Autism and the Ache of God

1/15/10

Hang around a group of parents that have children with special needs and eventually you'll hear about spiritual lessons learned from parenting a child with a disability. The spiritual lessons mentioned might include:

• a fading of materialism and prioritizing of relationships

• an enjoyment of the present moment and exultation in little victories

• a daily death knell to self-centeredness

• a focus on eternity and expectation of wholeness in the next life

While learning these lessons may shift a parent to a nobler set of values, none of them embody the central theme of the Gospel or the work of Jesus Christ. Any of the above could be a appropriated to a vague overlapping of a number of major religions. These spiritual lessons are honorable but not distinctly Christian.

Years ago, my friend Jodi helped me define a distinctly Christian lesson she learned when providing childcare for my boy Willson who has autism. (Jodi, is a gifted friend who entered Willson's world, won his trust and loved him with dedication. She is one of the few people he asks for by name even though we do not cross paths as we once did). One day when I came to pick him up Jodi commented, "Arlyn, you know how hard we work to communicate with Willson, how hard we bend and twist to make him understand what we want from him and for him? Well I think that is how hard God works to communicate with and relate to us." Her comment came flooding back today as I read the following from THE SIEGE by Clara Claiborne Park, a fellow mom of a child with autism:

What is the task of those who try to touch the untouchable, to reach those who have found reasons to keep themselves separate? How is one to tender the world desirable to those who do not desire it? One holds out a flower, a soft doll, an orange candy. One points at a bird. All are ignored, this time and the next and the next. (p.90)

The Christian God aches for relationship, never gives up, and in His pursuit He faces misunderstanding and rejection again, again, and again. If this portrayal of God seems foreign, I encourage you to read Hosea 2 or Jesus's anguished cry in Luke 13:34. How often do we not understand the intimacy He offers? To quote C.S. Lewis very loosely, we play with mud pies in the gutter when we have been invited to a feast.