I Am in Here (21 page)

I often call Elizabeth an “old soul” because she expresses to me a profound understanding of God and life that seems to go well beyond her years.

Living with Elizabeth and her autism has led me to ask many questions about life. How do we connect with those we love when there are no words? How do we balance acceptance of our children's differences with our desire to change them? How is God here with us in our suffering? How are we being healed? How do we balance life in the midst of such turmoil? How do we find joy and keep our hope alive?

I will spend the rest of my life seeking the answers to these questions.

Victor Frankl had his epiphany in Auschwitz: “For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth—that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart:
The salvation of man is through love and in love
.”
[2]

In
my
heart, even in the darkest moments, I know there is love in this world. And where there is love, joy and hope will follow.

Elizabeth said it better on one of our Christmas cards:

Joy is in the air.

Peace is everywhere.

Love is what we share.

Elizabeth's favorite poet, Emily Dickinson, writes about joy and hope. We try to read her poetry often because it is food for the soul. For me, Elizabeth embodies the spirit of Dickinson's bird in this poem:

Like Dickinson's bird, Elizabeth sings her own tune with persistence. No, not with persistence—she sings relentlessly.

Perhaps it's even simpler than that. From a young age, Elizabeth has replayed over and over again a particular scene from Disney's
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
. It is the scene where blackbirds fly out of a pie, startling Snow White. I used to think that it was just another of the meaningless, repetitive behaviors that can make us autism moms feel like we will go crazy. Now I know Elizabeth was telling me that she is one of those birds, trapped not in a pie but in her own silent cage. Long before we found a way in, she was begging to be set free.

Today Elizabeth takes great joy in birds and anything to do with flying. She loves to fly on airplanes, to fly kites, and to see raptors gliding overhead.

  
Over the Treetops
  

As wide as the sea

I noticed a seagull.

Did it see only the tree

Or did it see me?

I often wonder

How it would be

To fly over the treetops

And out to the sea.

I am very interested in anything that flies. It is amazing to me. Birds, airplanes, dragonflies, helicopters, to name just a few. I love to go on an airplane and be up in the clouds
.

Elizabeth's love of flying brings to mind an Agnes Sanford story that Pastor Bill likes to tell. He was having lunch with Agnes and told her about the thrill he had riding in a glider. Despite being in her mid-eighties, Agnes was enthusiastic to experience it. Unfortunately, when the day of the flight arrived, Agnes was not feeling well and had to call the pilot to cancel the trip. After she hung up the phone, she told Edith, the woman who helped take care of her in her later years, “I am going to go lie down and take a glider ride of my own.”

An hour later, Edith looked in on Agnes, and she was lying on her bed completely at peace. She was taking her glider ride back home.

We are here on earth for a brief stay, and then we are called home.

In “Arriving Home” from
The Dance of Life: Weaving Sorrows and Blessings into One Joyful Step
, Henri Nouwen shows us his “How” side when he writes:

The question is not “How am I to find God?” but “How am I to let myself be found by him?”. . . The question is not “How am I to love God?” but “How am I to let myself be loved by God?” . . . God is the father who watches and waits for his children, runs to meet them, embraces them, pleads with them, begs and urges them to come home.
[4]

Henri loved this vision of the prodigal son, which was so movingly painted by Rembrandt. I understand this painting now in ways that I could not have when I was younger. The painting captures the relentless, yearning love of God—the fierce love parents have for their children. Just as we fight to free our children from autism's grip and draw them more fully into the life for which they were created, so too does God struggle to free us from the grip of our sorrow, our worry, and our self-centeredness and into the life of love for which we were made.

You can see the marks of this struggle on the father's face in Rembrandt's painting. It's a combination of love, joy, and sorrow, all bound up in his compassionate embrace of the son who had finally returned home. The father and son fit together like two pieces of a puzzle.

One of Rembrandt's greatest gifts was his ability to capture the imprint of our lives on our faces as we age. Our loves, our hopes, our fears, and our sorrows—all of them are eventually written on our faces. In the same way that a river cuts through
a canyon, carving out a riverbed that sets the river's course, our shared lives cut grooves in each other. Our shared joys and sorrows connect us. It's a painful process, but it's also one of great beauty.

The struggles I've shared with Elizabeth have carved deep grooves into our souls. We are bound together in ways that are unique to us. I believe the same is true with God. My life has been a journey of inching toward and slipping away from God. Back and forth, back and forth. There is a groove carved in my heart that only God can fill. I'd like to think I've worn a groove into God's heart as well. And one day I will go home, where our grooves fit perfectly together, and I will rest in God's embrace.

On this earth, my joy with Elizabeth comes in those quiet times when we are walking in the woods or sitting on the couch together reading a book. These are the times when she lets me into her world. These are the times when we could not be closer, when we fit together like pieces of a puzzle. I hold her in my arms, and she knows that I believe in her and I will be there for her.

