Knock {it happened on a sunday} Day 20

I didn't grow up thinking I would become a mother.  When I babysat other people's children, they mostly irritated me, and even at the time, I didn't think I did a very good job taking care of them.  It seemed that my particular skills and talents would be better used in the company of adults, probably doing something serious and important.  This is how I was going to change the world.

Instead, if you've been following along all month, you know that it was me who changed.  Love came into my life and into my heart and all my priorities were flipped on their heads.  When I had been married for about a year and a half, I was evaluating my life and itching for something new.  My plan was to look for a new job, something that was perhaps more challenging with higher pay.  God's plan was to grow a new life inside my body.

I was pregnant, and didn't even know it, when I took off for Adventure Camp with my middle school students from church.  We zip-lined, jumped out of trees, went white water rafting, and rode mountain bikes.  I came home exhausted, and the feeling didn't go away for several months.  I had lots to think about as my belly grew bigger, as a baby squirmed around inside my body and made me nauseous, then insatiably hungry.  A choice presented itself, a choice I'd never imagined making:  should I keep working, or should I become a stay-at-home mom?

I knew only two women who stayed home with their babies: my aunt, whose youngest was in middle school, and my friend Jackie, who had just given birth to her second child.  Their lives looked nice to me, the time they spent with their kids, the sweatpants and jeans they got to wear every day, the schedule they set for themselves.  After talking it over with my husband, and just a few weeks before my kiddo was born, I made the decision that I wouldn't return to work after my maternity leave was over.

Now, for anyone reading this and considering a similar change, I would recommend preparing much longer to live off one income.  I would tell you that it's hard to go from being employed full-time, receiving paychecks and evaluations and helpful feedback from your bosses, to sitting in your living room with a crying baby while your breasts leak milk and your husband is gone most of the day.  We could have planned better for me leaving work, but I don't regret it.  Letting someone else feed and cuddle my son while I dealt with irate customers and malfunctioning equipment didn't sound very appealing.

The love that had taken hold of my heart exploded when I first held my infant son in my arms.  I wanted to give him every good thing I knew of:  love, gentleness, acceptance, attention, stability.  I fed him and rocked him and took him for walks.  I was overjoyed by all his accomplishments, as he learned to walk and feed himself and throw a ball.  I loved watching him experience things for the first time, like fireworks, being licked by a dog, rain and snow and sunshine.  I loved so much about being his mom that I went to my husband when James was 18 months old and I said, "Let's do it again."  Nine months later, we welcomed another baby boy to our family, and my heart wanted to burst from the excess of love.  I delighted in watching Winston sleep and coo and try to imitate his big brother.

There was so much going on, balancing two children at different stages of life and trying to continue helping out with the church youth group, and keeping the house clean and laundry going, all while my husband worked full-time and finished his college degree, that maybe I wasn't as attentive as I should have been.  Or maybe I wouldn't have figured anything out on my own, since I hadn't spent much time paying attention to children.  Either way, I thought things were going well.  But something kept happening.  Friends, strangers, even the boys' pediatrician, thought something wasn't quite right with my oldest.  He was approaching his third birthday, and while he was active and happy and finally seeming to accept that the baby wasn't going anywhere, he didn't say much.  In fact, he had a vocabulary of five words which I can still remember.  Mama, Nana, boom, dog, and broom.  Every time someone pointed this out to me, I would frown, check my handy parenting books, which said children developed at different paces, and boys often developed physically before developing verbally, and I would shrug it off.  I also hated that these people were often comparing James to another child they knew.  My son was perfect, just the way he was, and I wouldn't trade him for anyone else, even if that kid could tell me when he was hungry or say something funny that I could post on Facebook later.


Chris and I talked about it, and we decided to watch our son a little closer.  The parenting books said vocabulary would grow between ages 2 and 3, and so if we noticed him talking more as the year went on, we would continue as we were.  Then six months went by, and James was still only saying the same five words.  Mama, Nana, boom, dog, and broom.  I was watching his younger brother too, and there were things he did as an infant that were radically different from what James had done, things that fit more with the "typical development" lists in my parenting books.  So we called in the experts, and James was tested by childhood specialists, occupational and speech therapists, a psychologist from the school district, an audiologist from the county, a pediatric neurologist at our local children's hospital.  As we passed from one expert to the next, it became apparent that there was something wrong, and my identity as a mother took a serious hit.

Finally he was diagnosed with an Autism Spectrum Disorder, just weeks before his third birthday.  The doctor prescribed a course of action, including early intervention preschool and speech therapy, as well as blood and behavioral tests.  I told him, "Thank you very much for your opinion, but there is nothing wrong with my son."  And, though we followed his recommendation about school and speech therapy, I felt like we'd already put James through enough poking and prodding, and we canceled the doctor's tests.  I spent the next year (well, really I've spent every year) watching my son, waiting for him to blossom and talk and dismiss my worries.  I wanted so badly to see something that would erase the autism diagnosis, that would enable my son to grow into the man I thought he might be, a leader, a world changer, a commanding presence.  I prayed over him at night, asking God to please help him speak, to make him well, to give my son a good future.

It happened on a Sunday morning, in the midst of my discouragement and secret pain (because, of course, very few people knew even an inkling of what was happening with our son, and no one knew the extent of my concerns and my heartache, except perhaps my husband), that we went to pick James up from his Sunday school class.  He was only 3, a preschooler, and he hated any sort of arts and crafts, so they were always handing us blank coloring sheets or projects that the adult helper had clearly done for him.  This day, buried in the pile of papers and googly eyes and colorful announcements, I found a pink construction paper heart.  It was simple, something made by Cindy, the head of the nursery classes, and it bore a little white sticker in the middle.  Six words were typed on it, and it read:  

God has a plan for James.

I stared at that pink heart on the way home, and kept looking at it as it was left on the kitchen table with the mail and grocery store fliers.  Probably this was a craft that Cindy made for all the kids that weekend.  Probably there was no hidden motive or deep meaning to it, but as I've said before, I get to ascribe purpose to what happens in my life, and what illuminates the way for me.  So I took that little paper heart and I stuck it to my fridge, so I could look at it every day and be reminded of what I believe to be true.  God has a plan for James.  Just as God has a plan for me, for Winston, for my husband, for my neighbor, for the homeless drug addict passed out in a bus station and the refugee fleeing a war zone.  No one is a mistake.  No one's life should be wasted.

There was still much to do, to process the grief I felt at losing the child I thought I had, learning how to best parent a child with special needs, and to regain my confidence as a mother.  But it would take some big changes for our family to get there.