Looking Deeper
Hello! God has a way of smacking me upside the head and helping me see more clearly. That’s exactly what happened to me when I viewed this YouTube video:
I have two autistic children, and yet if I’d met this woman on the street, I’d have had absolutely no clue that she was so brilliant, perceptive, and gifted. I sent this to a lot of you over email, but if you haven’t seen it, please watch it. Stick with it, too. In the beginning, you’re not going to understand much of what you see except it’ll strike you as pretty weird stuff. In the end, this woman will knock you for a loop and surprise you.
Many times I’ve seen my own autistic children underestimated because they struggle to communicate with the words that the rest of us use. Adam is a brilliant child, and yet because he’s my least verbal (…though he’s coming along steadily! Praise God!) I would imagine that most people have no idea what he’s capable of when they first meet him. He continually stuns everyone. Loving him as we do, Kevin and I (not to mention his grandparents and aunts and uncles) know the capacity he has for the amazing, not to mention his absolutely wonderful sense of humor. Adam’s giggle is contagious and just fills us all with joy.
We want our children to learn to communicate with language and interact socially not because we don’t love them just the way they are but because we love them so much we want them to have many, many meaningful relationships with all kinds of interesting, wonderful people. We also know that God has big plans for them, and we can’t wait to see the difference they’ll make in this world in every language they speak!
This video convicted me though, once again, that I need to grow more capable of seeing the way that Christ sees. It’s only in not being afraid to love people who are “weird” to me that I will be tremendously blessed with the opportunity to know them and see them more clearly. Glimpsing their hearts and their phenomenal abilities is a true opportunity to glimpse the fingerprints of God.
