Tag Archives: Catholicism

Who’s Leading Who?

Posted on by
1

So today is Father’s Day. In honor of the day, I thought I’d dust off a post from a few years ago, update it a bit, and repost it. (That, and I’m too busy being a dad today to write something new.) So here goes:

Who’s Leading Who?

In one of the lesser-known resurrection accounts in the Bible, Jesus tells Peter: “When you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” The passage goes on to explain that Jesus said this to signify “by what kind of death he [Peter] would glorify God” (John 21:18-19).

This passage has always had special resonance for me, to the point of being a kind of interpretive key to almost all of the major events in my life. It sounds kind of grim, doesn’t it? All this talk about being led where you don’t want to go and dying—even if that death glorifies God. But that hasn’t really been my experience. Rather, I’ve found a surprise or two along the way as I’ve seen these words unfold in my life.

One major surprise came when I realized who it was who would end up leading me along unexpected paths: my own kids! Now I’m sure that many parents can relate. None of us really knows what to expect when we hold our first child. We can never fully appreciate how much our lives will change now that we have welcomed this new person into our lives. How much more when you are blessed with six children! And how much, much more when it turns out that all six children are on the autism spectrum!

Unexpected Paths.

I named an earlier post “A Little Child Shall Lead Them,” and I meant it as something more than a clever play on words. I can testify that my kids—all six of them—have led me in ways I never expected.

  • They have led me to the waiting rooms of psychologists and psychiatrists and speech and occupational therapists as I have sought to understand their challenges and help them make sense of them as well.
  • They have led me to school conference rooms, where I have advocated for them and labored mightily to convince unimaginative, one-size-fits-all educators to give them a fair shake.
  • They have led me to my knees in prayer—not desperate prayers for their healing, but impassioned entreaties that God will grant them a future full of hope, a future where their gifts are welcomed and where they can make a difference for other people.
  • They have led me down rocky paths as I have helped them work through sleepless nights; relationship challenges; full-scale tantrums; days-long depressive episodes; and anxious, hours-long perseverations.

Death and Freedom.

Now, Jesus told Peter this stuff as a way of hinting at the kind of death that awaited him. And that has proven true for me as well, in a more figurative way. No, I’m not writing from beyond the grave! But my kids have definitely led me to experience other kinds of “deaths”—

  • The death of my dream for a Brady Bunch kind of life. It was a pretty self-centered, self-indulgent dream anyway, and I’m glad it’s gone. Now I don’t have to worry about how clean or dirty the house is. Or about when my kids are going to record their first pop single.
  • The death of any rigidity or legalism I may have brought to my ideas of parenting. I have learned to become much more flexible and creative in my parenting. “So what if she wants to wear all black clothing to church?” “You want to stay in your bed to avoid the noise of the dinner table? Knock yourself out! Just make sure you eat afterward—and clean up your plate.”
  • The death of a few close friendships due to some people’s lack of willingness to “get” our family’s dynamic. This was especially hard at first, but I realized that it’s in times of difficulty that you learn what your friends are really made of. That’s when you have to decide who is really worth your time.
  • The death of a romanticized take on the spiritual life. There are no simple answers. There are no guaranteed formulas. And yes it’s true; sometimes God does give you more than you can handle. That’s why he gave us each other. It’s also why he created wine.

It’s ironic, but each of these deaths has made me feel a little more alive and free. Little by little, my kids have led me to a place of surrender. Not defeat. Not resignation. But acceptance. I have learned so much about myself; about human nature, both the bad and the good; and about God that I feel like I’m a very different person now compared to who I was when our first one was born. And that leads to the final part of this passage.

An Unforeseen Glory.

According to the story, Jesus was pointing to the way Peter’s death would glorify God. Well, I’m not about to think that I give God all that much glory. Not unless he is glorified in huge messes! But I do think that the deaths I listed above have helped me to see God’s glory in new, unexpected ways.

  • I see his light shining through my nine-year-old’s unassailable innocence, both when he’s in full melt down mode and when he’s completely aflutter with the joy of something as helping Katie cook dinner.
  • I see him shedding a tear when my fifteen-year-old gets himself tangled up inside and needs to be talked down from a ledge of self-condemnation.
  • I feel his arms around me every time I dive into yet another parent-teacher conference or begin yet another bitter disputation with the insurance company.
  • I see his covenant commitment every time I come home and watch Katie coaching the kids in homework, making dinner, and trying to help the six-year-old overcome his loud, insistent perseverations all at the same time.

