why the words change the world
Adam had been talking about this trip for a week–father and son, side-by-side in a pick-up truck, on their way to the beach.
To say that Adam has been talking about anything just makes me smile, because nothing sounds as sweet as his voice, nor does anything touch us quite like his earnest efforts to communicate. For years, he’s efficiently used words to request things he needs and wants, but his desire to share excitement with us and to talk about joining us in the things we’re doing has come only recently, born of hope and love and time. Ten years, and we’re just building a real relationship with our son, because relationships are built on communicating well beyond asking for what we want and need.
In the van after school Friday, Adam planted his face in the middle of my conversation repeatedly. “Home.”
I am not used to Adam interrupting. After about the third time, I laughed out loud, telling my dear friend that I couldn’t have imagined the time when I’d need to teach Adam not to just start talking while I’m talking to someone else. She smiled and said what any of us autism moms would say, “Oh, hey, I’m just glad he’s talking.” Words are such a precious commodity in our world.
“Home,” Adam said again, thrusting himself in front of me, his nose on mine, those bright blue eyes determined, holding my own.
“Unh.” I made the sound in my throat, halting myself mid-sentence, turning my attention to him. “I want…,” I said to him, insisting that he speak to me with a complete sentence.
“I want…to go home,” he said awkwardly, still not grasping the necessity of all those words nor why I wanted to hear them.
“Okay. Just a minute,” I told him. And I tried to turn back to my conversation, but he said, “Going on a trip. Beach house. Go home.”
I turned to him again, reaching to touch his cheek. Such effort, all new, and I don’t even have words for the joy. Unless your child has struggled to talk to you, you can’t know what it means when they finally reach for you with words, trying to connect. And if you’re reading this and your child struggles now, hear from a mom who’s been there: hold on. Hold on long and hard, and never give up. The thing you long to hear them say will come when you least expect it. For so long I have asked Adam a dozen questions after school, insisting that he answer, turning down the music on the stereo until he speaks to me.
And this joy I feel, I know this is why God has never given up on me, why He’s waited on me, relentless.
“I know. We’re going home soon, I promise. Daddy has to get home first. Then your trip.”
When we got home, Adam ran upstairs. I didn’t see him grab the trip list I keep in the travel folder by my computer. At least once a day, Adam surprises me with something he knows, something he’s observed while I thought he was too trapped in his own world to pay attention. I wonder, do I surprise God with the bits I suddenly understand, the glimpses of heaven I see in spite of myself?
Adam took the packing list upstairs before I could even mark how many pairs of pants, how many shirts. He filled a suitcase with enough clothes for a week, even though they’d only be gone for the weekend. He stuffed two tote bags full of his favorite things—George x3, calculators, workbooks, timers, communication boards. Then feeling somehow that his preparations were still incomplete, he found me downstairs.
“I need help please,” he said to me. I do that too: strive and strive and then finally ask for help.
“Help with what?”
I always ask, even when I know, just to hear his voice. I love the sound of his voice. It took Zoe so long to understand this. She has given me so many exasperated looks on his behalf, advocating for him. “Mom, you already know what he wants.”
“Yes, but he needs to tell me.”
And that’s just it. She’s right. It’s not that we need him to talk to us. We know what he needs already.
I know that when he’s hungry, he won’t leave my side. And if the bath water is too hot, he won’t sit down. If the sun falls too sharply in his eyes, he cries out and covers them protectively, the way I’d shield a stinging burn. When he doesn’t like the way something tastes or feels in his mouth, he holds the food between his teeth and takes tiny bites, his mouth curling defensively. I know when he doesn’t understand by the wrinkle in his brow, the same expression he had when he entered this world, as though he thought, “What is this place anyway?” I know when something I say cuts deep, just by the change in his breathing, the way his eyes register alarm. I know he’s happy when he’s flappy. I know his beautiful smile; I know the sound of his laughter when he feels deep joy. Adam touches my ears to say I love you, sits on my lap when he needs attention, spins and falls when he wants to be silly. He has taught me that communication includes far more than the words he struggles to say.
