
(from Lift Up Your Face by Third Day)
When Adam speaks, at least 75% of his words are words of praise. All his life, that’s been true. He abides, marinates in the music of worship. He takes his notebooks and his calculators, spreads them out flat, and backs up awkwardly right onto the Father’s lap. Their conversations may be unconventional, but they are holy, and they are continuous. The talking, Father and child, produces cries of delight, giggling over we know not what, and the most joyful smile ever seen.
So many times, I’ve been too blind to see: The son waiting, holding his breath for the Father’s voice. And then the Father, shrugging a little too big—a surprise— just as He waits…
to hear my son speak.
And easily, the words come, spoken and sung, scattered with laughter.
And Adam’s prayer is a song.
Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).