So yeah, there’s a lot of good stuff that comes from these little, unlooked-for deaths. Leave it to religion to be so delightfully paradoxical!

This Is My Body.

 For those of you who don’t know, I’m a Catholic, so this last one comes from my faith tradition. More than anything else, I see God in the bread at Mass as he says, “This is my body.” But I don’t just see and believe. I’ve also found the audacity to pray in return: “Hey! Over here! This is your body, too—this precious family you have given me. We’re part of you, and we all belong to you. So don’t pass us over or forget about us. You made my kids this way, so you’re stuck with us.”

Then I go one step further and tell him, “And here is my body, my life. It’s nowhere near the image of you that it’s supposed to be. It’s still too much shadow and not enough light. Still, I offer it to you. Go ahead and keep leading me, even if it’s where I don’t want to go. With all of these little deaths, you have found so many ways to empty me. And I guess that’s fine. But now I need you to fill me and raise me up so that I can give myself—body and blood, soul and humanity—back to my children.”

And the Lord reaches out his hand to grasp mine, and responds: “Amen.”

Happy Father’s Day, everyone!

Hope. Faith. Love.

Posted on by
1

Groovy Love

For those who don’t know, I’m a Catholic, and I take my faith kind of seriously. I also like to laugh at how quirky Catholicism can be at times. Among all the Christian denominations, we have got to be the most precise bunch. It’s likely because of our ties to the Roman Empire. Compared to the Greeks, who tended to be more philosophical and flexible, the ancient Romans were legal-minded sticklers for precision. How else did they manage to conquer the world?

Off the top of my head, I can think of two ways that our Roman roots show up. First, there’s our almost innate desire to define doctrines to the umpteenth decimal point: mortal versus venial sin, degrees of cooperation with evil, specific requirements for fasting, for receiving communion, and all that. Then there are the numbers. So many numbers. Just look at the sevens for an example: seven deadly sins, seven corporal works of mercy, seven spiritual works of mercy, seven sacraments the Seven Founders of the Order of Servites. Then there are the threes: Father, Son, and Spirit; poverty, chastity, and obedience; Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium. And, of course: faith, hope, and love.

It’s this last trilogy that struck me today. I recalled how St. Paul talks about faith, hope, and love being the only three gifts of God that last, and how “the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). And it got me to thinking about how these three virtues are the most important things we need as parents—and doubly so as parents of special-needs children. Forget Doctor Spock. Forget Doctor Phil. Even forget Doctor Who. All those self-help books at Barnes & Noble? Rubbish. All those listicles about parenting on Buzzfeed? Worthless. If you have faith, hope, and love, you’ll do just fine.

And because I’m Catholic, I will now tell you the right order in which you need them. *Clears throat*

Hope.

Every parent begins with this one. A child is born. He is beautiful, innocent, full of promise and potential. We look on this tiny person that is the result of our love, and we are gobsmacked. We have such high hopes for this little baby. Not necessarily that he’ll be an astronaut or a top chef or a CEO—although that would be great. We hope that he’ll grow and flourish and find happiness and love. That she’ll find her own special someone with whom she can make a family of her own. We dream of school plays and soccer tournaments and Christmas trees and family trips. We dream of (and dread) the driving lessons, the first date, the prom, and graduation day. Holding this little blessing in our arms, we can’t help but dream of the future.

Then the child grows up, and we see things that challenge our hope. Perhaps speech is delayed. Maybe he takes far too long to learn how to walk or use the potty. Maybe she doesn’t know how to mingle with her classmates in preschool. Maybe he always cries at the doorbell or any sudden noise. Something’s not quite right, and we worry about the future. Then the word “autism” enters our vocabulary, and we feel hope draining away. What about the prom? What about graduation? What about finding love? Is it all possible?

That’s when we look to . . .

Faith.