No. It’s not that we need the words to know him. That’s not why we work to help him talk. He’s our son, his body born of my own, his spirit our gift. Every day, I correct him hundreds of times, waiting patiently for him to say all the words, even the little connecting words he thinks he can do without. And I do this because I want to have a relationship with my son. I don’t want to be just the person who meets his needs.
But autism leaves a child without the ability to understand that relationships are worth the effort to break free of the sensory chaos. That lesson is one of the hardest and most important ones we work to teach. Adam needs to talk to us to find his way outside all the too much and into real relationships. And it’s only in experiencing relationships that he’ll come to understand why they are worth his effort.
The more Adam talks, the closer to us he feels, the more he tries, the more he has to say and wants to share, the more he knows the deep joy rooted in relationship, the less he feels isolated by his challenges. He needs to tell us what matters to him, what he hopes for, not just what he wants.
So much of our talking really happens because we need to share the words, less because the hearer actually needs to hear them. For the hearer, the joy is found in the effort made to reach across the space, in the sound of a voice.
So, I asked Adam, even though I knew already. “Help with what?”
“Going on a trip.”
“You need help packing for your trip?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Say that. ‘I need help packing for my trip.'”
“I need help packing for my trip, please,” he said, moving backward and forward on his tiptoes, his arms in the air.
So I went upstairs with him and wrote down the numbers, guiding him to count out 3 short sleeved shirts, 3 pairs of shorts, 1 pair of jeans. Together, we put away the things he didn’t need. We gathered his toothbrush and toothpaste, a hair brush.
When we finished, he looked at me. “Corolla Beach house,” he said to me, opening the closet to get his shoes.
“Daddy has to come home first,” I told him. “Daddy home first, then your trip.”
He looked at his watch, and I knew he wanted a time. “I’m not sure when it will be. Just play till he gets here.”
He turned his music up a little louder as I left the room, and I knew he understood. But the minute the front door opened and Kevin walked in the house, I heard Adam’s feet like machine gun fire against the floor in the upstairs hall, coming down the stairs. Adam appeared, wearing his shoes, looking for Kevin. “Corolla Beach house,” he said.
Adam sat in the truck before Kevin could finish packing it, and I had to walk outside to kiss him through the open window. He kept sitting straighter, adjusting himself forward, shoulders squared, looking at his watch and then out the front window. Everything about his body said, “I am ready. Let’s go.” And I didn’t miss the grin on his face as they pulled away. I saw his lips move, and I knew what he’d said to Kevin. “Corolla Beach house. Going on a trip.”
And it’s like the words have knit us all together all week, mother and son, father and son, brother and sisters.
Lately it seems like the more Adam talks to us, the more he wants to participate in what we’re doing. I see him trying to be like his dad, smearing shaving cream on his own smooth cheeks in the shower, crossing his leg just so. Too soon, he becomes a young man, walking in his father’s shadow, trying to match his steps.
So when finally father and son sit side by side, riding on a busy Friday road on their way to the beach, Adam suddenly says something complete, a beginning, words that reach across the seat.
“Daddy is driving!”
“Yes, I am,” Kevin says, “I’m driving to the beach.”
“Yes.” Adam falls silent, distracted by the light glinting on the window, the angle of its path. The wrinkle in his brow returns, and for a moment, he is lost, smacking his hand rhythmically against his own chest. Then, he reaches out again, trying for relationship. Adam stretches his arms out in front of him on an imaginary steering wheel, turning it, sitting tall. “Driving,” he says, grinning, happiness flying behind the word in a giggle, catching Kevin’s attention. Look Dad, I’m going to be just like you.
