One memory always comes to mind.

How could someone not realize they had arms? I wondered as I watched my son sitting in his high chair. We were visiting Granddad and Grandma Karen, his daddy’s parents. He was almost three years old, and Grandma had served mashed potatoes from the garden with rich homemade gravy. As usual, everyone around the table was enjoying dinner.

He lowered his face into the bowl like a puppy and licked the potatoes. Sometimes his hands wandered into the bowl to help the food along, but just as often his face did all the work. I watched with a knot growing in my stomach. That afternoon another mother quietly pulled me aside in the kitchen.

“You really need to work on his table manners,” she suggested.

She meant well, but we didn’t yet know he had autism. I had raised four children before him and had taught them all to use forks and spoons. I had tried exactly the same things with him, but nothing seemed to work. Her words stung because I already felt like I was failing.

Just a few weeks later came the appointment that changed everything. The doctor looked kindly at me through thick bottle glasses.

“He is autistic,” she said. “Very autistic.”

Drawing a half-circle on a sheet of paper, she pointed. “It’s a spectrum,” she explained, indicating a place near one end. “I’d place him about here.”

Today that would be considered Level 3 autism. At the time, she estimated his cognitive abilities to be around those of a six-month-old. He was three.

The drive home was quiet as he slept peacefully in his car seat. My husband and I talked in low voices about the future—about therapies, possibilities, fears, and hopes. We didn’t know where this road would lead, but we knew we had to start walking it.

Suddenly so many things made sense. He couldn’t seem to color. He couldn’t manage utensils. He didn’t appear to understand what his own hands were for.

So we started working on connections—and then on his hands.

Every meal began the same way. After we prayed, instead of picking up my own fork, I walked around behind his chair. Slipping my arms beneath his, I wrapped his little fingers around his fork, covered his hands with mine, and together we lifted the food to his mouth…again and again and again. Every single meal.

Eventually I began loosening my grip, sliding my hands farther down his wrists until his fingers carried more of the work. One day I decided to wait. We finished praying, and everyone reached for their forks, but I stayed in my chair and watched him expectantly.

He frowned and squirmed. Then came the familiar warning.

“Do you hear that tractor?”

Those words almost always meant a meltdown was on the way. He lifted both hands into the air and waited with them suspended above his plate. My heart felt like dry ground waiting for rain, about to crack.

After a few moments, I walked around the table again, placed my hands over his, and together we ate. It wasn’t the victory I had hoped for, but it was still progress. Because now, as long as my hands rested lightly on his wrists, he would hold his own fork. So the next day I moved my hands to his elbows, and then to his forearms. Sometimes I let go for only a second before taking hold again.

Little by little, his hands were learning.

One meal, after the blessing, I remained seated once more. Steam rose from fresh green beans, and crusty bread lay freshly sliced on a homemade cutting board. He looked at me expectantly but quickly averted his eyes. Then he fussed, and his hands floated uncertainly over the table.

Then…he picked up his fork, speared a piece of chicken, and lifted it to his own mouth.

For a split second the whole table froze. Should we cheer? Would we scare him? But somebody couldn’t help it.

“Christopher!” We shouted.

The dining room erupted with applause. He glanced around in surprise and burst into laughter. Delighted, he dropped his fork on purpose, picked it back up, and fed himself again, hoping to keep producing the laughter. He loved making everyone laugh.

To discover your hands is no small thing. It’s certainly cause for celebration. But…if his hands could learn to feed him, perhaps someday they would learn to write and draw. Perhaps someday they would build or play music. Maybe even someday his mouth would find words too?

So we just kept practicing. Coloring came next. He didn’t understand crayons any better than forks, so again, he held his hands out for mine.

I bought a large whiteboard and dry-erase markers. Standing behind him, I wrapped my hands around his, and together we drew circles, squares, arrows, smiley faces, and simple lines every day. He loved it.

Truthfully, I think he loved the smell of the markers at least as much as drawing. He would lean close and sniff them with obvious delight, and he always seemed comforted by the firm pressure of my hands around his wrists. Deep pressure always settled his little nervous system.

Eventually preschool time would end each morning, and I needed to teach his older brothers and sister. One day, I sat working through grammar with Andrew while Christopher played quietly on the hardwood floor beside me. His favorite toys were blocks, so I dumped a pile for him to play in. He could sort and stack them for what seemed like hours.

As Andrew and I worked through his lesson, I glanced down, and there beside Christopher lay one of the small whiteboards his older siblings used for spelling. A dry-erase marker was clutched in his pudgy hand.

And on the board…was a tractor! A real tractor!

I stared at it. He had never drawn a single thing by himself! He hadn’t even made a single mark on a board without my hands guiding his. Grabbing my phone, I snapped a picture before it disappeared and sent it to my husband at work.

“Our son just did this!” I shrieked into the phone.

Original drawing from Christopher

Hardly believing what I was seeing, I wondered, how in the world had he gone from holding out his hands so I could help him draw a single line…to drawing an entire tractor? He looked up at me proudly.

“Do you hear that tractor?”

For so long that phrase had been nothing but the warning that a meltdown was coming, but that day, I felt that it meant something else. I truly believed he had seen something, imagined it, and had actually drawn it. And finally he had found those familiar words to share it.

Little by little, he was finding his hands. He was finding his feet. And hidden inside the mystery of his mind, the gifts God had placed there all along were beginning to emerge.

We’re still seeing that today.

Many of you have faithfully chosen to support my writing, even when you weren’t receiving anything exclusive in return. Your encouragement has meant more to me than you know, and I am deeply grateful.

That is about to change.

I’m excited to begin sharing something that no one else has seen yet—a sneak preview of the book that Christopher and I are writing together.

The book is made up of letters exchanged between the two of us. Some are letters I have written to him, and others are his responses back to me. It has become a beautiful journey of reflection, growth, and the grace of God at work through the years.

Today, I’d like to share one of Christopher’s letters in response to one I wrote to him.

I hope you enjoy it, and thank you again for your continued support. It has helped make projects like this possible.

—Amanda

Read more

The phone rang, and I looked at the number, surprised. It was a single guy whom I’ll call Bill. I couldn’t remember a time he’d ever called me before.

“Hello?” I said.

“Hi, Amanda. I just thought I would let you know that, well, you might want to know that your son is standing on the windowsill in his room, and he doesn’t have anything on. Like, nothing on. And he’s looking out the window.”

I groaned.

“Okay. Thank you very much,” I said, shaking my head.

Dashing back to Christopher’s room, I opened the door. Sure enough, he was standing on the windowsill again, but then the smell hit me like a tsunami.

What in the world?

This would not be the first time his room had smelled like this. Our toilet-training journey was not going well. Then I saw the window, the walls, and the shoes in the corner. All of them had been smeared and painted with unspeakable substances.

I grabbed my head in my hands.

“Oh no, Christopher. What did you do?” I asked.

He jerked and jumped off the windowsill where he had been standing.

“Come with Mommy,” I said.

I took him to my bathroom and turned on the water. I felt like taking him outside and spraying him off with a hose, but I knew that would cause even more alarm. After rinsing him off in the shower and settling him into a bath, I went back to clean and sterilize the room.

How were we ever going to overcome the toilet-training issues? We’d been at it for years! And not just the toilet-training issues, but the hatred-of-clothing issues as well.

I had tried softer clothes and cut every tag out of T-shirts, pants, and underwear. But there was always some problem. The second Christopher was out of sight, off came the clothes.

During nap times and while he was outside playing, we lost more shoes than I could count. Somehow they simply disappeared, but I reminded myself that this was a journey.

At least it seemed like we already had some victories behind us, like wetting. Now if we could just get victory with the big jobs and clothing.

Learning to use the potty had included sitting for entire days with him, reading books while he sat on the potty, or sitting beside him next to the adult toilet waiting and watching for success. As strange as it sounds, that turned out to be marvelously helpful because he loved watching water coming from any source. Watching it hit the water in the toilet was even more exciting.

Suddenly, we had a breakthrough, and I wished I’d known that trick before spending endless days and weeks sitting beside the little frog potty that a typical child would have learned on.

After Christopher got out of the tub that day, I brought him back into his room and showed him the pile of dirty rags, clothes, and ruined shoes.

I talked to him as if he could understand every word.

“Christopher, we never do this. That’s very dirty. It can make people sick.”

On and on I went.

I didn’t know if a hundred percent of my words were being understood, or three percent, or zero, but I kept talking. I showed him and let him smell the mess. I explained until I saw something registering in his big brown eyes.

“Oh, you don’t want to do that? Oh, you don’t want to do that?” he repeated in a high-pitched voice, nervously shaking his hands like wings.

Walking the fine line between disturbing him enough not to repeat the behavior and pushing him into a meltdown was always a balancing act.

“That’s right,” I said. “We’re not going to do that anymore.”

And amazingly, we didn’t.

That problem finally disappeared.

Now, the getting-naked issue was another story. At my daughter Helen’s sixteenth birthday party, she had several friends over to celebrate. The house was full of girlish laughter and chatter. Candles had been blown out, presents opened, and Helen was enjoying her special day.

Meanwhile, I had been working diligently on privacy lessons.

“We get dressed in private,” I explained again and again. “No one should see you getting undressed except a doctor or if Mommy is helping you.”

We practiced shutting the door and putting clothes on privately.

Then suddenly, in the midst of the party, Helen squealed.

“Mom!”

I turned around to see a very naked Christopher standing right in the middle of the room full of teenage girls.

“Christopher! What’s the problem?” I asked, rushing over to usher him out of the room.

“Nicolas invaded my privacy,” he announced indignantly, referring to his two-year-old brother, and using terms he’d heard me use in my explanations.

“I was getting dressed, and he opened the door.”

Well, at least part of the lesson had worked.

“Okay,” I said, trying not to laugh. “But let’s not come out here.”

I herded him back toward the bedroom while poor Helen turned bright red all the way to the roots of her hair.

“I’m sorry,” I told the girls. “Just think Adam and Eve. He doesn’t understand.”

The toilet training eventually became a success, and sometime later we were taking a family trip through the mountains of Utah.

We packed our lunch into backpacks and headed down a trail toward a beautiful river. After hiking for about half an hour, we found the perfect picnic spot.

The pine trees swayed in the wind. The scent of the forest drifted through the air, and the river rushed over the rocks beside us.

Carri Beth gathered pinecones in her skirt. Blair skipped rocks, and everyone settled in for a wonderful picnic.

Then suddenly Christopher began to dance.

“Do you need to go potty? Do you need to go potty?” he cried.

Which meant, of course, that he needed to go potty.

What followed was a complete disaster, or so I thought.

I took Christopher off to a private spot and carefully explained that there weren’t any potties in the wilderness, but that we could make do.

The moment I reached for the buckle on his bib overalls, however, he looked at me as though I had violated one of the Ten Commandments.

He dashed around the other side of the tree with a scream. I followed, but he darted around the opposite side, smearing sap on his clothes in the process. The cries escalated into shrieks. Soon we were headed straight into a full-blown meltdown.

Dan came over.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“I don’t think I’m going to get him to do this.”

“Well, what do we do?”

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to take him all the way back.”

“Oh boy,” Dan said. “That’s a long walk.”

