rule of life
“I’m concerned about Adam’s schedule for the summer,” Riley says to me, folding her hands in front of her and digging one toe into the outdoor carpet on our back porch.
The hinges of the door haven’t yet stopped screeching, and a great wind rustles the leaves of the trees, and I take a deep breath, listening. I have just tucked in for some Sabbath rest, a stack of books beside me and my own planner splayed open before God, with all my questions and all my trust hanging out. I glance toward the bird feeder, searching for the bright red slash of one of the cardinals I have been watching.
Riley has come at just the moment when I most want to appreciate that I cannot possibly manage everything.
A gentle refrain scrolls through my memory, dredged up from where God planted it in my heart:
He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.
Riley has been reminding me about Adam’s summer schedule for days and I, with my hands right full in front of me, have been telling her for all those days that I’m his mom and I’ve got Adam and she need not worry her pretty little head about it.
“I’m just making sure, because I’m concerned about it,” she’s been telling me, and I’ve been asking God, and it’s been a bit like this daisy chain of petition and intercession, until finally Riley stands there advocating yet again, and I grab a scrap of paper and begin to plan some good work for my son. Even though I find Riley’s persistence annoying, I do love that she’s consumed with taking care of her brother’s needs.
This will not be the time the Christ fails to understand me nor the time He fails to meet my needs, I’m thinking, as I bend over that paper in front of me, breathing in that whistling wind, remembering when Jesus, bone-tired and grieving though He must have been, put a hold on His own Sabbath rest to tend to a people who did not yet understand that their Shepherd had come.
Riley, standing as she is in front of me, not quite wanting to meet my eyes with her interruption, reminds me of what Jesus said about persistent prayer, how he urged that we never stop asking God for what we need. She reminds me of something the prophet Samuel said to the people of Israel, that it would be his sin against the LORD to ever cease to pray for them, and I wonder, gripping that pen now, if I could learn something from my daughter about never giving up in prayer, either for my own needs or the needs of others.
So, I jot it all down quickly, everything I’ve received from God as I’ve prayed and considered, as I’ve asked God to plan a schedule for the summer that will keep Adam healthy and rested and strong, work that allows him to practice and grow and soak up what he doesn’t even know he needs—God’s Word and vitamin D and the blessings found in relationships.
I remember all of this on Monday, Riley and her persistence, how she felt so urgent about Adam having a plan, when I tell Adam he is doing well with his work, and he grins easily and says what he only ever says when it’s full-up true, “I love it.”
“You love it?” I ask him, because I can’t quite grasp that he would love a day so devoted to my plans for him that he has little room to lose himself and all his words to screens. It’s this way with Adam, because it’s this way with Autism, and as it turns out, Riley knows a thing or two about that. If school’s out and I fail to make plans for Adam, if I fail to create some structure for his day, he’ll spend the day doing laps around our kitchen table, playing YouTube videos of other people playing his favorite video games while one song plays on his tablet and another plays on his phone and he tries to make his own white noise to drown out all the sensory information he doesn’t know how to handle or interpret. It’s always been this way, that a written schedule becomes like a rope he climbs to safety.
But then, the rest of us are not so different. When it comes to life in the Spirit, we all have some form of spiritual autism. We’re all on the spectrum, and I wonder sometimes we suffer so much futility–all our hurry and busy and misguided internal noise, if we lose ourselves, because of some subconscious effort to numb our own confused and broken hearts. Are we making our own white noise, because we don’t know how to handle or interpret all the hard, hurting things that come pummeling right at us?
“Yes, I love it,” Adam says again, and again that easy grin, and I realize he hasn’t been disconnected from me all day. I came home from a meeting this morning, and he was not lost in echolalia, was not stemming in front of his computer. He had been waiting on me, waiting to take a walk, waiting on our time, because it’s part of our Plan—mine for him.
Jesus said that sometimes the truth can’t take root in human hearts because the cares of this world choke it out, and in my own life, I have found it to be true that if I have no real intention, because real intention leads to a plan, to spend my time with God, I will live unnumbered days, losing them to unfruitful things in unfruitful places.
Sometime in the third century, the Desert Fathers began a spiritual practice we now call Rule of Life, which refers to making a plan for life’s rhythms that, when created prayerfully and with surrender to God, helps a Christ-follower live her life with eyes fixed on her Shepherd, with ears listening carefully for His voice. I can spend a whole day without being disconnected. So, my planner splays while I pray, and Adam waits for me, not even really knowing how much he needs shepherding.
Adam spins into the kitchen now, ready to do some cooking with Riley and me, which is not an activity he would have ever chosen for himself, but it’s on his schedule and it’s part of his rule of life, and so, without hesitation, he shows up for it. He folds his hands in front of him, the way Riley always does when she’s waiting for instruction from me, and he smiles that easy smile, watching watching watching me patiently.
I smile back, widely and from my heart, reaching to touch his cheek with my fingers, because right now Adam looks so much like, “Here I am, send me,” and he seems to be downright joyful about it.
