Summer 2007...

I have come to believe that Dylan, our autistic son, is in the process of healing. 

Like the blind man healed by Jesus, who had his sight restored in stages, slowly, and who at first saw men and said they "look like trees walking around (Mark 8:24)," Dylan's awareness of the world, in light of others being part of it, is slowly getting clearer.  Praise God.

Yet as he heals, I've learned yet another lesson about what it is to be human. 

As Dylan's awareness increases, his preoccupation with self (Autism) decreases, and is replaced with the ability to feel emotional sadness and loss with his own relationships. 

In particular, Dylan had grown quite fond of a caregiver who left rather suddenly without really saying goodbye to Dylan.  Dylan is sad.  He found some personal items of the caregiver and has gathered them into his room, where he holds them and smells them.

Funny isn't it? 

Prior to the process of healing, Dylan, in his self absorbed world of autism experienced no saddness, no loss in relationships - his only real relationship was with himself.  To an exagerated extent, Dylan couldn't have cared less about the others around him and their plight.  All others were tools, like spoons and forks, to be used, but with no real relationship.

Is it possible then, that suffering, pain, loss is good, in that it makes Dylan more aware and able to understand that loss in relationship is sad?

I wonder.  Can Dylan's awareness lead to an understanding that life, in relationship apart from God is aloneness, isolation, hell on earth?

Superimposing the last thought onto my relationship with God, perhaps my pradigm must change.  Perhaps my feeling of sadness and loss of relationship with Dylan, or others, is good, in that it allows me to be more in relationship to God - to be atuned to Christ's sufferings on the cross.

The progress in  Dylan's healing is God's will. I will trust in Him, not my own understanding (Proverbs 3:5).

Yet I feel sadness at this loss of relationship. 

Is this how God feels about us when we turn to our own ways?

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!" Luke 13:34

Does God feel sadness and loss of relationship with us, when we become preoccupied with our needs, or preservation of self?  When we run after the desires of our heart and make demands on God that I want this, or I want that?  Turning our desires into idols, that put us in a position where God simply put, grieves, as he ignores our demands?

James 4: 2-3 states, "You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures."

So, in many ways I am autistic with God, when I become preoccupied with my problems, instead of giving them up to God, when I become angry, because a seemingly noble desire, like having a rich relationship with my son, and it does not come as quickly as I would like.

I admit that when I am in the midst of a sad time, I realize that this life is and will always be a disappointment - desires for rich relationship thwarted by the efforts of the enemy, and the sinful heart of human beings, including myself.  Yet my motives are not all pure, I realize that sometimes my desires are really not more than a demand.  I want this now Lord.

Fortunately, God loves us.   He will grant the desires of our heart.  Psalm 37:4 states, "Delight yourself in the LORD and he will give you the desires of your heart."

However the key portion is my delight.  Do I delight in the Lord in the midst of sadness? 

Do I trust in the Lord, even in the midst of sadness?

Now there is the challenge.  Delight and trust in the midst of the bad things in life.

God empathises, and comforts and cares. 

At John 11:35 appears one of the shortest verses in the Bible, "Jesus wept." 

Yet Lazurus died.  Could Jesus have come a few days earlier and prevented Lazuus's death, prevented Mary's sorrow, and not wept? 

Yes, but he did not.  Because He knew what He intended to do, to give Lazurus life, and more than that, to carry out the Father's will, which is to teach us about faith.

Perhaps, like brokeness, experiencing saddness is yet another sign of a need to turn to God, for He alone can bring peace in the midst of the enemy's battle.  (Philipians 4: 6-7).  He alone knows the plan.  Jeremiah 29:11 states, "For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future."