As the meltdown intensified, Dan scooped him up and began jogging back down the trail toward the trailhead where there was a porta-potty.

“He acted like you were murdering him,” Blair observed.

“He doesn’t understand the difference between a small deviation from normal and a terrible crime,” I said.

We laid out the turkey sandwiches, opened the chips, and sat down beside the beautiful mountain river, but our hearts were heavy.

“When’s Daddy getting back?” Zach asked.

“Hopefully soon,” I said.

We were packing up lunch with Christopher’s plate still sitting untouched on the picnic table when we finally saw them.

Dan walked up with a grin on his face. Then he sat down and patted the seat beside him. Christopher climbed onto the bench, picked up his sandwich, and took a huge bite.

Now that was a victory all by itself.

There had been a time when even eating away from home could cause a meltdown. New places, new routines, unfamiliar surroundings—any one of them could derail an entire day. Yet here he was, calmly eating lunch beside a mountain river as if nothing unusual had happened.

Then he looked around at all of us.

“Christopher was a big boy,” he announced proudly.

We smiled.

“He went potty.”

The family erupted into cheers. To anyone else, it might have sounded ridiculous. A family celebrating a trip to the bathroom, but to us it felt like standing on the summit of a mountain.

We knew how many tears stood behind those words. How many hours spent sitting beside little plastic potties. How many ruined pairs of shoes and loads of laundry. How many public embarrassments. How many moments of wondering whether he understood anything we were trying to teach him, and somehow, little by little, the lessons were taking root.

Raising Christopher taught our family to celebrate things we might never have noticed otherwise. A successful trip to the potty. Keeping clothes on all day. Respecting privacy. Eating a meal away from home.

To most people these would seem ordinary. To us they were hard-won triumphs.

There were many times when I wondered whether my words were reaching him at all. I wondered whether the constant explanations, the patient repetition, and the endless practice were accomplishing anything, but over and over again, Christopher surprised me.

Sometimes the victories came months after I expected them or arrived in forms I never anticipated. Sometimes what looked like a defeat in one area turned out to be a step forward in another.

That day in the Utah mountains seemed at first like another failure. We had interrupted the hike, disrupted the picnic, and sent poor Dan jogging down the trail with a screaming child in his arms. Yet by the end of the day, all any of us remembered was Christopher’s proud announcement.

“He went potty.”

We often measure progress by the battles we lose. God measures it by the ground we gain, and most of the ground is gained one small victory at a time.

Those small victories accumulated over months and years until one day we realized we have been utterly transformed into something much better than before.

The victories have become a life.

“Mom, have you seen the bathroom?” fourteen-year-old Helen said in a pleading voice.

I glanced up from grading school papers. “No. Why?” I asked.

She pushed a sandy wisp of hair behind her ear and let out a long-suffering sigh. “You really have to see it to understand. I just finished cleaning it fifteen minutes ago.”

I set aside my paperwork and followed her down the hallway.

There on the bathroom floor sat five-year-old Christopher. He had brought multiple bowls from the kitchen, plus Tupperware containers, shampoo bottles, hairspray lids, cups, pitchers—every kind of vessel he could think of. Fully absorbed, he never even noticed Helen and me standing in the doorway as he poured water from cup to bowl, bowl to pitcher, pitcher to bottle. Back and forth the water moved.

There was water all over the floor.

He was soaked from head to toe, and soap suds floated through puddles carrying the mingled scents of shampoo and bubble bath.

“Oh my,” I said once again.

This was becoming a daily occurrence. I had lost count of how many school papers, drawings, and books had been baptized in Christopher’s rituals.

“I just cleaned the whole bathroom and mopped the floor, and now this,” Helen said, staring at the disaster with pained hazel eyes.

It wasn’t just the water, either. His muddy sandals had tracked brown footprints everywhere because every time he went outside, the hose came on too. Water had become a constant battle.

“Help Mommy pour them all into here,” I said, pulling a pitcher into the mix.

Together we emptied each vessel, stacked them in the sink, and dropped towels across the floor to soak up the mess.

We were in the thick of it then.

Though Christopher had a few words and some sign language, the meltdowns were still overwhelming and mysterious. A few days earlier I had been on the phone when I heard screams erupt from the kitchen.

I rushed in to find Christopher face down on the floor, his fingers jammed into his ears as he beat his head against the tile.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

The children stood huddled around silently, and Annie, our friend who was helping us, looked helpless. “I don’t know,” she said. “He seemed like he wanted a piece of cake, and when I gave it to him, he started screaming.”

I looked at the slice of cake sitting untouched on his plate. It seemed perfectly fine, so I offered it to him again.

Christopher lifted his red, tear-streaked face, glanced at the cake, and began screaming harder.

I carried him to the dining room and sat him on the bench. We tried everything—a different dessert, someone else’s cake, another fork—but nothing helped.

Then seven-year-old Zach spoke quietly from the corner.

“Do you think it’s because it’s lying on its side?”

I stopped and looked around the table.

Every other slice of cake stood upright with the frosting on top. Christopher’s had tipped onto its side.

I gently turned the cake upright.

Christopher immediately picked up his fork and began to eat.

We all stared at each other in astonishment.

There seemed to be no gauge for what would become a crisis and what would not.

I was beginning to learn the warning signs of an incoming meltdown, but if I missed the clues, things escalated quickly.

One phrase had become especially familiar.

“Do you hear that tractor?”

Over and over he would repeat it.

“Do you hear that tractor? Do you hear that tractor?”

There was never actually a tractor.

But Christopher was terrified of tractors, and I slowly realized the phrase really meant: I’m afraid.

So whenever he started saying it, I tried desperately to redirect him before panic overtook him completely.

Standing there in the flooded bathroom that afternoon, watching him move water endlessly from one vessel to another, an idea suddenly came to me.

If water soothed him so deeply, perhaps I could use it to help him.

It didn’t take long to test the theory.

A few evenings later I was cooking dinner when I heard it from the other room.

“Do you hear that tractor?”

Then again, half an octave higher.

“Do you hear that tractor?”

I shut off the burner and hurried toward him.

“Come with Mommy,” I said, grabbing his hand.

I pulled him into the kitchen and handed him a cup.

“Let’s fill the cups with water for dinner.”

Together we hurried to the refrigerator dispenser and filled the cup. Then we rushed it to the table and placed it beside Daddy’s plate.

“Now a green cup for Kippy.”

We grabbed another cup.

“Now red for Zach.”

Back and forth we ran, filling cups for every place at the table.

Christopher became increasingly focused, moving faster and faster with purpose and excitement.

But the moment we stopped, the anxious refrain returned.

“Do you hear that tractor?”

I paused, thinking hard.

Then suddenly inspiration struck again.

I hurried out onto the porch and grabbed the dog bowl.

“Give the dog water,” I said, placing it in his hands.

We ran to the spigot, and Christopher shoved the bowl beneath the stream of water.

We carried it carefully back to the porch.

“Do you hear that tractor?” he said again, but quieter this time.

A warm wind stirred across the yard, leaves skittering through the grass.

I grabbed his hand again.

“Come on.”

We hurried to the chicken coop.

The black rubber trough inside was running low. Christopher peered through the wire fencing while I handed him the hose.

“Put it in the bucket,” I instructed.

He fed the hose through the fence while I turned on the spigot.

The hose jerked ans leaped up like a snake, spraying water everywhere. Christopher shrieked with laughter as the trough slowly filled and overflowed.

The chickens came running and clucking noisily toward the water like prancing ladies.

Christopher laughed again and imitated them.

When I finally shut the water off, he stayed standing there, mesmerized by the chickens.

And for the first time all evening, I no longer heard:

“Do you hear that tractor?”

I had discovered something. The next day we did it again.

Some days became fill the cups, water the plants, water the chickens, water the ducks, water the dogs, water the garden days.

Other days it was simply filling cups at the table. But slowly, little by little, we were getting somewhere.

Then one evening, as I coded and the peppery smell of enchilada sauce filled the kitchen, Helen washed dishes beside me. I heard the familiar words drifting from the next room.

“Do you hear that tractor? Do you hear that tractor?”

“There’s no tractor,” ten-year-old Andrew answered patiently.

I sighed inwardly. Dinner was running behind, and I knew watering everything might take the next hour.

I reached to turn off the burner. But before I could move, Christopher walked into the kitchen.

Watching him, I held my breath. He went to the dish rack, picked up a cup, and filled it carefully with water. Then another, and another. One by one he carried them to the table, setting them beside each person’s plate.

I felt a sudden sting behind my eyes. He was serving the family, and all because of water.

Water soothed him, and somehow, by learning the language of what calmed him instead of fighting against it, we had found a way to help him belong.

Nine-year-old Christopher frantically tugged at my skirt, clutching my hand, he shouted for the entire Walmart store to hear,
“Did I lie? Did I lie? Mommy, did I lie? I didn’t lie, Mommy, did I? Are you mad, Mommy?”

“You did not lie,” I said, leaning close to his ear and whispering. “I’m not mad, but we’ll talk about it later, in the car.”

“Why later? Why later? Did I lie? Was I bad?”

“You did not lie. We’ll talk about it in the car.”

“Are we going to the car? Will we talk about it in the car?”

His voice was high-pitched, and everyone was watching. How had I gotten myself in this predicament?

Well, it had all started from good intentions, but good intentions, I’d discover, can take some twists and turns, especially when they are connected to an autistic child.

In my journey with my son Christopher, I have read scores of books, watched documentaries, consulted with speech therapists and neuroscientists, and my mother’s heart was determined to give him the best chance—a chance to belong, a chance to succeed, and most of all, to communicate, to love, and to be loved.

At that time, there was a lot of controversy around whether an autistic person could empathize or even feel emotions, feel love, but I knew my son could. I had seen the tears roll down his cheeks while listening to a beautiful song. But there were other times when it didn’t seem like he could. He laughed at the wrong moments. When his little brother got a splinter in his finger and was screaming, he laughed. But in still other situations, he’d nearly gotten himself killed trying to save a toddler from running into the road.

The emotions were there. The heart was certainly there. It was all just a little scrambled together and chaotic.

So I ordered a stack of emotion cards, and each day we sat on the bed in my room and looked at them.

“This boy is bored,” I said, holding up a picture of a boy sprawled on the couch, arm over his head, eyes drooping. “This little girl is afraid”—high pigtails, wide eyes, tightened cheeks.

We’d look at a card, and then Christopher stood at the mirror and make the same face. I’d heard that when you actually make a face, you can feel that emotion. If you smile, you’ll be happier. As a matter of fact, I’d read a study that demonstrated how movie stars claimed that their lives deteriorated and their relationships became rocky when they played the role of an angry or miserable character—and improved when they played the role of a joyful one.

I believed that making these gestures and expressions would help Christopher to empathize, so it became a daily routine.

We took turns. I’d make the face. “Now what do you say to me when I’m making this face?”

“Are you okay?” he would imitate; his eyebrows high as he watched to see if he got it right.

Then later, around the dinner table… Steam rose from the mashed potatoes, as we all ate, and suddenly Christopher leapt up and rushed into the kitchen.

“Oh, he’s so sad,” we heard him say in his own voice—and then, in my voice, “Are you okay, Christopher?”