It’s faith that keeps our hope alive. Faith in our child’s innate goodness. Faith that he really does want to do well and to succeed. Faith in the team of care providers that we stumblingly assemble to give him every chance at a full and rewarding life—whatever that means. Faith in a God who would never abandon a child of his.

That faith sees us through the melt downs, the tantrums, the tone-deaf schools, and the unthinking or unaware neighbors. It lifts us up when our kid begins to go south, whether because of regression or oppositional behavior or depression or anxiety. It sustains us through the long, wearying days and helps us sleep at night. When hope begins to fade, faith tells us that despite what we are seeing now, better days are ahead. It gives us assurance that what we hope for will come to pass (Hebrews 11:1). It may not look like what we expected, but it will come. And so we press on, fueled by faith, toward that vision that we have hoped for.

But what happens when even faith wavers? What if the child we have worked with, prayed for, fought for, and even clashed with, simply is not making progress? Maybe he can’t overcome the next hurdle, or maybe he just doesn’t want to. Whatever the case, what do you do when hope has dissipated and you can’t place your faith in any of the resources you once relied on?

You still have . . .

Love.

And in the end, you know that’s all you really needed. Your dreams may not be fulfilled. Your doctors and therapists may be at an impasse. Your prayers don’t seem to be working. Nothing is going right, and you don’t know if anything good is on the horizon.

It doesn’t matter. He’s your son. She’s your daughter. And you can’t help but love. Even when you want to throw up your hands in despair, you know that this is your child, and that knowledge brings you back to sanity. It softens your heart, if only just enough to let you take the next step forward.

No matter what happens, love wins out. It may take years, but it will win. Because a child who knows he is loved, no matter what, will always have a glimmer in his heart, and that glimmer will offer some protection, some encouragement, some guidance in the dark days. Just as God looked at us and couldn’t help but love us, even when we felt lost and hopeless, we can’t help but feel love when we look at our children.

So even if he never learns to use the toilet, even if she never speaks a word, even if he ends up living all alone or in your basement, there’s always love. Good old, stubborn love. Because it’s the one thing—the only thing—that will matter in the end.

An Inspired Diptych

Posted on by
3

Pieta

So here we are in the middle of another Holy Week—the seven days between Palm Sunday and Easter. This is the time when Christians pay especially close attention to the stories of Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion, and resurrection. And as you might expect, believers conjure up beloved images during this time—images drawn from the Stations of the Cross or from a classic movie like The Ten Commandments or Jesus of Nazareth.

My favorite image, however, is a little different. I tend to think about Jesus’ mother, Mary, and especially that moment after the crucifixion that has been called the Pietà. See that picture up there? It’s Michelangelo’s rendering of the scene, and it’s on display in St. Peter’s Basilican in the Vatican. 

Anyway, the Pietà wasn’t always my go-to Holy Week image—at least not until something happened about four years ago. And since it’s Holy Week, I thought I’d share the story.

It had been a long evening—and it was only 6:30. Our second child had been fighting Katie over homework, fighting her older brother over the use of the TV, and fighting me over whether she was going to eat her dinner or just sit at the table and wail.

She was nine years old at the time: a very pretty girl with big, ice-blue eyes; light brown hair with natural blonde highligts; and a fair face with a few freckles. When she’s not throwing a tantrum, she has a lively sense of humor and an innocent, even sweet disposition.

She also has Asperger Syndrome. Among other things, this means that her brain has a difficult time processing all the visual and auditory input that we neurotypical people take for granted. So after a full day dealing with the sights and sounds of school, she has had just about as much as she can handle. She spends six hours every day holding it all in, and it’s only when she gets home that she feels safe enough to let it out. And that’s precisely what happened this evening.

So there I was, taking my daughter from the dinner table and escorting her to her room—again. “Maybe if I sit with her for a few moments,” I thought, “she’ll be able to calm down.” So up the stairs we went, me tugging her as she reluctantly followed, crying and swatting at me. I sat down on her bed, held her in my lap, and tried to speak in soothing tones while she shook and wept. But it was no use. She just kept pitching back and forth, wailing and screaming until she fell asleep in my arms.

Recognition and Revelation.

I was lucky that night: she fell asleep quickly enough for me to make it to the prayer meeting I had been attending. It took place in the chapel of a large Catholic church. The chapel was dedicated to Mary, and it featured a series of stained-glass windows depicting various scenes from the Virgin’s life.

