I'm Patty, and my husband and I are living with our adult son who has autism and epilepsy. I love sharing lessons learned from life around me, especially life with Aaron.
I want to wish each of you a very happy and blessed Thanksgiving!
We made it to Houston!
I just wanted to share with you a picture of Aaron with his sister, Andrea. Aaron colored that picture in his day group and was very happy to give it to Andrea.
I wish you all a very blessed day in whatever form it takes.
May we all remember to count our blessings and keep our minds on the Giver of them all.
I love early mornings at my desk in the room facing west on our upper level. I have taken scores of sky pictures from the windows in this room.
It is dark on the mornings I sit there with my Bible open. But always the sun eventually rises, later this time of year.
Yesterday the view outside those windows matched my heart.
Heavy.
The sky laden with clouds.
Aaron had a seizure a couple hours earlier. His seizures have been more frequent lately and I wonder why. Will this mean an increase in one of his seizure drugs and then all that goes along with that?
Our son 10 hours away tested positive for COVID this week. When it went to his chest, I wanted to be near him in the way that only a mother understands. Then he got the call that he was furloughed from his job.
And he can’t join us for Thanksgiving.
We plan to travel to our daughter’s for Thanksgiving. Should we go? The virus, you know.
Heavy.
Even the partial early Christmas decorating I’ve done this week doesn’t create the needed cheer in my heart.
But I read Psalm 24:1-2:
“The earth is the Lord’s, and all it contains; the world and those who dwell in it. For He has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers.”
The sun DID rise, obscured by clouds though it was.
God has an order to this world He created. He’s promised that to us.
“While the earth remains,
Seedtime and harvest,
And cold and heat,
And summer and winter,
And day and night,
Shall not cease.” (Genesis 8:22)
God also has an order to my life.
I am not a pawn to random chance or karma, but I am under the steadfast and certain predictability of the God Who created this world, and all that is in it.
I prefer this sunrise:
And this sunset:
But I trust the God Who holds this world together (Colossians 1:17).
Whatever the news, national or personal, I am certain that God is in charge.
I don’t know or even understand His plan.
But I’m not to trust the plan.
I’m to trust the Planner.
So I will…through heavy clouds or blue skies.
Sunrise and sunset will not cease. And neither will the loving control and care of the God behind it all.
Aaron and I were in the middle of watching an episode of The Waltons last night when he pushed the pause button and got up from his chair. He went to the kitchen and soon returned carrying a huge bag of popcorn. We’re talking huge in the sense of Sam’s huge. All I envisioned was Aaron putting his hand into our community bag of popcorn, grabbing a few pieces, and then putting his hand up to and partially into his mouth.
Germs!! My mind could see all those little, microscopic germs being transferred into our huge bag of popcorn. YUCK!
I stopped Aaron in his tracks, told him to pour some popcorn into a bowl, and over his grumbling he went back to the kitchen to do what I had said. It wasn’t long, though, before I heard this:
“Mom, can you come here? I need some help.”
Did he ever! When I walked into the kitchen, there on the floor was a big mess. Aaron had spilled lots of popcorn on the floor. Mom to the rescue! Aaron got the broom, and we were soon able to clean up the mess.
All around me today I see messes. So much upheaval is in our country and the world today. People are suffering and worried and angry. I wish the messes we see were as easy to clean up as Aaron’s popcorn on the floor, but we all know that’s not the case.
I read and studied Psalm 22 this morning. I agree with Dale Davis, who says that David is speaking of his own suffering in this Psalm and yet goes “beyond his suffering and into the suffering of Another.” David’s suffering also spoke of the suffering of Jesus still to come.
Certainly, the suffering of Christ for us is the greatest gift ever given. Yet it’s also in David’s earthly anguish that you and I as followers of Christ can find great comfort as we navigate this dangerous world in which we now live.
I, like David, can look behind me in my years of following the Lord and I can see His faithfulness to me. I have no reason to doubt that He will remain faithful in the days yet ahead.
I look around me and I feel the chilling wind of change…change that is not good for believers. I see how the world’s perception of Christians today has become warped…how we appear by liberal definition to be bigots and racists and haters. How if we don’t jump on board with radical agendas and unbiblical lifestyles then we are not welcome to live in their world.
The description that David gives of his persecutors sounds eerily similar to some of our accusers that I see on the news today. He pictures his haters as bulls who encircle him and open their mouths wide at him; as lions who are tearing and roaring; mad wild dogs who have closed in on him; evildoers who surround him.