We knew what he was doing. He was standing in front of the stainless steel Berkey water filter, looking at his reflection and practicing the emotions.

Was it working? I wasn’t really sure, but I felt we were making progress. He was tuning in.

When I scolded our toddler, Nicolas during family devotion time and his lip popped out and he began to cry, Christopher reached over and grabbed my arm.

“Is he okay?” he said, and there was genuine concern on his face. I was excited.

The next step was dealing with moral issues.

Christopher was a little thief when it came to treats. He loved sweets. Our canister of chocolate chips was regularly mysteriously empty, and I had run out of ideas for how to hide it. I tucked it behind a jar of oats. I even put it in the pan cupboard, but somehow he always found the chocolate chips, and would even scoop sugar straight from the bin.

The crazy thing was, none of us ever saw him doing it. If we were in the room, he was good—but if we were not, he didn’t seem to be stricken by his conscience at all.

So that became my next project. I wanted him to have a sense in his heart of right and wrong.

I began to read a book by Molly Bang on design—how abstract art was meant to create feelings and emotions. Certain colors came together to give peace, joy, and harmony—colors like blue, yellow and gold. Horizontal lines, soft rounded edges—these brought peace. But diagonals, black, purple, red—created tension and chaos. Heart rates went up. Breathing quickened. I had an idea.

I began to put together a scrapbook with Christopher.

“What does it mean to tell a lie?” I asked him. “What is a lie?”

“It’s a snake,” he said. My brain did a bounce. A snake, I thought. Something in it actually rang true in my heart.

“Well, maybe you’re right,” I said, thinking—the snake did have a forked tongue. And the first lie was told by a snake. God had ulterior motives, and we could be as gods. So we built a picture.

The smell of Elmer’s glue wafted up as Christopher and I cut out shapes—black, red, purple. The colors didn’t go together. The shapes were tense. A triangular snake head peeking out behind a falling-down forest. A forked tongue. Black trees. Purple background. A red snake. It gave me the creeps.

“This is a lie,” I said.

Then I gave him examples. “If you eat sugar and Mommy comes and asks you, ‘Did you eat sugar?’ and you say, ‘No,’ that’s a lie.”

“Now here’s the truth,” I said.

We made another picture. A beautiful cream-colored pathway under a golden sun in a blue sky. Two figures walking side by side.

“When you tell the truth, you’re in the light. The sun is shining. Jesus is with you.”

We memorized scriptures to go with each trait—honesty, lying, obedience, disobedience.

I asked him, “What does it mean to disobey?” He instantly quoted a scripture, and my mouth dropped open.

“Whoever hears these words of mine and obeys them is like a wise man that builds his house on the rock…” he said.

So we cut out a picture of a house on a rock. The colors were peaceful. Then we cut out another picture of a house on sand, and a tornado was tearing it up. The colors were chaotic and the shapes disorganized. But Christopher was getting it!

The amazing thing was, he could now look at people’s faces and tell me, “He’s telling a lie”—even about his own sibling, and he was right. We had a truth detector right in our own home.

I could feel hope rising like our river after a storm. Christopher was going to be a man of character someday. And Christopher always told the truth. He could also quote scriptures to stand behind those truths.

But it had some drawbacks.

It happened on a Monday. Normally the kids visited Grandma on Mondays, and I took that opportunity to run errands and clean house. But on this particular Monday, Grandma wasn’t available, so I decided to take Christopher with me to the store. After all, it was good for him to get exposure to stores periodically. We already had his service dog, so we were a bit of a spectacle anyway, but this would be good for the dog, too. Right…?

All seemed to be going well. People admired his dog. He was behaving nicely—until we came to the checkout line.

In front of us was a young man in a wheelchair. I wasn’t overly concerned. Christopher had a beautiful sympathy toward people with handicaps. But this young man—I don’t know why he was in a wheelchair, but his body was at least three times as wide as the wheelchair, spilling out over the tires and overlapping the armrests. He had definitely outgrown the wheelchair a long time prior.

Christopher suddenly said at the top of his lungs, “That is a very fat man!”

“Christopher,” I exclaimed in a loud whisper, “shh!”

“Why are you shushing me?” he said. “Did I lie?”

I didn’t want to say, “No, you didn’t lie,” in front of the man, so I just said, “Don’t say that.”

“Shouldn’t I speak the truth? Don’t I tell the truth?” he shouted back.

I whispered in his ear, “We’ll talk about it later.”

“Why do we talk about it later?”

And on and on he questioned me, becoming more and more frantic until he was leaping up and down beside his dog. The dog circled him, whining, then pushed his head against him to try to calm him down.

I hastily heaped items onto the conveyor belt and then shoved them into bags behind the cashier.

For once, I was very glad to have the dog and hoped everyone would consider his handicap enormously debilitating.

At last, we managed to get out the door. A mist was falling. We rushed to the car—the whole way, Christopher tugged at my arm.

“Did I lie? Did I lie, Mommy?”

At last, we settled into the car. I buckled him in, climbed into the front seat, and leaned my forehead against the steering wheel.

“Oh, my Lord,” I breathed.

Christopher bounced franticly in his seat, his voice high-pitched. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong? Did I lie?”

“You did not lie,” I said.

“I told the truth. I was a good boy.”

Now how do I explain that?

And then my shoulders began to shake.

I laughed and laughed until the tears rolled down my cheeks. Before long, Christopher was watching me in the rearview mirror—laughing along with me. So what kind of page do I make for this—chaotic colors or peaceful colors?

A trip to New York in the fall, during the height of color, was meant to be a family vacation, woven together with visits to relatives and friends along the way. By then, I knew that five-year-old Christopher (Kippy) had autism. What I didn’t yet understand was how deeply it would touch every part of what we did.

He had learned a phrase that clearly held some sort of meaning for him, though we didn’t yet know how much, because it was classic echolalia.

“What are we going to do?” he repeated in a lilting voice.

He sat behind me strapped in his booster seat, in the RV we’d borrowed for the trip. The hum of the engine steady beneath us, his small sneakers tapping lightly against the seat as he repeated it again and again.

“What are we going to do? What are we going to do? What are we going to do?”

“We’re going on a trip to see Grammy,” I answered.

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to New York. We’re going to see Grammy.”

“What are we going to do?”

With each repetition, his voice grew louder and more urgent, threaded now with something rising toward panic.

“Why does he keep saying that?” Zack asked, his forehead resting against the cool glass as the Tennessee hills rolled by in long, green waves.

“What are we going to do?” came again from Kippy’s seat, like a needle stuck in a groove.

Twelve-year-old Blair decided the solution was to tell him everything.

“We’re going down this road. The wheels of the car are turning. We’ll stop at a light. Then we’ll go into a restaurant…”

But interestingly, Christopher seemed to listen; his gaze was fixed somewhere above Blair’s dark feathery bangs, his head tilted, brow furrowed.

“He almost seems to understand,” I said to Dan.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if he does,” Dan replied. “Maybe we should tell him more.” And so we began to try to explain, narrating everything, every transition, each step.

“We’re going to stop at the hotel. Daddy will go in first. Then we’ll carry the suitcases. Then we’ll go into the room…” And almost imperceptibly, things began to smooth, but the trip wasn’t over.

I felt distressed by his manners. I didn’t know how people would interpret what they saw. We avoided restaurants, choosing instead to make sandwiches and eat in parks, the fall grass fading from summer green, but still warm from the sun. But actually, the picnics were something of a gift. Still, meals were difficult. The moment I set a dish in front of Kippy, down went his head, eating straight from the plate. At best, he would grab with his hands and shove the food into his mouth, mustard painting his palms and arms. I’d sit beside him, guiding his hands, helping him hold a spoon, one bite at a time. But the moment I turned away, the old pattern returned. No explanations or demonstrations seemed to reach him.

When we at last arrived in upstate New York, it was apple season. The air itself was scented, cool and damp, with the faint sweetness of fallen fruit. Orange maple leaves skittered across the gravel driveway, fluttering along the ground as we climbed out of the motorhome.

Christopher ran wildly around the vehicle, his footsteps crunching over leaves and small stones. He bowed and bent in a crazy dance all his own, muttering grunts to himself.

“What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” he again chanted.

We had borrowed the motorhome intentionally, so Dan and I would stay there with Christopher and the baby, while the other children slept in Grammy’s house. I knew meltdowns would be forthcoming, and the motorhome felt like a small, contained refuge.

It worked out well, and we were able, for the most part, to shelter his struggles from the relatives. We spoke plainly about his autism and the road we were on. Everyone responded with support and kindness.

Our next stop was Connecticut. A small group of families had gathered, interested in community life. They had invited us to come and share, drawn by what we had experienced growing up in community at Homestead Heritage. I was both excited… and uneasy.

By then, I had been teaching child-training classes for a few years. If I am honest, perhaps I’d taken some pride in the success we had seen with our first four children. But then came Christopher. We didn’t introduce ourselves by explaining his autism; that seemed awkward. We simply let thing unfold.

The group had prepared an evening for us, supper in the backyard, a fire crackling low, with thin ribbons of smoke rising. The air had an early-autumn bite that stiffened my fingers and numbed my ears. There was to be singing and worship, so Dan brought his guitar. Helen was to play the piano. At first, all went well with lots of introductions and small talk.

Christopher tugged at my skirt, the fabric twisting in his grip.

“What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” I bent low and whispered each step ahead to him.

The children were seated at a long picnic table, and the adults sat at a nearby separate table. I probably should have had Christopher sit with me, but I asked Helen, at fourteen, to stay close to him.

Hot dogs were served, on glass plates for the adults, paper plates for the children. Someone placed a glass plate in front of Christopher… he flapped his hand in excitement. He was hungry, since dinner had been so delayed. But, the young woman, realizing her mistake, took the glass plate away to replace it with paper.

I saw it happen out of the corner of my eye, and my heart dropped. He was already tired, already hungry. This wasn’t going to go well. He wouldn’t understand. Suddenly, he pitched backwards, rolled off the bench and onto the ground, screaming, writhing in the damp leaves and black soil, now clinging to his clothes and hands. The whole gathering fell silent, as I abruptly left my conversation and rushed to him.

“Kippy, they’re bringing you another plate,” I whispered close to his ear. “They’re bringing you another plate.”

But the screams only grew louder, echoing against the stillness of the yard. He clamped his hands over his ears.

“What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” he cried, until his hoarse words dissolved into breathless sobbing.

I couldn’t calm him, so handing the baby to Helen, I tried to de-escalate things, only to trigger a meltdown from another direction…my baby’s feeding was interrupted when I suddenly pulled him from under the nursing cape.

Christoper was large for five years old, but lifted him anyway—his body rigid, hot with distress, covered in dirt, now soaked in urine—and carried him to the motorhome. The cool night air echoed with his screams. There, I spent the rest of the evening trying to soothe him.

Helen, always conscientious, came quietly, opening and closing the door in intervals, letting in the distant murmur of voices, to ask if we needed food or for her to take over. I fed Christopher a hot dog, one bite at a time, between his shuddering sobs.

Eventually, he fell asleep in my arms, his breathing finally softening, his weight heavy and exhausted against me.

