Autism Over the Years

On the Autism Road...
From week to week it is amazing what you see on the Autism road.  It is a road after all, a journey
where the destination is completely obscure.  This road is certainly a forceful agent of change, with it's detours, dangers, and unfortunately disasters on a regular basis.
I read all kinds of books, but my favorites are science fiction.  I like to take all kinds of "journeys," if not physically, I enjoy it in my minds eye.  I recently read a lot about time travel.  About how Einstein proved that you really could, if traveling as fast as light, move faster than the hands of a clock...forward or back.  Now there's a thought, oh what I would change if I could go back in time.  How about you? Do you know the ONE EVENT THAT ALTERED YOUR LIFE?
Last month I did a bible study on the life of Paul the Apostle.  He too was traveling down a road.  He was on his way to destroy the men and women who claimed to belong to "The Way."  (The name given to those we now call Christians.)  It was on this journey that the Lord is said to have struck him to the ground, and gave him quite the talking to.  The moment, that altered his life and changed the future of Christianity.  Paul's journey was anything but easy, and it didn't end well by earthly standards.  It was certainly full of detours, dangers, and lots of disasters.
Though I wouldn't compare my life to Paul's, and certainly not the results he achieved... the similarities are certainly there.  What I mean is, that difficult journeys are common among God's people.  It seems that we are made to travel.  Isn't the appeal of the pilgrimage, to change us over the course of the journey?  If I could go back in time, there are lots of places I would visit.  I can easily imagine myself emerging at the end of some dark corridor, in a different time, a very different person.
I often wonder if my son does the same thing.  Does he imagine himself somewhere else, at some other time?  I really hope he does.  We all need a way to escape for a few minutes, and being locked inside a very disabled mind/body is more challenging than most of us care to think about.
My son, Britton's favorite place on the planet is Kauai.  We stumbled into knowing that, in a very strange, roundabout way.  One of my clients, years ago, reached her goal weight.  She and her husband were going to Kauai and she invited us.   It was an unbelievable blessing at the time, but we had no idea how far reaching it would be in future.  How that one short journey would begin to shape our sons life, and in turn ours.
We loved Kauai so much that we began to take the whole family.  We save like misers all year...  we save points, and reward miles, we do whatever we can to make it happen.  It became so very important that we have been known to sell things to get there.
From the very first trip a sort of miracle happened.  Our son spoke some words to us.  That may not seem like much of a big deal to many people, but Britton doesn't talk.  I mean, nothing, zero, zippo!  But in Kauai, he would say things like, "hurry up," "let's go," "let me,"and once, "I don't want to." They are enough words now, that I've begun writing them down.  My small attempt at trying to know who he is on the inside.  No matter how many or how few words we hear, we are always stunned, and amazed.  We never have known this, had we not taken the ridiculous chance of flying him across the Pacific Ocean for eight hours.  (If you have a child with autism and your wondering, "are they insane?" Yes, we are.)  Now of course, we do it every single year.  It's always scary, it's always a risk, and yet the pay off is maybe four or five words, and to us it's worth it. (What's the risk you may ask?  Well when someone with autism is frightened, or confused, etc, they go may go ballistic!  Picture that on a plane!)
This year we did some crazy long hikes.  Little mini pilgrimages I guess you could call them.  They make Britton so happy that we hike almost every day.  Not just a few hours, we're talking 8-10 hours, all day long, every single day.  Our favorite hike is the Kalalau Trail.  It is one of the most beautiful places you can imagine.  Volcanoes along some of the most beautiful beaches and azure ocean for miles.  Our favorite hike is about eight hours, but you can hike for weeks, or months if you want to go further.  The interesting thing is, on the top half of the hike you find all kinds of discarded items along the way.  I have always wondered what those items were doing there.  Flip flops, bed rolls, cans of food, a pair of swim trunks, socks, almost anything you might be backpacking can be found up on the top of the hike.  This past visit, as we hiked down, two young men came along having been hiking for weeks.  I noticed they stopped and picked up a few of the items, which apparently they had left on their way up.  I also noticed that their packs were practically empty.  So I asked, (cause I'm curious like that) and they told me, that they started with "weighted down packs."  They had obviously eaten a lot of it, but "the truth is," they told me.  "We thought we needed all that stuff, but as the journey got difficult, we realized what items really mattered, and would get us to the end."  Boy did I understand that statement.  Everything that hindered, anything that held them back, or weighted them down--it all had to go.
So very like our autism pilgrimage.  The list of things I use to think were important, are almost laughable to me now, so much has been cast by the wayside.  The months, the years, even the minutes that autism is extremely heavy, it is important that I carry less.  By the same token, I pray that my "autism muscles" get stronger. I know that my heart finds it easier to let go of the things that have to be cast aside.  I can't say they never hurt, things like, going to see my aging parents as often as I should, or even going to help my daughter take care of our grand daughter, or even working in my church the way I did in my "other life" before autism.  Things that I just cannot carry at the same time as I carry autism.  I use to pray that people understood, now I know that they don't. The good news is, I don't expect them to.   But the concern of that is also something I have to let go of, and know that God does understand.  He wants me to the finish the journey, He wants me to choose carefully as I lighten my pack.
People have gone on pilgrimages throughout all history.  The destination is indeed important, but it's the journey itself, the physical act of going and doing what we have to do, that transforms us.  If there is to be any transformation of the spiritual self, that change would take place not when we have arrived at our destination, but in the long, hard work of the journey itself.
What happens in us on....THE WAY.