open up

I stand on my tiptoes a little now to brush Adam’s teeth, reminding myself not to hum aloud the thread of praise weaving through my thoughts because Adam will feel as though, while he’s already telling me it’s time to finish with his teeth, he must also ask me to stop humming, please, because the music, on top of everything else, would just be too much for him.  What I know today that I could not have imagined twenty years ago, what I’m thinking as I press my lips into a smile and lean in, is how immeasurably much I love that I get to know Adam well enough to know this about him.

Adam’s lips curl in around the toothbrush until I can’t really see his teeth anymore, and I can’t decide whether he’s just instinctively trying to protect his oversensitive mouth from the intrusion, or if he’s trying to keep the suds from spilling over.

I would also not have imagined that after all this time I would still have to practice embracing a reality I don’t want.  In my heart, I still shrink back a little from the bruising truth that Adam will very likely always need this kind of care from me.

“Open your mouth, please,” I say, and Adam’s brow furrows as he complies, because I am asking him to endure something his body desperately wants to avoid.

Sensory processing challenges, as a general category, are very common among individuals with Autism, but those challenges vary greatly in expression.  Adam has always struggled with overstimulation, particularly when it comes to processing physical touch, especially around his head and mouth, and for this reason, he faces certain chronic difficulties with personal hygiene.  Because Adam experiences heightened, even painful sensations, he avoids touching these areas aggressively.  If left to his own devices, he would brush only his front teeth and only very briefly, and flossing would fall off to never.

“Hey,” I say, gently gripping Adam’s chin because involuntarily, he’s drawing away from me, away from the toothbrush.  When he looks at me, those bright eyes holding mine, I speak slowly, making my voice quiet.  “You need to open up.  I know it’s hard, but I need to help you.”

I smile, waiting, thinking of so many times when it’s been me trying to trust when mostly I just want to run.  There are these Jonah moments, when the will of God doesn’t make much sense.

 Open up, child.  I want to help.

I can say your will be done and not actually want a will that disagrees with my own.  I can say your ways and your thoughts are higher and memorize verses about not relying on my own understanding and still believe God’s will should fit into my limited perspective.  I can get caught up in measurable outcomes, in my own culture’s definitions of success.

“Brush teeth is finished,” Adam says, although it sounds more like rush teef uz funisht because of the toothbrush.  His tongue thuds against the side, throwing off my rotation, and a dribble of foam runs down his bottom lip.

God promises to finish the good work He started, but lately I’m coming to see that the finish He has in mind might not exactly be the one I dreamed up.  I dab Adam’s lip with a washcloth.

So, I ask God to align my heart to His, and He so gently takes me by the chin and shows me:  Maybe the book of Jonah seems to be about Jonah getting to Nineveh, but really the whole story turns on Jonah turning back toward God.  Maybe life is a series of turns back toward Him.  He shows me more, that He never really has been after my independence.   All this time, He’s been teaching me how to embrace the fact that in absolutely everything, I will always need more of Him.

I’ve believed parenting to be about helping my children become independent, but God has been teaching me that it’s even more about leading them to embrace how much they need Him.

All these things will be added unto you really means all the things.

“Adam, this is harder when you’re talking,” I tell him, laughing as he blocks the toothbrush with his tongue again.

“Aww,” he says, grinning foamy-wide, trying to laugh, which is hard when your mouth is full of toothpaste.

This is, after all, the heart of the good news, that I need the Lord, and that because of Christ and the cross and the resurrection,  I get to know Him always the way you know someone you live not just beside but with.  It’s taken such a long time, but I’m learning that the knowing, that experiential intimacy, is the outcome that matters most.

“Almost done,” I tell Adam.  “Why don’t you spit and then I’ll finish up?”

I withdraw the toothbrush, holding it aloft over one sink while Adam bends his lanky body down over the other and then turns again to face me.

I have tender places, scars I’ve nursed for decades, pains I’ve worked hard to shut away, and through the years God has kindly, gently shown me that the strongest people, the most blessed, are the ones who know how desperately they need God, who depend on God to love them.

Adam watches me carefully now, waiting while I move the toothbrush back to his very back teeth, while I gently scrub his tongue, while I wind a length of floss around my fingers and tell him to open wider.  He watches, and in those sky-blue eyes I see the tender trust that moves him to obey me, even while he’s telling me in his way that the intrusion is entirely unnecessary.

But not my will, yours. 

All the way to the bathroom, in fact, Adam told me that brush teeth was already finished, and I told him carefully, with as few words as I could manage, that it could be, if he could also manage to brush the sides, the back, and behind those sweet teeth.

“Sweet,” he said to me and smiled, because he knows that means I love him, but he didn’t say sides or back or even yes because he also knows that he simply cannot do this by himself, and maybe, I’m thinking now, that understanding makes him wise.

I shift on my feet, leaning into Adam’s mouth, bumping the tips of my fingers against his adult-sized teeth.  At the same moment that I am thinking that he could really hurt me, could bite right down hard on my fingers and draw my blood, I’m thinking about how desperately I depended on God to lean in, to shed His own blood for me. 

Adam groans as I tug the floss between the teeth that need it most of all, the ones so close together as to trap the strand between them.

“Floss teeth is finished,” he tries to say, over and over, wanting it to be so, willing it to be so, until finally I pull back my hands and agree.  It is done.

“Yes, it’s finished,” I say, and we laugh again together, him with great relief, as he slides behind me to his freedom.