Finally, I laid him down on the couch and sat there a moment in the quiet. By now, the evening was nearly over, and I didn’t know what to say, what to do. I didn’t know how to explain. So I didn’t. Finally, trading places with Helen, I simply stepped back outside for the last moments of fellowship. And tried to act as if it hadn’t happened.

That night, lying beside Dan in the motorhome, the narrow space dark and still, I cried.

“We’ve been a disgrace,” I said. “Everything we stand for… people are going to misunderstand. Maybe we shouldn’t have come. Maybe someone else should have…”

Dan reached over and patted my hand.

“I don’t think they feel that way,” he said gently. “I think it’s obvious he has needs.”

“But what do I do?” I said. “What are we going to do?” Even as I said it, I heard the echo.

What are we going to do?

“God is going to help us,” Dan said. “Step by step. The victories will mean more because of the battles. We have to trust that people will understand what we can’t explain.”

Then he added,

“And you’re going to have to let go of that image… of being the perfect mother.”

I knew he was right, but the path forward felt hidden behind a fog of uncertainty. If only I could have seen a few years ahead. If I could have known that these very people would one day be woven into our lives. And it wouldn’t be our perfection that spoke, but our weakness.

It could never be us speaking only transmitting His voice through the victories God gave, His strength made perfect in our weakness.

Sitting at my desk by the window, I worked my way through a stack of school papers, red pen in hand. The low hum of the window unit filled the room, steady and almost mesmerizing, and the cool air lifted the loose strands of hair from my face. Then it clicked off, and in the quiet, I heard him. His pounding feet so rhythmic and familiar.

I lifted my eyes just above the edge of the unit and saw him there in the yard—my now, nine-year-old son, Kippy. His feathery dark hair lifted slightly in the breeze as he paced and danced his well-worn path. Three long strides forward, then take a bow, his body folding deeply, hands flapping like butterflies behind him. Then he’d turn, three strides back. Again. And again. And again.

There was a cadence to it, a pattern I knew so well that I could hear it even in my sleep.

The crunch of tires alerted me to a car passing slowly along the road beyond the cedar rail fence that edged our yard. It paused, and the window rolled down.

“Hi, Kippy!” Bonnie called, leaning out with a cheerful wave. Her eyes crinkled in a smile behind thick glasses. I held still at my desk, waiting. There was always that pause, but four years ago, there would have been nothing, no words or response.

But we had been working toward this, patiently and faithfully, one small step at a time.

It had started under our fig tree. That tree stood at the corner of our yard, right where the dusty river road met Dry Creek Road before bending up the hill. Its wide, glove-shaped leaves cast a thick shade, and Kippy claimed that place as his post—his safe observatory of the world. From there, he watched life bustle by. Neighbors headed to milk chores, and families walking toward the river for a picnic. He watched the children running, voices bright in the distance. He peered at the milk cows ambling by for milking time. He gazed out on our geese as the strutted among the orchard trees.

But if anyone turned toward him, he would retreat back under the leaves and into the shadows, the low-hanging branches providing a protective screen.

“Hi, Kippy!” they called as they passed, but he never answered. And still, everyone loved him. Everywhere I went, someone would stop me.

“How’s Kippy doing?”

“How’s he coming along?”

“Is he talking yet?”

He had captured the hearts of the whole community without ever saying a word. We began to work on that road to his heart becoming more than a one way street.

“When someone says hi,” I told him gently, “you say hi back.” So we practiced.

“Hi, Kippy,” I would say, waving.

He would study my hand, puzzled, then echo carefully:

“Hi, Kippy.” It was a beginning.

“I say, ‘Hi, Kippy,’” I tried again. “You say, ‘Hi, Mommy.’”

It took months, but even once he got that, when his dad waved, he then said, “Hi, Mommy.”

When his brother waved, “Hi, Kippy.” All the names floated around, unanchored. Still, we were moving forward. Day after day, we practiced.

In the garden, as I weeded onions, I’d prompt him softly as neighbors passed while he stood under his fig tree,

“Hi, Connie!”

And then urge him, gently, “Say, ‘Hi, Connie.’” His hand would lift. His voice would follow.

“Hi, Connie.”

We practiced with siblings.

“Hi, Kippy,” Zach would say, and together we would answer, “Hi, Zach.”

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the pieces began to come together. Then one day, before Bonnie even saw him, he stepped out from under the fig tree, into the Texas sunshine and called:

“Hi, Bonnie!” And I knew something had clicked.

Now, three years later, I sat at my desk, waiting for his response. Outside, Bonnie’s hand still lingered in the air from the car window. And then—

“Hi, Bonnie.” The words came, clear and right. She smiled, and the window rolled up. Her car moved on. And the rhythm resumed. Three steps forward. Bow. Hands fluttering. Turn. Three steps back.

I smiled, marking the small victory. Then I heard his commentary to himself begin...

“Hi, Kippy.” I frowned slightly and looked toward the road, but no one was there. He was still pacing, still moving, but now speaking quite loudly.

“Hi, Kippy.” He repeated, then a pause.

“Hi.” Then again.

“Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi…” The words tumbled out—one after another, but not the same. Never the same tone or accent. Each “hi” carried a different voice. Low and gravelly. Light and sing-song. Fast. Slow. A trace of a Texas drawl. Then something sharper and northern. A New Jersey accent…

It was as if a hundred people were speaking through him, every greeting he had ever heard, replayed, reshaped, examined. I sat completely still, listening. Leaning over the desk for a closer look, I watched him mimic seemingly every “hi” he’d ever received as he loped back and forth on his worn trail. Minutes passed, and still he went on.

“Hi, Kippy. Hi. Hi, Kippy…”

His eyes lifted at an angle toward the sky, his body moving in rhythm with the words, as though he were sorting them, testing them, turning them over in his mind. And then, at last—it stopped. He stood still, and said, quite clearly:

“Why does everyone say hi, again, and again, and again…?” I leaned forward, hardly breathing.

“She has said hi to me 300 times.” A pause.

“Why can’t they say it once?”

“I already know they say hi. They want to say hi.”

Another pause.

“She said hi to me 300 times!” I pressed my hand over my mouth with laughter. We were odd, that need to greet each other again and again in the same way.

Slipping out of the room, I shook, half with laughter, half astonishment, and called Dan.

“You won’t believe what I just heard,” I said.

“Our son… he doesn’t understand why all of us keep saying hello over and over again.”

But later, as the laughter settled, I considered it all.

Under the fig tree, Kippy had not just learned to speak our language; he’d been studying us, listening and cataloging! He’d been trying to understand why we say what we say, the way we say it, again and again. What was automatic to us was such a mystery to him. What was simple to us was something he had to piece together—voice by voice, moment by moment, and I realized: He was not just learning to enter our world. We were being invited, little by little, into his. It was a wonder and an adventure!

All seven of our kids tumbled out of the Suburban, each carrying a part of the dinner, racing to join their cousins.

It was Sunday dinner at Granddaddy’s house—a cacophony of laughter, games, teasing, and good food. And today was a favorite: Aunt Stella’s red enchiladas. Add Uncle Asi’s charro beans, Aunt Carri’s apple pie, Aunt Hannah’s guacamole, and our Mexican rice, and it was a feast in every sense of the word. The sharp scent of lime and cilantro rose from the kitchen, and the warm, spiced steam of enchiladas filled the house, as the clatter of serving spoons against ceramic dishes made the background music.

The kitchen buzzed with last-minute garnishes and ongoing banter, the playful competition between cooks as each claimed superiority, spoons clinked against pots, and I wiped my hands on a flour-dusted towel.

Hannah finally called everyone to the tables—four of them now to hold the growing crowd. The children clustered in groups, cousins pairing off by age, chattering about chores, pets, and school.

Only five-year-old Christopher lingered outside.

He stood at a distance, head tilted slightly, watching from the corners of his eyes. Every now and then he bounced on his tiptoes, a little prance of contained energy, gravel crunched softly under his shoes. He followed a few yards behind as the family moved inside—then suddenly, something sparked.

His eyes lit up with some idea. His eyebrows shot high. The bounce in his step lifted his soft, dark feathery bangs. Darting into the house, weaving between aunts and uncles, he made his way straight to Granddaddy’s chair.

Up on his tiptoes, he covered his mouth, gave a loud cough, and followed it with a very deliberate and masculine clearing of the throat. Quite a loud noise for his size. We all laughed. We knew this ritual.

Granddaddy—my father—had been battling cancer for some time now, and with it had come a constant cough. Somehow Christopher had noticed it… and though he still couldn’t talk learned to imitate this perfectly. And somewhere in his mind, that cough had become a form of communication. So Dad responded every time.

Christopher would rush in, stand beside Dad’s arm, cover his mouth, cough, clear his throat, then lift his eyebrows and wait. Dad would cough back, his chest tightening with the effort, the soft rasp of it familiar now to all of us. And Christopher would erupt—jumping, laughing, and shrieking with delight. Dad’s beard would tremble with laughter… and maybe something else, too.

We finally gathered at the table. Stories circled seamlessly—toddler antics, school lessons, news from trips. Dad loved it all. Loved hearing what everyone was learning, where everyone had been, what life was unfolding into.

Between stories came the teasing.

“Hey, Hannah,” Asi called out, lifting his chip with exaggerated admiration, “this is the best guacamole I’ve ever had… but don’t tell Hannah I said so.” A ripple of laughter moved around the table.

Hannah didn’t miss a beat. Though she was often the target, she gave as good as she got. More than once, I’d seen her quietly swap bowls of dip with someone else mid-meal, just to watch Asi praise the wrong one with full conviction.

“Oh, I won’t,” she said sweetly, reaching for the bowl. “Wouldn’t want to ruin your reputation.”

Glasses clinked. Someone reached for more beans. Then, the tone shifted. Dad shared the latest prognosis. The table quieted, and forks stilled. The air grew heavy with the kind of understanding that doesn’t have words.

I glanced at Christopher. For all his lack of language, he read a room better than anyone. His eyes moved quickly from face to face. A small crease formed in his brow. He looked up at me and fussed softly.

Then—just as suddenly—his expression cleared. An idea. He leaned around me where he could see Dad, lifted his hand, covered his mouth…and coughed. Dad coughed back.

The spell was broken, and the laughter returned, softer this time, but still real.

Christopher had never said yes or no. Not mommy. Not anything we could reliably understand. He echoed sounds—phrases here and there—but meaning remained just out of reach. So we’d begun learning sign language together.

I didn’t know it myself, not really—just the alphabet. So we sat side by side watching Signing Time, learning as we went. And slowly, we began to get it, and he began to use it. A bobbing fist for yes. Two fingers and a thumb snapping for no.

“Do you want a drink, Christopher?” Up shot his little fist. It bobbled. Yes. Just a beginning, but we were starting to speak!

After dinner, we gathered in the living room. Dad in his green armchair, the lamp casting a warm circle of light over his shoulder. Dan and I on the couch. Aber took the old rocker. Christopher sat on my lap, as always, watching, scanning, reading every face, every tone, every shift in the room.

“And how’s Christopher?” Abraham asked, his black eyebrows lifted above his glasses. Christopher glanced at him quickly, then away—but smiled.

And suddenly, I had a thought.

“Does Uncle Aber wear glasses?” The room went still. Christopher turned and studied him. His small wrist lifted and bobbled…Yes.