I got there a few minutes early, tied up in knots and on the brink of tears. Since only a few people had arrived, I found a quiet corner and knelt down for some private prayer.

As I bowed my head and shut my eyes tight, a host of anxious thoughts swirled in my mind. What was going to happen to my little girl? Would we ever find the right therapies and medications? How could Katie and I keep up? What about our five other children, all of whom are also on the autism spectrum?

But then I looked up, I saw that I had stationed myself right next to the stained-glass window depicting the Pietà. I saw Mary, a look of both resignation and surrender on her face as she cradled the lifeless body of her son, the image pierced my heart. I had just come from cradling the seemingly lifeless body of my child, and here was Mary doing the same thing.

It was a moment of recognition and revelation. My reaction to my girl’s suffering was tinged with bitterness, but so was Mary’s. Looking at her face, I could tell that she didn’t just shrug off what had happened with a sense of holy indifference. She was a real mother holding her own flesh and blood. As I kept looking at the image, I imagined Mary telling me, “It hurts, doesn’t it? It really hurts. I don’t have comforting words to offer you, except to say that I know how bitter it is—because I’ve tasted it. Does that help?”

An Inspired Diptych.

In that moment, I felt a sense of kinship with Mary that I still have a hard time putting into words. The best I could come up with was a diptych, a kind of two-paneled painting. On one panel, I imagined myself holding one of my children, much the way that Mary holds Jesus in the Pietà. As I contemplate this panel, I realize that, just like Mary, I too am sharing in my children’s pain and frustration and anguish. When melt downs like my little girl’s happen, I am just as helpless as Mary was, and the best I can do is keep vigil with them and pray for God’s strength to keep moving forward.

On the other panel, I see myself as the lifeless body, spent and exhausted, lying in Mary’s lap. I have given all I have to give, I have done all that I know how to do, and there’s nothing left. But Mary is there, accepting my pain, sadness, and helplessness as her own and ennobling it by turning it into a prayer that we offer to God together.

I realized that night that this is an okay place to be. If Mary is with me, I know I’ll find some kind of resurrection, some kind of divine grace to help me get up and take the next step. I saw that it’s okay to collapse upon occasion; someone will always be with me until I can rise again.

Rising to the Challenge.

What I learned—what I felt—as I looked at that stained glass window has stayed with me. My little girl is not so little any more. Her melt downs may not be as dramatic, but her challenges have become more complex. So too have our other kids’ challenges, melt downs, and rough patches. Frankly, a day doesn’t go by that I don’t get the chance to identify with one or another—or both—of those pictures on my diptych. And that’s a good thing. Because I don’t know what I’d do without them.

I hope you have a happy Easter.

Mountain Climbing for Christmas

Posted on by
1

montaintop castle

Well, we survived another Christmas in our house. I suppose I shouldn’t say “survived” this year. There have been times, mind you, when that has been the best word to describe our family’s holiday observances. Having six kids on the autism spectrum can lead to all kinds of challenges around the holidays. From the absence of a structured school day to the sensory overload of a joyous but crowded Christmas liturgy, there are lots of opportunities for ASD people either to melt down or withdraw into their own worlds.

But this year was different. There were some minor issues along the way, but nothing left me shaking my head in deep frustration or abject resignation.

So what made the difference? I think much of the reason lies in something that happened four weeks earlier, on the first Sunday of Advent.

Two Horizons.

There’s a funny thing about Advent. For at least the first two weeks of the season, the Scripture readings in the Catholic liturgy focus on the “second coming” of Christ at the end of time instead of his first coming on Christmas Day. The prophet Isaiah’s glorious “mountain of the house of the Lord” is in the horizon, not the peaceful manger in Bethlehem. It’s a time of restoration and perfect, lasting peace, a time when the lion lies down with the lamb and when all the barren “wildernesses” in the world are transformed into lush landscapes.

It isn’t until December 16 that the scene shifts and Mary and Joseph take center stage rather than Isaiah and John the Baptist. In a sense, we shift from our ultimate goal—heaven itself—to one of the most important mile markers on the road to that goal—the dawn of redemption at the birth of Christ.

