the way she loves me

I flip the page on a brand-new week in my planner, wagging my pencil back and forth in my fingers.

I had expected to find space for a breath, a quiet stillness on the empty grid within which to pause and practice a Sabbath surrender before writing in my careful strategy for the week.

We may make a lot of plans, the proverb goes, but the Lord will do as He has decided.

This was to be my space for acknowledging that His purposes will always prevail, to give thanks that this is so, to surrender my plans before laying them down.  Sometimes, beneath where it says Week-at-a-Glance I write a prayer instead of a list.

But today, Riley’s ever-diligent handwriting already fills that block for notes, her white-knuckled letters hard-etched so big and bold that they trail over every border and swerve recklessly into the margins.  She has written a reminder about a text she wants me to send this week, and then a reminder to have a conversation with Kevin to nail down specifics about travel plans.

I shake my head, momentarily blinded by Riley’s polite audacity, by the way that, in an effort to be helpful, she has already overwritten my schedule, even my acknowledgement of God, with her ideas.  How human of her, but also, it slowly dawns, as I rest my thumb on one of her tree-branch y’s, how wonderfully relational.

This is one of the multitude of graces we are given with Autism, that we learn to value every relational connection, knowing firsthand that relationships aren’t guaranteed, and we learn to embrace and expect that love sloppily, recklessly imposes.  Years of hard-fought baby-steps toward I am yours and you are mine have given me a different perspective.  In the beginning, I was told that Riley might never be able to relate to us at all, that her life might become isolated and solitary due to a self-containment she had never chosen for herself.

So, I am blind, and then, the Spirit touches my eyes yet again.

Look what God has done, that He gave Riley the ability to love and be loved, as well as the desire to participate in family life.

“Umm, Mom?” She calls out to me now, interrupting my thoughts.  “Why did the location of your meeting on Monday change?”

I glance up to find her perched on a stool at the bar, her own planner spread open and a rainbow of pens beside her, her head bent over her phone as she studies our online calendar.

She wants to know all the details about where I will be and what I am doing because this watchfulness is her way to be involved, to know me.   Philosophy escapes her and conversation confounds, but facts and details she collects like treasures, storing them and keeping them carefully.  Here is the gold I’ve discovered:  She knows her own poverty of spirit, and she offers up what she can, for love.

In one way or another, we all understand this truth, that in relationship we are not our own, that to love is to give ourselves.  God has written this wisdom into every helix of His creation.  He has shown us that this is true in every practical and visible way, and when God, the inexhaustible One, does this Himself, we are saved.  You have not resisted [temptation] to the point of shedding your blood, the writer of Hebrews says, because there is always the temptation not to walk in love, and no matter how well any us ever manage to obey the command to love, no matter how much any of us ever give of ourselves in love, it will never come close to what God Himself has given of Himself for us.

We are other people’s people, my friends and I often say, smiling over the wonderful, difficult obscurity of lives pre-occupied with love.

This is Riley loving me, and so, loving her in return, I give up the details she’s looking for, holding them out in my hands to her like my five loaves and two fish.

“We just thought it might be better to be outside instead of in,” I say to her about my meetup with one of my friends.  “It’s so pretty out.”

She nods thoughtfully, returning my gaze, lifting her eyes from the blue-white glare of the screen in her hand.  “Sounds good.  That makes sense.”

She always says that, even if I have a good idea that what I’ve said remains a puzzle in some way, because, and this too is a grace, the words themselves never mean as much to her as the exchange between us.

I feel astounded:  Again, God allows me to see.

This is what matters most to Him too, the exchange between us, the effort to abide.

Again, God covers me with His love, because I know I am often sloppy and imposing in my relationship with Him, have often overwritten His wise and watchful shepherding, His Sovereignty, His Word, His will, with my own ideas.  I press too hard; I stumble over the borders.  Relentlessly, I ask questions, even though I am always realizing the limitations to my understanding. Always, I am learning the poverty of my spirit and finding gratitude for the wealth of His.  In love, I offer up what I have, knowing He alone can make enough of it.

For a long time, I imagined that God tolerated my messy relational overtures with almost constant dismay, always with an assessment of my imperfection, because, how could He not?  But God uses my life with Riley and Adam to overwrite my assumptions about Him with the truth about His love.  If I, though I am imperfect, can receive Riley’s love with love and patience and celebration and joy, how much more will God receive my awkward reaching with compassion and even delight.

Riley and I really are not so different.  I might also have been forever lost in myself.  I might never have been able to Relate, but by grace, God has remade me to love and be loved, with the desire to participate in family life with Him.  And because I know the poverty of my own Spirit, I’m grateful that although I may make a lot of plans, the Lord will do as He has decided.

There it is, then, the space of acknowledgment, the place from which I can begin.