And then—soft, uncertain, his voice just above a whisper said, “…yes?”

The room held its breath. No one moved. I leaned forward, hardly daring.

“Does Daddy wear glasses?” He turned to Dan. His fingers snapped together the sign for no.

“No.” His little boy voice was louder and more certain this time.

“Does Grandmama wear glasses?” My own voice wobbled now. His hand rose again.

“Yes,” his voice and the sign simultaneously. His voice was strong and bright. Certain. Tears blurred my vision. Around me, others wiped their eyes. Dad reached for a tissue. It felt right—somehow—that all of us were there. That his first answers… were witnessed by those who loved him, his family. Together.

The night drew to a close. The last dishes were washed and counters cleared. The children ran with abandon, playing freeze tag in the yard under the stars, fireflies blinking in the warm dark, the hum of crickets rising from the grass. I called out the door,

“Kids—come say goodnight to Granddaddy and Grandmama!”

They lined up beside his chair, one by one pressing kisses to his cheek, just above his beard, then moving on to Grandmama. Christopher took his place in line. He didn’t kiss. Didn’t hug.

But when his turn came, he lifted his hand…covered his mouth and gave his cough. Laughter filled the room once more as Dad coughed back, his eyes crinkled in a laugh.

And I thought—who knew that love could have a language without words?

My daughter, Helen’s long, slender fingers danced gracefully over the piano keys. She had played her first melody before she could even speak clearly. Then when she was five, her uncle began teaching her. Even then, we knew she had a gift. Now, at fifteen, she could effortlessly play anything she heard, and whenever she sat down at our upright, the house filled with music so beautiful it felt like a holy interruption to ordinary days.

Nicolas, not yet two, loved to sit in her lap and pretend he was playing, too. He placed his fingers lightly over hers and rocked to the rhythm.

But of all of our kids, six-year-old Kippy (Christopher) loved music the most. He always pulled up a chair beside the upright, opened the back panel, and peered deep into the piano’s mysterious cavern, where the hammers danced against the strings. He’d press his cheek to the wood, listening, feeling, singing—completely at peace.

But not today.

It was April 17, 2013. And not even music could calm him. We’d known Christopher was severely autistic now for three years, and the battles were our daily reality.

He slipped through the living room door just as it swung shut, then flung himself to the floor, howling and thrashing. He screamed and rolled and cried, stuffing himself into pillow shams, hiding under the bed, rocking back and forth with his hands clamped over his ears.

We gathered in the living room, trying to have family devotion time, but Christopher’s cries rose above it all.

Blair turned to me, his voice taut. “Reading and singing—none of it is working. I can’t even think above the screaming.”

“Why does he do this?” he asked again, helplessly.

“We don’t know,” Dan said quietly. “But God knows. Just because we don’t understand what he’s feeling doesn’t mean that there’s no reason for it.”

Christopher couldn’t tell us what was wrong. I don’t know if he even knew himself. Dan took a breath, then began to tell a story.

“Last night I was reading a book, Midnight in Bhopal. It told a story about a Scottish nun named Sister Felicity who operated a home for handicapped children in India in 1984. One of the little girls she cared for had lived practically her entire life in a coma-like state. Yet she seemed unusually sensitive to impending change. In fact, she had only awakened during the night a couple times in her whole life. Both times, it coincided with the imminent arrival of a violent monsoon.”

He paused.

“But on this particular night, the weather in Bhopal was perfectly clear. After putting the little girl to bed, Sister Felicity went over to a wedding in a nearby village. She was startled when, in the middle of the celebration, one of her assistants came running over to get her. ‘You must come at once. Your little girl is in the hospital!’”

Dan’s voice dropped.

“The girl had woken up, shouting and calling for Sister Felicity. She was inconsolable. And she ultimately broke free from three people trying to restrain her and leapt from a second-story window. Upon hearing the news, Sister Felicity ran all the way to the hospital to be with the girl.”

Dan’s gaze settled on Christopher, still curled up in the corner.

“Little did she suspect that this apparent tragedy would save both of their lives. Less than an hour later, just after midnight, an accident at a nearby industrial chemical plant caused an explosion that released huge quantities of deadly, toxic gas into the night air. As the wind pushed the fatal cloud across the city, over 16,000 people died, and half a million were permanently injured. It was the deadliest industrial accident in history. The cloud of death rolled through the house where the little girl had been sleeping, as well as the nearby village hosting the wedding celebration. But the hospital was spared.”

He let the silence linger.

“Had that girl not woken up and had a fit,” he said softly, “that nun would’ve died, too.”

Then, more quietly, “Sometimes I think those with disabilities are less distracted by the noise of life. They’re tuned to a different frequency. Maybe that’s what’s happening with Christopher. Maybe today is just hard. Or maybe he’s feeling something we’re missing. Let’s pray together.”

He bowed his head. “Lord Jesus, please bring peace into Christopher’s life. And help us tune in, not just to his needs, but to the world around us, so we might hear Your voice. If this is a signal of unseen trouble, send protection and help to whoever is in need of it today.”

I tried again to begin school after that, but it was no use. Christopher’s cries echoed through every room, shaking every plan loose. At last, I gave each child an assignment—math, penmanship, reading—and carried Christopher outside.

We settled on the front steps. Sometimes the open sky gave him space to breathe. Sometimes running helped.

He ran the length of the yard, back and forth, a blur of motion. But he kept returning to me, panicked.

“I hear a tractor! Do you hear a tractor?” he screamed. “I hear a tractor!”

Tractors terrified him. They had long ago attached themselves to the root of his fear. Even when there was no growl of a tractor engine, he would cry, “Do you hear a tractor?”

Stroking my hand down his arm, I tried to soothe him. But nothing calmed his frantic terror.

And then the ground shook beneath us.

A low, thunderous boom belched from the earth, and the windows of the house rattled behind me.

What in the world?!

Leaping to my feet, I looked all around me.

Christopher froze in place, then clamped his hands over his ears. Then, slowly, he let his fingers slip away and stared sideways up at the sky.

“Do you hear a tractor?” he whispered.

With my heart thundering, I grabbed his hand and rushed inside. I picked up the phone and dialed Dan.

“Did you hear that?” I asked. “What was that sound?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

I called my sister-in-law. I called my brothers. No one knew. Finally, I reached Jake Tindell, our neighbor up the road.

“Yes,” he said. “A chemical fertilizer plant just exploded. Fifteen miles north of here. In West, Texas. At least fifteen people were killed and over a hundred injured. It’s still burning.”

I could hardly take it in.

But Christopher was calm now. He stood still. Quiet.

He turned back toward the piano.

Helen sat down, without a word, and began to play “Jesus Loves Me.”

Christopher pressed his cheek to the side of the upright, eyes fixed on the hidden world inside. The hammers struck the strings. The melody rose like a prayer.

And he sang:

Jesus loves me; this I know, for the Bible tells me so.

Little ones to Him belong; they are weak, but He is strong.

Yes, Jesus loves me . . . .̰

The rush of the river tumbled over pink rocks, leaving them glistening in the sun. Flecks of gold and silver sparkled around aqua waters laced with white foam as the current galloped up onto the rocks and frothed back down again. Overhead, pine trees loomed, stretching toward an endless blue sky, and the air was sharp with their evergreen scent.

Dan and I crowded at the rail fence beside the river in Glacier National Park with our six children—Helen, eleven; the four boys scattered in between; and three-week-old Carri Beth strapped against my chest in a baby wrap. Destiny, a teenage friend we’d mentored and now our nanny, stood with us. This would be our last trip together before her upcoming wedding.

Dan raised his voice above the roar of the water and the chatter of the children. Excitement bubbled almost as lively as the river beside us.

“Okay—now a few instructions,” he said, waiting until he had their attention. “Everyone sticks with Mom and Dad, and everyone has a buddy.”

We buddied four-year-old Zach with Helen, Andrew and Blair together, Kip with Daddy, and the baby with Mommy.

“Everyone listening?” Dad asked.

“Yes,” they chorused.

“More people die from drowning in these rivers than anything else in the park,” he continued. “Not bears. Not mountain lions. But by falling into these cold, rushing rivers. So stay back from the water. If you step onto the slippery rocks, you’re going to fall in.” They solemnly nodded.

“Everyone stays with their buddy,” he went on, “and no one gets ahead or behind Mom and Dad. And”—he added, holding up his water bottle—“no littering. If you bring it in, you bring it out. Water bottles, wrappers—everything stays with you.”

They nodded again.

“Alright. Let’s go.” And we were off on the journey.

But this journey had actually begun two weeks earlier:

Carri Beth’s birth was the first my mother hadn’t attended. She and my dad were away, spending time in ministry with our church’s Idaho branch. Soon after the birth, sickness began circulating through our Texas community. One day my mom called and asked, “Is there any chance Dan can get away from work long enough for y’all to come up and visit Dad and me here in Idaho? We’d love to meet our new granddaughter…”

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, but we did our best to make it work. With some finagling and rearranging, we were in the car the next day with Carri Beth, just nine days old, and a vanload of excited children.

Christopher, now two and a half, still didn’t seem to notice that his new baby sister even existed. He hadn’t begun to talk yet and wandered in his own little world, eyes distant and brow puckered. The trip unsettled him more than usual. His anxiety followed us mile after mile.

The older kids, on the other hand, were thrilled at the novelty of stopping at a hotel. Priceline was new to us then—you could bid and end up with an incredible place for almost nothing. That night we landed a Courtyard Marriott, far nicer than anywhere we had ever stayed before.

Dan went inside to check in and then came back out, opening the van door.

“Now, kids,” he said, “this is a much nicer hotel than we’re used to. The lobby is fancy, and we all have to walk through it. I want everyone to walk quietly and calmly and not make a disturbance.”

Oh boy, I groaned inwardly. Six grubby kids who’d been in the car all day, full of snacks, walking through a fancy lobby—we were going to make a disturbance no matter what. But we tried.

Grabbing their small rolling suitcases, the lighted wheels blinking as they spun, we all lined up. The tall glass doors opened into a high-ceilinged lobby with marble floors. Glass chandeliers hung above us, and an entire tree grew up through the center of the space.

Click, clack, click, clack, our shoes echoed.

Clackety-clickety, clackety-clickety—the suitcase wheels sang. Naturally, Carri Beth chose that moment to wake up and scream inside the wrap.

I brought up the rear while Dan led the charge. Somewhere in the middle, Andrew suddenly hollered across the echoing lobby, “Hey, Mom! I just lost my soul!” My mind stumbled. He lost his soul?

Then I saw it; the sole of his cowboy boot skittering across the floor. “Oh,” I sighed. “That kind of soul.” At least we were still whole.

“Shhh!” Dan and I both raised fingers to our lips as Blair tore across the gleaming floor to retrieve it.

With souls still intact, we finally arrived in Idaho and introduced our brand-new baby to my parents. My dad took Carri Beth in his arms, standing in the sunshine with pine-covered mountains behind him, and prayed a blessing over her life.

Christopher wrapped himself tightly in my skirt, hiding.

We spent a wonderful week of games, campfires, hot dogs, sticky marshmallows. As we packed to head back to Texas, Dad asked, “Have you all been to Glacier National Park? If you have time, you really ought to go. It’s beautiful.”