This shift can feel a bit jarring, but I saw something new this year. With its early focus on the second coming, Advent has a sense of movement. You know that you’re heading somewhere. The destination is always in view as you are encouraged to take one more step toward it. Rather than a time of passive waiting for Jesus to appear (in whatever form), Advent is a time for journeying. It’s a road, not a way station.

Progress on the Road.

What does all this have to do with autism and my family? Well, as we headed to Mass on December 1, it occurred to me that we are heading somewhere as well. We’re not just treading water, trying to survive the next melt down. We’re not just anxiously awaiting the next diagnosis or school-related drama. We’re not just marking time between therapy visits and prescription refills.

It kind of sneaks up on you, doesn’t it? You expend so much energy helping your kids make sense of the outside world, negotiating truces between them, advocating for them, picking up the pieces after they fall apart, and trying to forestall the next crisis that you rarely get the chance to see how much your work is paying off. But it is.

For one thing, whether you know it or not, your kids are figuring things out on their own, often quite independent of you. They’re developing their own coping skills and testing their own strengths and weaknesses. They’re learning what works and what doesn’t as they try to make sense of the jangled, jumbled world they’ve been thrown into. They do is all by themselves, when you’re not looking, and they come to their own conclusions about how they should live.

For another thing, your words are getting through to them, even if you have to repeat them over and over again. Just the other day, our oldest daughter verbally walked me through her unique, unorthodox strategy of how she was trying to avoid a melt down over a toy she wanted—and then proceeded to prove that it worked. Not only did she not fall apart; she was pretty darned proud of herself.

Finally, you don’t tend to notice day-to-day how much your kids are changing you. They’re making you more patient. They’re teaching you how to love in ways you never thought of. They’re making you more compassionate—not just for them but for everyone else who struggles. In a way, they’re helping to make you more like Christ.

In other words, you are on the road. It’s just hard to see it sometimes.

New Road, Same Destination. 

It sounds so simple, but when you’re in the thick of it as often as we are, it’s hard not to see the forest as just one freakin’ tree after another, each tree blocking your path. But those trees are more than just obstacles; they’re marking out a new road for you to travel.

This is one of the biggest challenges I face as a parent: accepting a different path for my family than the one I imagined so long ago. But that’s where my kids come in. Each in their own way, they’re heading down that path of their own accord, and they’re taking me with them. From the fourteen-year-old with intense social anxiety to the four-year-old with hair-trigger sensory issues, from the flap-happy eight-year-old to the OCD thirteen-year-old, they all seem to have discovered a new road. I have little choice but to follow them, sometimes chasing after them, as they go on their way.

I kind of knew that was happening all along, I guess, but this Advent has made it easier for me to see it. Even better, these past few weeks have made me more aware that the path doesn’t lead to a dead end or into a shadowy valley. It still leads to the “mountain of the house of the Lord.” The mountain is higher than I thought it would be. The climb is steeper than I thought it would be. But that’s okay, because the house that sits on top of the mountain is a lot bigger and a lot more glorious than I thought it would be.

Do They “Get” Religion?

Posted on by
4

We had quite a bit of drama last Sunday over getting the kids to church. One in particular—our second, a 12-year-old girl with Aspergers—gave us a lot of grief. First, there was the feigned illness excuse. Then there was the pulled muscle stratagem, in which she faked a sore back because she had been throwing the football with her brothers the day before. Then, when all else seemed lost, she pulled a very clever ploy: the constipation gambit. Just one minute before we absolutely had to get out the door, she ducked into the bathroom, locked the door, and protested that she really had to go, warning us that it would take a long time.

By this point, I was done. I had been working with the others, trying to get them ready, all the while fielding this girl’s anxious protests. So by the time she played her final card, I gave up and told her to stay home. I also made sure that the computers were not accessible. I may have been done, but I was not going to be anybody’s fool!

Then came the afternoon, when she was set to go to Sunday school, or CCD as we Catholics call it. She had sworn up and down all day that she would not try to get out of it, but as soon as the time came, the same old excuses came up. Only this time with far more emotion: desperation, anxiety, fear, anger, recrimination, exaggeration. You name it, she threw it at us. Again it was clear that, short of physically throwing her in the car and dragging her to class, it just wasn’t going to happen. (Note: she’s big for her age, and not all that easily moved. If I were to try the physical approach, I would likely look like an abusive dad.)