Art is another shining example of shared joy. We started out small and have gradually moved to bigger venues. Our first adventures were exhibits of local artists in the library. Next we went to a small museum, always allowing Elizabeth to set the pace, which meant we were kind of jogging through the rooms. Now we plan trips to cities that have great museums, and the pace has slowed. It's still faster than I prefer, but we take our adventures in art as a victory. We just completed a series of college lectures on great paintings, and Elizabeth told us she loves Vincent van Gogh. Many reproductions of his paintings now hang in her room.

Van Gogh happens to be my favorite artist, and with Henri Nouwen's help, I have come to understand why. Henri taught a seminar at Yale Divinity School in the 1970s called “The Ministry of Vincent van Gogh.” In the foreword to the book
Van Gogh and
God
, Henri fondly remembers that course and “how we would spend long hours together in silence, simply gazing at the slides of Vincent's work. I did not try to explain much or analyze much. I simply wanted the students to have a direct experience of the ecstasy and agony of this painter who shared his desperate search for meaning.”
[5]
This is definitely a course I should have taken.

Henri believed that Van Gogh's universal appeal is rooted in his art's tender reflection of life as a pilgrimage. Van Gogh had been an evangelistic preacher before finding his ministry in art. In November 1876, a young Van Gogh mounted the pulpit of a small Methodist church in Richmond, England, to give his first sermon:

We are pilgrims on the earth and strangers—we have come from afar and we are going far—the journey of our life goes from the loving breast of our Mother on earth to the arms of our Father in heaven. Everything on earth changes—we have no abiding city here—it is the experience of everyone.
[6]

Throughout his life, Van Gogh melded the philosophies of East and West. He was fascinated by and collected Japanese “floating world” prints that mirror the Buddhist notion that life is in constant flux.

My reasons for loving Van Gogh's art are rooted in his use of color and texture. Simply put, the vibrant colors bring me joy, and something about the thickness of the paint makes each work dance with energy and life. You need to see a Van Gogh painting in person to appreciate the dynamism of those great dollops of paint. The same can be said for Elizabeth: you need to see her in person, to be present with her, to feel the energy and life that is within her.

Maybe I love Van Gogh even more because he may have had autism. We will never know for sure, but there are many “special” people who have made great contributions to the world due to
their obsessive, creative, and perhaps “autistic” minds: Albert Einstein, Lewis Carroll, and Sir Isaac Newton to name a few.

Philosopher and theologian Paul Tillich linked painting with poetry: “All arts create symbols for a level of reality which cannot be reached in any other way. A picture and a poem reveal elements of reality which cannot be approached scientifically. In the creative work of art we encounter reality in a dimension which is closed for us without such works.”
[7]

The ability for art to communicate beyond words—not just without them but beyond them—brings me back to Elizabeth. We all share Elizabeth's struggle to communicate. All of us have tried to find words for our deepest thoughts and feelings about who we are. We easily speak the most meaningless, mundane things, but the most important things to us, the dearest things, are the hardest to find words for. This is the goal of the artist, and for me, Elizabeth's art—her poetry—communicates more than words that she would speak.

There are times when Elizabeth does speak to me. We laugh and dance together. This is my vision for her, fully healed. She is the same beautiful child she is now, but without the fetters of autism. She doesn't strike herself in frustration. She is happy and healthy. I believe this vision will come to pass because I persist in the hope that the Love that binds us together will heal her, body and soul. We know that there are three things that endure—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

Today, a decade after her initial diagnosis, our battle continues. Despite all of her challenges, Elizabeth embraces life and knows that she is being healed every day. And miracle of miracles, she is starting to communicate with her voice. Sometimes while driving down the road, I will hear “pizza” behind me when she sees a sign for her favorite food. Because I am thrilled to hear
her voice, we pull over and stop for a slice. “Fire” is another favorite word, which she says when we light birthday candles or burn wood in the fireplace.

  
Fire
  

By the fireside

All aglow

All the colors

How they flow

Red to orange

Yellow to blue.

That only names a few.

Just like the feelings

A warm fire brings.

It makes your heart

Want to sing.

Looking into a fire is fascinating to me. It is comforting on a winter night when there is snow on the ground. The fire seems alive the way it moves and changes color
.

In this second coming of her language, the few words that she struggles to get out are not always clear, but they are evidence of her valiant efforts to overcome the shackles of her autism. For me, her voice is a joyful noise, and I cheer her every word.

As Elizabeth writes, she has a “Bright Future.” This poem was introduced as the first of this book and appears again here
in hopes that you read it differently now. In the first chapter, it showed her optimism; now it is a call to action. With the right encouragement and support, our children are strong and able. The beauty of nature found in the tall tree, shining sun, and glimmering lake are reflected in them. Elizabeth wants us to see every child and praise God for a glorious creation.

  
Bright Future
  

When you see

A tree

Think of me

Growing strong and tall.

When you see

The sun shining brightly

Think of me

Tough and mighty.

When you see

The water on the lake

Think of the future

I plan to make.

Me

Strong

Mighty

Free

The How People in this book have given me the strength to tell you Elizabeth's story. By now, you have probably guessed my secret: I've never met many of these How People. They are
the authors who have touched my heart and imprinted on my soul the knowledge that
I am not alone
. The How People I have met both in person and in print are with us on our journey. The hope and joy in their stories inspire us to fight our battle another day.