He hadn’t been yet himself, but he’d researched it, hoping someday we could all go together. So we decided to take the plunge and detour through Montana.

That was how we found ourselves standing at the river’s edge.

We hiked trail after trail. On one steep mountain path, I again took the rear, Carri Beth strapped to my chest. Person after person stopped when they saw her.

“How new is that baby?” a gray-haired woman asked.

“Almost three weeks,” I said.

“And you’re climbing a mountain! Hurrah for Mommy!” she cheered, passing the word along until several more echoed her praise.

It was encouraging, but I was exhausted.

We decided to take one last trail, leading down to a fifty-foot waterfall. We climbed down beneath the pines until we reached the bottom. Dan took the older kids up onto a ledge near the top while I stayed below with the little ones, absorbing the serenity as aqua water swirled in the pool. At last, it was time to head back.

The climb was steep. Dan carried Christopher on his back, and I carried Carri Beth on my front. Trudging beside us, Destiny hung onto four-year-old Zach’s hand. The three oldest—Helen, Blair, and Andrew, moved faster and faster ahead, following the riverside trail.

As they disappeared around a bend, I said, “Dan, I’m not comfortable with how far ahead they’re getting. Maybe Destiny could—”

A blood-curdling scream split the air.

“Helen’s voice,” I knew instantly. “Andrew!” The echo of her scream slapped back and forth multiple times between the craggy peaks.

Then Blair’s voice joined the echo. “Andrew!” Again, his scream went on and on, jumping from ridge to ridge.

My heart slammed so hard I thought my chest would split open. I knew exactly what had happened. Andrew was in the river…

Dan dropped Christopher’s pack and ran. Destiny ran. Zach tried to run, but I caught him.

Dan slung the backpack off and laid it beside the trail. Christopher began screaming in terror. I grabbed the pack upright while still carrying Carri Beth, motioned Destiny to keep running with Dan, and took Zach’s hand.

So there I was—dragging the pack with Christopher in one hand, holding Zach with the other, Carri Beth bound to my chest—running uphill faster than I thought possible, but not fast enough.

“Oh God, oh God,” I prayed aloud.

Christopher screamed harder, but for once he was looking straight at me. The terror in his eyes nearly undid me. I crested the hill. The screaming had stopped.

Helen and Blair stood frozen, huddled together, staring toward the river. Destiny sat beside them in the pine needles, pale and blank.

“What happened?” I demanded.

“Andrew went into the river, over the falls.” Helen and Blair pointed toward a smaller waterfall, so beautiful earlier, now seemed menacing.

“Where’s Daddy?” I almost shrieked.

“I don’t know. He went down there. He told us to stay here.”

“Dan!” I screamed.

His face suddenly appeared over the rock ledge—soaked, streaked with dirt, blood oozing from his temple.

“It’s okay,” he said, looking me in the eye. “He’s okay.”

He was gray. Even his lips were gray.

He disappeared again. Below, Andrew lay soaked on the riverbank, sticks and pine needles clung to him.

“He went over the waterfall,” Helen wailed.

“He’s okay,” I repeated.

Dan hauled himself up the bank and we gathered around, silent and shaking.

“He was standing on a rock,” Blair said. “It wasn’t even that close. He kept slipping and slipping… and then he went over.”

The waterfall he pointed to was only six feet high—but downstream was the fifty-foot fall. That was what we had all imagined, and was where he would have ended up.

“He went over the small one,” Dan said, “then down the cascade and landed into a pool. There was a whirl in it. He was clinging to a rock in the middle.” We all spontaneously began to pray and to thank God for sparing him, for the little whirlpool, for the rock.

“Why were you so close to the river?” Dan asked Andrew.

“I didn’t think those rocks were close,” he said quietly. “I didn’t know they were wet.”

“Well,” Dan said, “now we know.”

We began the walk back to the van. Andrew shivered, blue with cold. Dan walked beside him, still holding his water bottle.

“Why did you keep the bottle?” Dan asked. “You only had one hand to hold onto that rock.”

“Because you said not to litter,” Andrew answered.

Dan’s eyes widened as he glanced at me. “I just wish he’d listened as closely about the river as he did about littering.”

We warmed Andrew, got in the car, and watched the sun melt into the mountains like molten honey.

Christopher leaned against me, spent and finally silent. I told Dan, “I’ve never seen a child as terrified as he got, nor as difficult to calm down.”

Christopher’s unusual terror that day felt like a foreshadowing of how much our life with him would be lived on edges no one else could yet see.

But gazing at the mountains, I said, “You forget how beautiful it is,” and we watched the light and riotous colors slowly fade.

“Pain and beauty both shrink with time. You can’t hold onto them or truly understand them, until you see them again,” I told Dan

The August sun slanted through the blinds of my bedroom window, catching in the pecan leaves and scattering gold across the quilt. Dust motes drifted lazily in the light as I shifted my sore body and breathed in the quiet.

My brand-new baby daughter was curled in the crook of my arm, her tiny body warm and damp with that otherworldly newborn smell.

Carri Beth, my sixth child, had been born the night before. Her breath fluttered like a whisper against my skin. Tracing the faint blue veins in her eyelids, I stroked along the downy skin to her temples. From the kitchen drifted the scent of cinnamon and butter—French toast. Abby was making my favorite breakfast for this first dawn of Carri Beth’s life.

Dan stirred beside me.

“Let’s call the kids to come meet her,” I whispered. “And your parents too.”

Introducing new babies to their siblings was one of my favorite moments in life. The hush that fell over them, the reverent hovering of their hands, the first soft touch, all felt like watching love and awe awaken.

I moved into the recliner in the living room, the house still with early-morning quiet.

A sister was a novelty in our home. We’d had one girl, then four boys in a row. I had almost believed another girl was not meant for us.

Appearing one by one in the doorway, my kids peered in as if into a chapel. For once their footsteps were soft on the wood floor! Their eyes flicked to me first, taking in my face, my rumpled hair, before drifting to the baby.

Helen, now eleven, sandy hair loose around her face, stepped closer, her eyes glassy with awe.

Blair broke the stillness. “Ah! She has no hair!”

“It will come,” I laughed.

Andrew, missing his two front teeth, flashed a crooked grin. Zach elbowed his way in closer.

And then there was Christopher. He was two and a half and still not talking. I had hoped this moment might awaken something in him. With all my previous children, it seemed to mark a transition out of babyhood. But when he saw me, he began to wail—a raw, sound that scraped through the room. Now this wasn’t entirely unusual, all my kids had moments like this. I patted the seat beside me, but then he climbed into my lap as if the baby wasn’t there at all.

“Look, Christopher,” I whispered, guiding his hands to her soft head, but his eyes never moved or even took her in. It really felt as though he thought I were holding a folded blanket instead of a child.

His cries escalated, so Dan took Carri Beth from me, and I rocked Christopher, feeling his small body rigid with fear. He thrashed, slid from my lap, and rolled onto the sofa.

Finally, I carried him into the bedroom and held him in the chair beside the bed.

When the others left, I looked at Dan and felt the tears sliding down my cheeks.

“He didn’t even see her,” I said. “He never even saw her. We’ve never had a child act like that. Maybe jealousy; maybe a little resentment, but they’ve always also been curious and excited. It was like she wasn’t even there!”

Over the next weeks, the unease grew like a shadow. Christopher passed through rooms without glancing at her. Once, when she lay on a pallet on the floor, he stepped over her like she was furniture.

Then came a night that terrified me. Three week old Carri Beth slept on the sofa, swaddled tightly, a small roll pillow guarding her. The house smelled of garlic and chili as I stirred up a Thai dinner. Constantly glancing over my shoulder, I checked on the baby and Christopher. Christopher ran in circles, thudding feet, grunting breaths. He jumped and ran, jumped and ran, around and around our dining table. He was completely absorbed in his running.

Carri Beth began to cry on the couch. I hurried to finish the meal, sweat dripping from my hair, stirring faster to outpace her. Suddenly, Carri Beth’s cry changed, and I turned. To my shock, Christopher had lifted her, and thrown her to the floor.

I screamed and ran, the pan clattering as I flung it from the stove. The blanket had softened the fall. She was screaming, red-faced and angry, but unharmed.

Christopher shook his head violently, then began screaming too, the noise overwhelming him.

“Oh, God!” I began to shake and then collapsed onto the couch. “No, no! Don’t ever hurt the baby!” I scolded through tears. But then my reaction alarmed him, and he hurled himself on the floor and began beating his head against the floor boards screaming.

“What do I do?” I cried to the ceiling.

From that day on, I wore Carri Beth pressed against my chest in a baby wrap or kept Christopher within reach.

That night as I told Dan, my voice and my hands were still shaking.

“There is something wrong with him. Maybe I need to work harder on his talking. He’s almost three! He doesn’t say anything.”

During dinner, I watched Christopher dip his face into his bowl like a puppy, unaware of his own hands. I slid out of my seat and stood behind him, guiding his fingers to the fork. He only reached out extending his hands for me to hold to feed him.

I knew we were standing at the base of a mountain. Whatever lay ahead, I would have to become more than I’d ever been before. I could not turn back. I could only climb.

It was time for spring cleaning. Shoving the glass windowpane up, the curtains billowed out as cool air rushed into our bedroom. I could almost smell the bluebonnets in the field beyond our little cabin, and my fingers itched to get back into the soil after the long winter months. But today, we were cleaning out closets.

My longleaf pine bed, hand-built by my brothers and friends, was stacked high with winter coats, sweaters, and turtlenecks waiting to be packed away for the season. I slipped a CD into the computer for company as I worked. The instrumentals kept my hands moving in rhythm.

Christopher, now fourteen months old, toddled around the floor, climbing into bins as I filled them, burrowing among folded clothes bound for the shed. As the afternoon wore on, I glanced at the clock. Ah. Time to get dinner started.

I scrambled into the kitchen, browned meat in a pan, then hurried back to clear the bed before evening settled in. The scent of cooking followed me down the hall.

Then I heard the squeak of the office chair. Peeking around the corner, I saw that Christopher had climbed onto the chair at my desk. He sat upright, gently rocking as the chair swiveled back and forth, his eyes fixed on the wall. I stopped and stared, as if seized by my collar.

An instrumental version of My Heart Will Go On drifted from the speakers—the same CD I’d put in earlier. Christopher swayed to the music, but it was his face that held me. His big brown eyes were fixed on something I could not see. And most astonishing, tears streamed down his cheeks.

He wasn’t exactly crying. He made no sound, but seemed peaceful, even content, yet those tears traced steady paths down his face, the way they do on an older man moved by something deep and wordless.

I had felt that kind of emotion before, holding a newborn, hearing a piece of music that reached straight through me, embracing someone long gone. But never had I seen it in a child, certainly never in an infant.

I stood frozen in the doorway, holding my breath without realizing it, afraid that even breathing might interrupt whatever was happening. After a moment, I slipped quietly away and found my husband, Dan.

“Come here, Honey,” I whispered. “You have to see this.”

We stood together and watched him. Christopher never noticed us. I felt as though I were looking at a prophet or an angel. Goosebumps raced up my arms. I had never seen anything like this. When the song ended, he lingered a moment longer, then climbed down from the chair and went on with his day, making messes, crawling under furniture, climbing into boxes. He was, once again, my fourteen-month-old baby.