Remember the looks on the faces of the rioters when they hurled insults at those who attended White House events this past summer? We’ve seen and heard that same spewed hatred over and over, aimed at pro-lifers and conservatives and Christians in various settings.
I never thought I’d see the day when moral values are demeaned and blatant ungodliness is held up as the national standard.
But it is here, and it is now.
What jumped off the page to me this morning as I read Psalm 22 is this:
“But You, O Lord, be not far off; O You, my help, hasten to my assistance. Deliver my soul from the sword, my only life from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion’s mouth; FROM THE HORNS OF THE WILD OXEN YOU ANSWER ME.” (Psalm 22:19-21)
David was already in the middle of great trouble. The picture is of him being actively mauled. But in the midst of being attacked, David asserted that God answered Him.
God doesn’t always remove my attackers, in whatever form they come, but He DOES hear me and answer me.
David learned that he may have felt forsaken but in reality, he was not. God was there in every scary moment.
And so He is with us and He WILL continue to be with us. He will surround us while we figure out how to function as the minority in our culture today. He will answer us from the horns of the wild oxen!
David knew that though he felt forsaken at times, God was there with him. And God is with us as well.
“For He has not despised and He has not detested the affliction of the afflicted, nor has He hidden His face from him, but when he cried to Him, He heard.” (Psalm 22:24)
God knows. God hears.
I will praise Him and I will share Him with others.
I will stand strong for truth.
And some day, in His timing, He will clean up all this mess.
A couple weeks ago I was talking to our daughter on the phone. Almost always, when she and I are on the phone, Aaron will come bounding up to me and without lowering his voice he will ask if that’s Andrea. I shake my head yes and so the hovering begins as he waits for HIS turn to talk to Andrea. I finally let him have his time, knowing that if I don’t he will most likely linger close by until I do.
“ANDREA!!” he begins. “Guess what game I’m playing now?!”
And he’s off, talking about everything under the sun that has to do with his world. He never asks about her life or how she’s doing. Never. But she understands that about her brother. She laughs with him and talks to him about all his games and movies and answers his unusual questions about unusual things as seriously as if she’s talking to a lab manager about the proper way to conduct a molecular test.
A couple weeks ago, she and I were talking about how Aaron is and how he must appear to others. His conversations, his approach to life, his characteristics that others observe when they first see Aaron or if they know Aaron well…everything that makes Aaron who Aaron is. Andrea said that he really is just a kid in a man’s body.
Then later that same evening, Aaron and I were talking to a neighbor and her young son out on our driveway. This little boy just looked up at Aaron as Aaron went on and on about whatever. Aaron was talking rather loudly, as usual, and all the time he talked he kept working his fingers together the way that he does.
Finally, our young friend was able to get a word in…a question, actually.
“Are you a man kid?” he asked Aaron.
That question went completely over Aaron’s head as he just barreled on with his topic of interest at that moment.
But it stopped me in my tracks.
“What a perfect way to describe him!” I quietly told his mother.
And how interesting that Andrea and I had said that same thing, yet not as precisely, just that afternoon.
A man kid.
There stands Aaron, looking every bit like a man…and he is. He has a man’s voice, a man’s physique, a man’s facial hair, and even a man’s balding head. 😊
But he acts so much like a kid! And to other kids I know it’s a process to try to figure Aaron out. We’re so used to him that we don’t often mentally step back and think of how it must be for children to understand Aaron.
Tomorrow is Aaron’s birthday. Our son, who is a man, turns 36 tomorrow!
Our son, who is a kid, is exuberantly excited about his birthday. He always is, every single year.
If you ask him how old he will be, he pauses as he tries to remember his new age. That number of “36” means nothing to him.
But oh, his birthday means everything to him. Just ask our neighbors, some from around our circle that we don’t really know. If Aaron is outside and he sees someone walking by, he briskly heads to the street.
“HEY!!” he yelled the other day to a couple of ladies. “It’s almost my birthday!!”
They laughed and congratulated him as they went on their way.
And our man kid stood there rubbing his hands together in delight, with his deep chuckle bubbling up, his sweater flapping in the breeze, and joy all over his face.
Remembering that Aaron is a man kid helps us enjoy him.
But more importantly, it helps us understand him…and understanding Aaron is crucial in how we live with him and deal with him.
Happy Birthday, Aaron!!
We love you, man kid!!
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