that smile
Adam’s delight.
This my friend—my sister—texts after looking at the pictures from our trip, just those two words and a series of hearts, having arrived in seconds at the treasure I will carry with me long after even our memories of summer have faded. Adam’s delight, that wild smile stretching wide across his lean face, cutting through all the sensory clutter, the confusion, the pain of living from what is for him a place of continual and pervasive overwhelm.
Our Adam, born with a knot pre-tightened in the muscles between his eyes, has looked, because of that crinkle of confusion, burdened from birth. But he flies down waterslides all smooth lines and freedom, sits at baseball games wearing peace like softest armor, plays mini-golf and laughs. So, because we delight in his delight, in his joy, in his abandon to abundance, Kevin and I took him on a celebration trip for graduation and did most of his favorite things. For us, seeing our son experience life to the full was the most joy-spilling experience of all.
Repeatedly, as we slid, thrilling, along the curve of wet walls, our wrinkled fingers gripping hand holds on rafts, water dumping on our heads and trickling in tributaries over our skin, what really made us laugh was his smile, his utter glee, and the gift of witness.
“That smile,” I kept saying to Kevin, as we pulled our flipflops from cubbies and made our way down people-clotted paths, as Adam’s eyes glinted with expectation.
What would it be, I kept thinking, to truly believe that God loves us better than we could ever love each other?
How would that change my expectations?
Could I believe that He delights in my delight, would give himself just to see me find my way to joy, would laugh to see me smile?
Because this trip served no productive purpose for our family–no teaching goals, no training, no preparatory practice. We did not believe that these experiences would make Adam a better person or protect him or meet his basic needs. From inspiration and inception, our goal for the weekend was his delight, his freedom, that smile.
I text back, tell my sister, my friend, how, every time my heart flooded with joy over Adam’s delight, I was reminded that God delights in us too. Why, I dare to ask, my thumbs flying over the keys, is that so difficult for us to receive?
I think of Adam at the water park, as relaxed as I’ve ever seen him, glee escaping in swooping sounds bubbling up from his throat and imagine what it would have been, instead, for him to worry over his own safety, what each turn or curve would bring, for him to overthink our plans, for him to try to find, in that moment, some lesson or goal or thing to do, and what I would have said to him. Hey now, just enjoy this. Relax, I might have coached. Just savor the goodness, because you know I would never let you go a way that wasn’t good.
This same sister I’m texting, she always talks about laying back and letting go in the river of God’s delight. I had told her we were boogie boarding that river this summer.
I came that you might have life and have it to the full, Jesus said, expressing not a novel idea but the consensus of scripture, that what God wants for us is more life than we can conceive or perceive or expect, the kind of life we can only experience in Him. That word in New Testament Greek, perissos, translated to the full in John 10, means beyond expectations, exceedingly more than imagined. Paul double emphasizes this, using the same word plus hyper to describe what God can do for us, translated exceedingly abundantly more [than we ask or think] in his letter to the Ephesian church.
Historically, those who have loved God and His Word for any length of time have loved the snatch of Zephaniah’s Old Testament poetic prophecy that proclaims,
He will rejoice over you with gladness / he will quiet you with His love / He will exult over you with loud singing.
And yet, I sometimes struggle to receive the truth of God’s love, of His delight in me, in practical ways, carried away perhaps not by the rushing river so much as bogged down in what feel to me like drowning swamps of suffering. It would be minimizing to suggest that our lives in a broken-up world should or ever will feel like a wonderland of waterslides, and yet, there is a truth to be seized with abandon, as a practice of freedom, that in love, God seeks more for us than productive pain. He is always loving us, which certainly facilitates our transformation, but which also means He delights, as a loving Father does, in our delight. That smile, maybe He says, treasuring up our expressions of joy, even our fun.
My phone jingles, joy in the hand when it’s the reach of a friend, her hand—her spirit–touching mine. She replies swiftly. Oh.so.true. How often I forget his delight in mine. I certainly wouldn’t give a stone instead of fresh sourdough bread to my children.
She refers to a point Christ made about God’s response to our prayers, our petitions, our longings, giving an answer to what, in teaching, He had posed as a contemplative question—Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? However loving we may be as parents, God loves more and better. Exceedingly abundantly more.
I think about how Adam asked for his trip for such a long time, in so many words, how carefully he mentioned waterslides at every opportunity, how at night, I’d hear sounds from his room, him watching YouTube videos of people at water parks.
We can think God only loves to fulfill the requests we ourselves deem worthy or upright or spiritual, but right now, I’m thinking God loves when we just ask for perissos, for hyperperissos, in all things, and I’m thinking He loves when we’re just honest about what we want. Heaven knows I loved how persistently, how boldly, how unpretentiously, Adam asked us to take him to slide down some waterslides.
It’s true that the Spirit, in forming us, redefines what life and fullness and abundance mean, that these concepts in their complexity aren’t merely about comfort and fun for us. Word is, if I delight myself in the LORD, He will give me the desires of my heart, which of course means that eventually He becomes my delight, and, as the psalmist put it, it becomes true in my heart that there is nothing on earth that I desire apart from Him. It’s a guarantee: I will, in desiring Him, receive Him without limit. In that way hyperperissos becomes the life I live with Him now and forever, and not merely a weekend’s experience of joy.
It is joy, though, that He wants for us, not just our spiritual productivity.
These things I speak in the world, Christ prayed, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. Literally, He prayed that we might be filled to capacity with joy, that our awareness of grace, Christ’s awareness alive in us, might create in us rivers of real life welling up, such that delight, our delight in Him, should exceed our expectations, overwhelming every circumstance. It blows our minds, maybe, as God should, that the only kind of overwhelm He ordains for us is an overflowing awareness and experience of His love and goodness, that, here for a little while, everlasting delight, the thrill of trusting in Him, of embracing our identity as the beloved, as more-than-conquerors, should absolutely overwhelm even the valley of shadow.
It’s not that Adam didn’t experience his Autism on those rides, not that we didn’t have to pause midpark to replace an insulin pod, but that his delight overwhelmed all his trouble, and that’s what my friend sees on his face, pouring from that smile, her finger scrolling through our pictures. Adam’s delight.