And yet…What was so different about him? He had rolled early, crawled early, walked when he was barely a year old. Nothing about him raised alarms. The only thing I couldn’t get him to do, something my other children had done without effort, was raise one finger and say he was one on his first birthday. And now that I thought about it, he never waved…never clapped. But otherwise… he was normal. Right?

So what was this presence around him—this thing I could sense but not name? It didn’t feel like a shadow or a warning. It felt more like the distant roar of the sea. Or an echo in the mountains.

Who was this child?

Christopher’s Birth

I had never felt such peace at a birth as I rocked in our burgundy recliner beside the window. The stormy night sky was softening now, fading into lavender and pink as the sun kissed the edges of the clouds. I couldn’t tell whether the rain was moving in or out. I tapped my toe against the wood floor to keep the rocker moving, listening to the quiet creak of the chair and the distant drip from the eaves.

This was my fifth birth, and it hadn’t gone anything like I’d planned.

Five days earlier, we’d been gathered in the Dawson’s living room for dinner with a guest of Carl’s, a young, energetic producer who wanted to do a documentary about our life. He had bright eyes and a load of enthusiasm, the kind that made everything feel like a potential scene. We were polite but reserved, unsure what we thought about being filmed at all.

Then he glanced at my nine-month-pregnant belly and smiled.

“It would be wonderful,” he said. “I could even attend your birth. What a story that would be.”

That was definitely not going to happen.

What I didn’t say—what I barely acknowledged to myself, was that I was already having regular contractions. Earlier that morning I’d noticed small, familiar signs that labor might be beginning. But as the evening wore on, unfortunately, something else took hold of me. A fever rose suddenly. I began to shake with chills, my body aching, my head pounding as if it were being squeezed from the inside. A flu had been going around our church community.

I leaned over to Dan and whispered, “I think we’d better head home. I’m not feeling well.”

“Labor?” he whispered back.

“Not sure,” I said.

But when we got in the car, the truth came spilling out of me in tears.

“I am in labor, and now I’m coming down with this flu that’s been going around.”

Dan prayed for me right there, his hand resting on my shoulder. I climbed into bed when we got home, my teeth chattering uncontrollably.

For four days, the fever raged.

I could barely swallow. Even sipping a drink took effort. My throat burned, and a deep, hacking cough settled in my chest. I lay there day after day, acutely aware that I was nine months pregnant and utterly incapable of bringing a child into the world in that state. The contractions disappeared as suddenly as they’d come, as if my body had simply decided, Not yet. Not like this.

As a midwife, I understood the physiology. As a mother, I felt the helplessness.

Then, last night, at 9:45, the fever broke.

I woke drenched in sweat, but clear-headed, almost light. I climbed out of bed and ran a bath, sinking into the hot water with a kind of relief that felt spiritual as much as physical. And there, in the stillness of the tub, the contractions returned, deep and vice-like.

I welcomed them. I wanted this finished. I wanted this child born. I wanted my body to remember what it knew how to do.

I said nothing at first. After all, the contractions had stopped once already. I put the four children to bed with a story, lingering a little longer than usual, and then climbed into bed beside my husband.

All night I woke intermittently as the contractions came—steady, every eight minutes, never wavering, slowly growing longer and stronger. It was strange. Most of my previous labors had begun five minutes apart and tightened quickly from there. This one felt patient, deliberate and almost restrained.

At two in the morning, the contractions changed character. I slipped silently out of bed and into the recliner, rocking through each one in the dim light from the glowing nightlight.

By 5:30, Dan rolled over and opened his eyes. He saw me rocking.

“Everything okay?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m in labor.”

We listened to the intermittent rain on the tin roof and talked quietly about past births. My fourth labor had been the hardest—three days long, a baby in a difficult position, nearly a transport. Three weeks earlier, while praying, I had confessed to Dan how afraid I was that this birth might follow the same path.

He patted my shoulder.

“Oh honey. After that last birth, you could do anything.”

I laughed at his optimism, but it steadied me.

We remembered out loud, each of our children, the details of their arrivals, the moments that had marked them.

“I want to do this with grace,” I told him. “So far it’s going well, but they’re still eight minutes apart. And they feel almost like transition.”

At eight o’clock I dressed the children, pausing every eight minutes to lean over the dresser.

“Are you okay, Mommy?” nine-year-old Helen asked again and again.

“Yes,” I said, smiling. “I’m just going to get the baby today. He’s trying to come.”

We bundled the children off to Grandma’s. It was February 1st—my due date.

While Dan left with the kids, I set out snacks and tidied small things, marveling at how much time seemed to stretch between contractions. They dipped to six minutes for an hour, then widened again.

“I’ve never had a labor like this,” I told my mom when she arrived. “But I almost feel complete.”

“I’ll bet you are,” she said calmly.

“I’m not going to push yet,” I told her. “I’ll wait for the urge. I’ve been sick. I’m wrung out.”

The room gradually filled—Mom, Angie, Noa, and Theresa, moving about quietly, efficiently. As a midwife, I knew every sound, every setup, every motion. As a laboring woman, I surrendered to them anyway.

I leaned over the footboard of our longleaf-pine bed and yielded to the rising urges with some deep groans.

Then there was a knock at the door.

“Who in the world would that be?” Dan said, hurrying to answer.

The rain had settled into a steady rhythm now, soft but persistent.

He came back grinning. “It’s Destiny.”

“Oh no,” I groaned.

Destiny was sixteen. We’d befriended her, and just the week before she’d told me she didn’t want me doing all the work of mentoring her. Could she come help out? We’d agreed she could come Thursday mornings to bake bread and clean with me. I’d completely forgotten! It was her first week, and I was in labor.

“She was so excited the baby was coming, she could hardly contain herself,” Dan said.

Thunder rolled faintly in the distance.

“I hope she has a ride back home…” I was interrupted by the next contraction. “I think I’m ready,” I huffed.

Things moved quickly then. I remained in the recliner and yielded fully as my fifth child slipped into the world—into his grandmother’s hands. She placed him on my chest.

I looked down at his wrinkled little puppy face, his dark, silky hair still wet.

And just then, the sun broke through the clouds outside the window.

That was when I saw it—a small patch of silver hair.

“He has a sunbeam on his head,” I said, nodding toward both the light pouring in and the pale streak in his hair.

“He’s a marked man,” Dan said quietly.

The next morning we named him Christopher Aaron—Christ bearer, and light. Dan sat beside me and read softly from Scripture: “I bear on my body the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ” (Galatians 6:17). The word marks there is the same word we use for stigma, though Paul spoke of it not as a wound but as a sign of belonging. Lying there with our son warm against my chest, the room still reverent from his birth, I felt the weight of that word in a new way—not as something to be feared, but as something God might use to tell His story.

Light had broken through after the storm on the day he was born. And he was our only child born in the daytime.

We had no idea then what lay ahead.

The producer had been right. It would be a story.

Not the kind that could be captured on film or neatly narrated. But a life marked—bearing something often called a stigma, something misunderstood and heavy. And yet, over time, that mark would become for us a sunbeam of light.

A story still unfolding.

Christopher’s story is, at its heart, a redemption story.

That is why it pulls so fiercely on the cords of our hearts and blows the notes of truth across our minds. Every human being is searching for redemption, and his life gives us a glimpse of what it looks like in real time: loneliness turning into companionship, disintegration giving way to integration, chaos settling into peace, and a child who was entirely non-verbal slowly finding his voice.

Autism literally means “within oneself.”

It can be the most isolating prison—a world locked inside one’s own mind. For those who never find connection, it is a silent exile.

At three years old, when Christopher still was not speaking and his behaviors had unraveled into daily storms that shook the foundation of our home, I knew it was time for an evaluation. Until then, some part of me had believed, perhaps wishfully, that he was simply delayed and would speak when he was ready. But when his quiet introspection turned to frustration, frustration to anger, and anger into violent outbursts, denial was no longer an option.

His evaluation placed him at the developmental level of a six-month-old with level-3 autism. The doctor solemnly told me that the “speech” we heard was merely echolalia—that nothing he said was actually communicating meaning. I had suspected this, hearing him repeat random sentences in flawless imitations of my voice or his siblings’ voices… but still, a mother always hopes.

It was a heavy drive home, that long stretch down I-35 from Dallas to just north of Waco.

“What does this mean?” I asked my husband, Dan. “Will he ever get married? Will he ever talk?”

The doctor had said he might not, and had recommended medication for his anxiety.

Dan was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Honey, I don’t know. But that’s not the real question. We’ve got to stop thinking our job is to make him ‘normal.’ What is normal anyway? Were John the Baptist or Elijah normal? No—God used them because they lived outside the box. Our task isn’t to fix him; it’s to remove whatever barriers stand between him and his purpose. We have to find where we’re connected.”

That one sentence shifted the whole trajectory of our journey.

Instead of searching only for language or the elimination of symptoms, we began searching for connection. And those connections appeared in the most unlikely places:

on a swing,

in the dust bunnies under a bed,

wrapped in the coats of a closet,

or carried on the strains of music.

They came one by one, inch by inch, or perhaps more honestly, millimeter by millimeter. But slowly, bridges began to stretch across the vast chasms. And as they formed, we discovered not only who our son truly was, but who we were as a family… and who we could become together.

Thus began the story of Christopher.

His name means Christ-bearer—one marked by Christ.

And so he was.

He was marked, and we were destined to share that mark with him.

I had a nasty cold. I hated colds. They were bad enough to make life miserable but not quite bad enough to put you to bed. I’d take a fever over a cold any day. Fevers came in with authority—clear, commanding, no questions asked. They struck you down like a proper enemy and made their presence known.

But colds? Colds were guerrilla warfare—sneaky, persistent, always just under the threshold of “sick enough.” They nibbled at your edges. They dripped from your nose and clawed at your throat and muffled your brain until you felt like you were wrapped in gauze and stored in the back of a dusty drawer where static crackled faintly behind your ears.

I needed a C-clamp for my nose, which had been replaced by a leaking faucet. And my head throbbed in time with the hum of the window unit, a sound that felt too sharp for morning and too dull for thought. I didn’t have time for this. School was waiting. Prenatal exams had been canceled. Babies were due any moment.

Well, first things first. I’d try to salvage the school day.

Christopher couldn’t afford to miss a day of therapy, structure, connection. His disabilities didn’t allow for drifting days. So I pulled out the box of emotion cards, 5x7 photographs of faces locked in grief or joy or confusion. A bored teenager slumped against a wall. A baby red-faced with rage. A woman looking off into the middle distance with tears just about to spill.

I held one up. “This boy is bored. Why would he be bored?”

We built stories from there. And when we finished talking, Christopher would march over to the mirror, place his small hands on the rim of the sink, and twist his face into the expression. Trying, with all his might, to feel it inside himself.

It was my heart’s prayer that one day he would not only mimic, but recognize, that he would feel a smile coming before it reached someone’s lips, or sense smothered sadness in a person before a single word was spoken.

Some days, his therapy looked like sign language. Other days, it was colored balls rolling across the floor—red, blue, yellow, green, each one named out loud, again and again, until names stuck to color. Often, it meant crawling alongside him when he crawled, or rolling when he rolled. Anything to break through the barrier of his private universe and coax him out for a while. To laugh. To wonder. To look.