Kevin laughs, caught up in Adam’s over-sized gestures, the sweet, beautiful effort Adam makes to connect. One of our teachers likes to speculate that these brilliant children of ours believe we’re the ones with the real communication deficiencies. It almost seems just this way as Adam drives his imaginary car, his movements too large, his eyes carefully holding Kevin’s. It’s as though he knows they speak different languages, and he’s trying hard to speak Kevin’s, to use words that will bridge the space between them.
“Are you driving too?” Kevin asks, and Adam laughs hysterically.
“Yes! Driving!”
Mile after mile up the road, Adam repeats the game, capturing Kevin’s attention each time with words and a performance. And it’s glorious, the closeness gathering between them.
So Saturday, father and son sit side by side in the truck, fresh from the ocean too-cold, riding on a short, empty stretch of beach road. Adam lifts his hands in front of him, sitting tall, catching his father’s gaze. “Driving,” he says to Kevin again, smiling. “Daddy is driving.” Look Dad, I’m going to be just like you.
Kevin smiles, delighted by the sound of Adam’s voice, son reaching to father, their relationship traveling to deeper spaces. “Would you like to drive?” Kevin suddenly says to Adam, gesturing to the wheel.
“Yes!” Adam says, surprised, placing his hands just where his father’s larger ones had been. Unaware of Kevin’s guiding hand on the bottom of the wheel, Adam tugs overzealously, back and forth. The truck wobbles on the empty road, and Adam laughs, delighted to be driving just like Dad.
“Look, we’re going straight. You don’t have to turn it,” Kevin says, steadying the wheel.
But Adam turns enthusiastically, thinking driving means constant motion, and the truck drifts slowly right. Wordlessly, gently, Kevin corrects their path with his hands, careful to sustain the moment, the connection between them. It brings him great joy to let Adam participate, to let him hold the wheel, even though the driving is still Kevin’s to do.
“Okay, Buddy, Daddy’s turn,” Kevin says as they near the place where they will turn onto a busier street. And as Kevin reclaims the wheel, Adam grins, placing his hands again on the imaginary steering wheel in front of him. “Driving,” he says, laughing. Dad, I’m going to be just like you.
And the relationship between them feels new, closer for the sharing of experience, closer for words spoken.
It took me such a long time to understand that God doesn’t need my words, but He loves to hear my voice. We speak different languages, His the holy heaven-words, mine the crude utterances of flesh. He works tirelessly, teaching me to speak, to say all the tiny words, even the ones I don’t feel like I need, but not because He needs my words to know me.
This is the truth: He already knows what I need before I ask. He can look straight into the depths of my soul and see everything to be known. He can read every dark shadow. Nothing is hidden from His gaze (Hebrews 4:13).
And if I’m talking to Him to impress everyone else with my spirituality or I’m saying a lot of words because I think that’s what it takes to be heard, He can do without my prayers (Matthew 6: 5-13). He doesn’t ask me to pray because He needs my words to know what I need and want. He asks me to speak because He delights in my voice, and He wants to be more than just the one who meets my needs.
God wants a relationship with His daughter. But this spiritually autistic child hasn’t always understood that the relationship is everything she needs. I haven’t always understood why it’s worth it to break free of all the distracting details of this life to talk to Him. I’m so thankful that He’s never given up on me, not for all the years my words to Him were reserved for requesting.
I’m so thankful that He loves me, that He knows me. It blows my mind: He says that my prayers are the incense that perfumes Heaven (Revelation 5:8). And He knew that our relationship would be built on Word reaching across space, on words about far more than what I want and need, so He asks me to pour out my heart in prayer, because that’s what I need to do to understand the power and depth of our relationship.
Because see, it’s the relationship that has made Him my everything.
And the more we talk, YHWH and I, the more I want to be just like Him. I want to do just what He’s doing, to experience more of Him, and it makes me laugh out loud, knowing He delights in letting me—even me!–put my hands on the wheel, though the driving will always be His to do.
Oh. It’s glorious, this gathering of closeness between us.