This was all so frustrating for me. This girl is getting close to her confirmation, and to this point everything related to God or faith or the Church has been a struggle. As you can guess from previous posts, I take my faith pretty seriously, and one of my highest goals is to see all my kids come to a personal embrace of their faith, just as Katie and I have. But this is probably the best picture of how this girl’s guardian angel must feel on Sundays.

Image

Literal Brains, Spiritual Truths.

It took me a few years to get to the point where I’m not all that surprised by this. For quite a while I tried to force my expectations on them, wondering if they would ever accept the faith that is so important to Katie and me. It’s hard to admit that this may never happen because of their ASD, but I’ve come to realize that it’s a very real possibility, if not a downright probability.

After all, teenagers on the autism spectrum tend to have a harder time with religion than their neurotypical peers. ASD kids are very concrete thinkers. Inference and abstraction are foreign concepts. So the thought of an invisible Person whose presence and influence can be detected by intuition and emotion can seem absurd. Aspies tend to be fiercely independent and unwaveringly evidence-based, so there’s not much room for faith in a brain like that. There’s not much room for the idea of submitting one’s heart and mind to an exterior, mysterious God. If my girl were in the upper room with St. Thomas, she would have outdone him in his demand to probe the wounds of Christ before believing that he had risen from the dead.

All this can make the whole idea of a religious service, whether it’s a solemn Mass or a nondenominational electric guitar-fueled gathering, extremely foreign. Then, when you consider all the sensory issues involved—incense, lots of unfamiliar people, loud music, all that sitting and kneeling and standing—it’s a melt down waiting to happen.

At times this has left me wondering if I should even bother to teach the faith to my children. Maybe it would be better just to aim for good, moral kids who stay out of trouble. If their brains are wired so differently, why pretend they’re going to “get it” anyway?

Meeting God.

But I just can’t do that. I may have to accept a different script for my children’s lives than I had intended, but I’m still not giving up. For all the trouble it can cause, and for all the creativity it can demand to get them to Mass, I still believe it’s worth it.

That’s because I believe in a God who acts—and who acts dramatically. You see, while many of my convictions about religion were formed by the Catholic intellectual tradition—I studied philosophy and theology at a Catholic liberal arts college—these convictions came to life for me because of a deep interior conversion experience.

It’s a long story, but suffice it to say that when I was a junior (32 years ago this month, in fact), I had an experience of God that was intensely personal. Everything I had learned in my brain became real to my heart, and I was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that God was real, that Jesus loved me, and that his Holy Spirit was alive and working in my life. I felt a joy I had never known before, as well as a freedom from guilt and a new sense of purpose to life. I’m convinced that without this experience, I would have lost interest in God years ago.

That’s why I’m not giving up. I know that God is bigger than ASD. I know that he loves my kids. And if he loves them, he can’t help but want to show them his love. So I believe that somehow, somewhere, in some manner, he will do for my children what he has done for me. He’ll make himself known and touch their hearts. I don’t know when. And I certainly don’t know how. But I believe deeply that he will do it. I just have to adjust my expectations of what that will look like.

Doing My Part.

So in the mean time, I’ll keep doing what I can. I’ll keep making sure that they have the data in their minds so that when God moves, it can transfer to their hearts. I won’t try to force faith on them. And I certainly won’t get my expectations too high about their emotions or their spiritual intuitions. Where some of my friends’ older kids are beginning to own their faith, I’m not expecting my kids to do that any time soon. At this point, my main concern is to make sure that the information is there. It’s to help them feel as comfortable as possible in church. I know they may never be all that comfortable. But at least it’s a start.

So here I am doing my part. The rest is up to you, God. Good luck!

And if it never happens for them, if they never “get” the experience I had, I won’t sweat it. As I said above, God is bigger than ASD. He’s also bigger than any one model of religious experience or salvation. Even if they can simply come to accept the premises of faith and try their best to live an upright life, I’ll be happy.

Because you made them the way they are. You know who they are. And you won’t let them down.