more than we ask or think
“Strike on the batter,” Adam murmurs, leaning forward, elbows to knees, brilliant blues intently trained on the ball as it flies through the air and thuds against the catcher’s mitt.
The batter steps back from the mound, adjusting his grip on the bat.
“Two strikes,” Adam observes so quietly I almost don’t hear, sitting as I am at the other end of the row, with chili dripping over the side of my hotdog.
I’m not sure when baseball first entered Adam’s imagination, but enter it did, ever so softly, as a video game he watches other people play on YouTube, a collection of phrases he says on echolalic repeat to soothe himself in the afternoons after school or on the way, one lean hand cupped around his mouth as he speaks. He has borrowed the words of baseball commentary for so long, using them to calm his body and mind, that they have become part of the background soundtrack of our lives.
You would not maybe know how overloaded Adam’s central nervous system becomes, how painfully loud and exhausting the world feels to him sometimes, how he longs for peace, if you did not know how to interpret the rhythm of his pacing at home or the classically Autistic twitches, the repetitive movements of his hands, the songs and videos and phrases and scripts he wears out like a stuffed animal rubbed bald beneath his fretful hands. I wouldn’t presume to speak for every neurodivergent person on the planet or even perfectly for my own son, but I can tell you that it’s helpful, if you’re trying to love people with Autism, to know that their rituals and rigidity serve a purpose for them, that they aren’t just symptoms of some kind of mindless interior spinning into unreality. He finds ways, like we all do, to self-regulate.
I glance down the row, past Kevin and Riley to the end, where Adam sits, his body quiet now, still, a light breeze riffling his hair. Beyond him, the sky turns blush pink. Something about baseball, probably the slow, predictable repetition of movements and sounds, the things the rest of us with our ninety-mile-an-hour minds find tedious, offers my son some relief.
Admittedly, I understand the hunger of a soul for peace, for a quiet restoration to wholeness, have felt it gnawing at me like a thing with teeth. I have also experienced the relief that comes as a function of God’s grace. What longing do you feel? That question, like a soul compass, has become the sound of the good shepherd calling me to his side. At this point in my life, I know every hunger as an invitation to be filled, to be soothed, to be sustained by Him.
It was Kevin who, having recognized Adam’s self-appointed delight, first imagined taking Adam to see a baseball game. A homebody by necessity, because being away from home can be so exhaustingly hard, Adam would not have conceived of the idea himself. For Adam, baseball existed as a digitized, crayon-colored experience, a set of recorded sounds and produced voices played and replayed on a loop, maybe, on a good day, a few minutes of televised sport he stood beside Kevin to watch before deciding he needed the familiarity of his bedroom more, even though, for a moment, they connected there, the father’s arm lightly sheltering the son.
Scripture suggests that we humans all have a similarly limited view of things. For now we see in a mirror dimly, Paul wrote. Now I know in part. This is of course why we’re encouraged not to lean on our own understanding and reminded that no matter how unrestrained and wild our asking and thinking might be, God’s capacity and vastness of imagination far exceeds our own. We aren’t merely encouraged to pray big, as if the full life God wants for us awaits a well-worded request, but rather, we are encouraged by the Word, by Christ himself, to trust that God will imagine and do for love what is even beyond our capacity to conceive.
What do you long for? Well, God imagines more, will do more than that dim reflection.
“He needs a strike, he needs a strike,” Adam comments now, eyes still trained on the field, the diamond now lit by high beams in anticipation of darkness. It’s a phrase I’ve heard him say a thousand inopportune times—during haircuts, at the doctor’s office, in the checkout line at the store. Everyone surmises, because of the echolalia, that Adam likes baseball, tries, in fact, to use it to start some kind of conversation. He usually grins a little, wearing a sheepish did-I-say-that-out-loud kind of expression, says a soft yes and then drops his eyes, but here, for just a while, the words have become more than just a cry of desperation, like our prayers, maybe, when we finally catch a real glimpse of God.
Kevin has, of course, made bigger plans for us than this local game, things far, far beyond anything Adam could ask or think. He found a map online of all the professional baseball parks in the country, with places to scratch off after each visit, bought us tickets to a Nationals game in D.C. this summer, an Orioles game in Baltimore. The son’s joy is his Father’s delight; that’s how it is, how it was, how it will be.
It started with a simple question, “Would you like to go to a baseball game?”
A simple, risky answer, just, “Yes.”
And now, it seems, we will see even greater things than this.
Adam feels me looking, glances away from the game just long enough to smile, to say, “ears,” which is, in the language of a person who feels hurt sometimes when he’s touched, an easy way to say I love you. He doesn’t hug; he reaches with his hands, touches our ears with the tips of his fingers.
Bat cracks and ball soars, and I am left with a question lingering, whisper-light in my thoughts, and a simple, risky answer, just waiting on the tip of my tongue.
What is God’s imagination for me? I can’t imagine.
But whatever it is, just, yes.