And it was working. Once, when he stuffed himself into a pillow sham, I stuffed myself into one, too. And when he started to laugh, I knew I’d breached his autistic wall. When he began to roll, Helen rolled beside him. And slowly, day by day, the distance began to shrink.

But not this morning. He was distracted, his eyes fixed on the boxy window unit buzzing in the corner. I knelt beside him.

“Christopher,” I said, turning his face toward mine, “look at Mommy.”

His eyes flickered toward me, then back to the machine.

Then I heard the unmistakable sound of tires on gravel. Omie’s car. Just the whisper of tread on our driveway sent a thrill through the air.

“Christopher,” I said, straightening, “Omie is here!”

And he sprang up like he’d been uncoiled. He gave a delighted leap, a squeal, a kind of half-dance, half-bow as he bounded toward the door.

“Omie is here. Omie is here. Omie is here!” he called, echoing my words with rising joy.

He loved her. He would never say that, not directly. But his joy told the truth. His ritual of repetition. His light-footed dash. Omie meant something to him—someone real and steady and good.

She was a retired speech therapist, a longtime member of our church, and one of the most generous people I’d ever known. Four days a week, two hours a day, she gave herself to him. No money, no fanfare.

“So you can give that time to your other children,” she’d said.

She came bearing games and songs and steadiness. And love. I truly could not have done it without her.

As he disappeared out the door with her, I sank into the wicker chair on the porch, a tissue box close at hand. I blew my nose again and looked across the sweet potato field. Just beyond it, I could see Jessie, my neighbor, moving through her yard. She was carrying something to the chickens, three children trailing behind her like ducklings. They were close enough to see, but a little too far to call to across the way.

I watched for a while, then shuffled inside and collapsed on the schoolroom sofa.

“Family reading time,” I rasped.

The older kids brought their books and took turns reading aloud, my voice too hoarse to do much. I let my eyes close more than once.

“Mommy, are you listening?”

“Yes,” I mumbled. “Keep reading. I’m just closing my eyes because of my cold.”

Around lunchtime, the doorbell rang. There stood Jessie, her glowing face freckle-sprinkled, green eyes bright beneath sandy hair. She was holding a steaming casserole dish, and her three children stood behind her, one with a basket of bread, one with a pitcher of juice, another with a salad. Tucked under her arm was a little quart jar.

“I thought you might could use some lunch,” she said. “And this chicken soup is for you.”

“How did you know I was sick?”

“Oh, a little bird told me,” she said, grinning.

I never did find out who the bird was. But Jessie had a way of listening to birds. She took “Love your neighbor as yourself” quite literally.

Just before lunch, Omie brought Christopher back home, and we returned to school.

We’d come a million miles together, further than I’d ever dreamed possible when Omie began helping him five years earlier. No one had thought he’d ever talk. But now he did. English might seem like his second language, but it was his. He was even beginning to read. Picture cards had been our gateway: monkey, chair, bed. It was sight reading, but it was reading.

Still, I had come up against another wall.

“Christopher,” I said, “I want you to write a sentence.”

“Yes, Mom. What should I write?”

“Whatever you want. Look out the window. What do you see?”

“I see a tree.”

“Okay, write one sentence about the tree.”

“Yes, Mom. What do you want me to write about the tree?”

“I want you to write what you see.”

“I see a tree?”

“Yes. Can you write that?”

“Write what?”

Back and forth we went. He could copy anything. He could take dictation without flaw. But he could not, ever, originate a sentence. Not one.

I didn’t understand. Maybe it was part of the mystery of his mind. There were so many. And somehow, I loved that—this puzzle of him. As hard as it was, it made me feel alive.

I talked to Dan. I prayed. I knew Christopher had something to say. I could feel it. I could see it shimmering behind his eyes. And I believed. Deep down, I believed God wanted him to write. That there was a key. Somewhere. Somehow I had to find it.

So I began to look. I prayed when I walked to the mailbox. I flipped through catalogs with sharp eyes. I listened at church meetings, read Scripture slowly, pondered every conversation for a glint of insight.

Then, one night we went to a gathering with a meal, worship, and a few visiting missionaries. I ended up making small talk with one of the mothers. She told me about a correspondence course they used on the mission field to home-school their children.

She said something almost in passing: “It’s really centered around letter writing; most missionaries want their children to write home to family and friends.”

And right then, it clicked.

That was it.

Christopher didn’t write because he wasn’t talking to anyone. There was no recipient in his mind. No purpose, no context. It was all too abstract. He needed someone on the other end of the line.

I could hardly wait until morning.

“Christopher,” I said, setting out paper and pencil, “how would you like to write a letter to Omie?”

“I’ll write a letter to Omie,” he echoed. He took the pencil. He sat down. And he wrote, with no prompts whatsoever:

Dear Omie,

I am sitting at the table, learning school.

My mommy is teaching me.

My dog Puzzle is sitting beside me. He’s watching.

I love you.

Love, Christopher.

I had to get a tissue—not for my cold this time, but to keep the tears from falling on the page.

He had never written anything before.

From that day forward, his school days were full of letters, one for Omie, one for my father, one for Bonnie, one for our neighbor Shosh. His writing blossomed. And more than that, his relationships began to blossom, too.

It was only fitting that Omie received the first letter. Omie, who brought with her each day a little breath of fresh air, a little more room for love.

The phone buzzed in my pocket as I knelt beside Sally’s recliner, scribbling notes from her prenatal checkup. I was halfway through jotting down her fundal height when I saw the screen light up: Hadassah.

She’d been watching the kids for me ever since my last sitter got married. Steady, sweet. Never one to call unless it mattered.

“Hello?”

But I didn’t even get the whole word out before her voice rushed in.

“Amanda! I can’t find Kippy! I’ve been looking for 45 minutes. We all have.” Kippy was my autistic son Christopher’s nickname. Parents of autistic children know that wandering is a common and terrifying difficulty with autism.

My breath caught. “Oh, my. Where did you last see him?”

“I thought he was napping. His window was wide open. I—I’m so sorry. This is my fault.”

“No, it’s not,” I said quickly, already standing, already packing up. “I’m coming home.”

I ended the call. Hannah, who’d been checking Sally’s blood pressure, pulled out one stethoscope earbud.

“Everything okay?” she asked, her blue eyes widening.

“No,” I said, grabbing my prenatal bag. “Kippy’s missing. Again.” This was not Christopher’s first disappearance. We had tried everything: locking windows, coded doors, GPS arm bracelets. But he was a little Houdini.

She didn’t ask any more questions. She didn’t have to. Hannah had walked Christopher’s difficult road with me before, had prayed with us, cried with us, helped us search. She just nodded and stood. 

“You go,” she said firmly. “I’ve got things here. Right, Sally?”

“Of course,” Sally said. “We’ll pray. God will help you find him.”

I paused halfway through packing, then realized Hannah would need the whole kit.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “I’ll bring it by when we’re done. Do you want me to stop by the other three checkups, too?”

“Yes. Jenna, Carrie, and Monica . . . .”

She nodded. “Done.”

The front door banged behind me as I sprinted to our Suburban, the midsummer heat hitting like a furnace. I turned onto Fort Graham Road and pressed the gas, every nerve taut.

It was only a nine-minute drive, but it felt like ninety.

I prayed the whole way—loud, urgent prayers—and then called Dan, putting him on speaker.

“Honey,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, “Kippy’s missing again. Can you call people? Get help?”

“Yes,” he said immediately. “I’m heading home now.”

Dan was at work in the church publications office, but he wouldn’t linger long, not for this.

I pulled hard into the curve of our driveway, skidding my tires. I left the Suburban running, then, remembering, turned back to cut the engine.

Helen was crying.

Hadassah stood on the porch, wringing her hands.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, voice cracking. Her blue eyes brimmed behind her glasses.

“You didn’t do this, Hadassah,” I said quietly. “We just need to start looking. Where have you searched?”

“We climbed the ridge behind your house and got as deep into the woods as we could. It’s thick up there. We also checked the river road, and we ran up to your parents’ house.”

The humid air was sticky and thick. I was grateful it wasn’t winter, but ninety degrees in the woods without water was dangerous, too.

“Do you know what he was wearing?”

Helen nodded, wiping her face. “Just his blue and red T-shirt. And a diaper. That’s it.”

My heart sank. Kippy was four now, sharp as a tack, clever with locks and levers, but he had no sense of danger. He was a little escape artist, slipping past every safeguard we could install. 

We’d found him before. In the rain. In the cold. Barefoot. Wandering under the stars.

Grabbing a water bottle, I started toward the ridge behind our house, ducking through brush and pushing past weeds that reached my chest. Endless varieties of Texas thorns scratched my arms, and insects buzzed hot around my ears.

“KIPPY!” I called. “Kippy, baby!”

But I knew he wouldn’t answer. He never did. Still, I called. And I called on God.

The ridge sloped steeply, and I caught the scent of dry cedar and wild onions. Then, beside an old red oak tree, something caught my eye.

A sock. Small. Striped.

And beside it was a little blue train engine. One of his favorites.

“I found something!” I shouted, holding them up.

Dan came crashing through the brush behind me. “What is it?”

“His sock. And his train.”

Just then, Blair’s dog Jet, a big black Lab, bounded up the trail, tail wagging, tongue swinging, full of sloppy joy.

“Maybe Jet can find him,” Blair said.

I knelt and held the sock and train out for Jet to sniff. “Find Kippy, boy. Go find him!”

Jet’s ears perked. He sniffed, gave a snort, then bolted up the trail, crashing through the brush like a tank. We followed as fast as we could. Blair clipped on his leash to keep him from disappearing.

Jet stopped suddenly at the edge of a steep bluff, pacing, whining.

“Oh, no,” I whispered, chest tightening. “Do you think he fell?”

Dan didn’t answer. He scanned the edge, then motioned to a steep trail off to the side, a scar of dirt winding down.

We scrambled down, slipping and skidding, grabbing roots for balance. I half-slid on my rear. Jet was already ahead, yanking at the leash, pulling Blair through nettles and rocks into a shaded creek bed below.

The air changed in the hollow, cooler beneath the limbs, and our footsteps echoed along the dry stones.

Then, around the bend, Blair’s voice rang out.

“Here he is! Here he is!”

We ran.

There, beneath a spread of pecan limbs, stood Kippy.

Barefoot. Dirt-streaked. Diaper sagging. His blue and red T-shirt was damp with sweat.

He was staring up into the treetops, completely unbothered. The filtered light turned his straight locks to flax.

I stopped and doubled over to catch my breath, and my heart. Then Dan and I both reached for him.

“Kippy,” I breathed, scooping him into my arms.

“Where did you go, baby?” Dan asked softly.

He didn’t answer. Just reached for his train engine and began spinning its wheels, calm as ever.

I wiped the sweat and grit from my eyes. “You can’t run off like that,” I whispered. “You scared us.”

We made our way home, branches slapping our arms, hearts still pounding.

I pulled out my phone—twelve texts from Hannah and the mommies I had been supposed to see.

The mommies at all the checkups are praying. Did you find him? Is he okay?

I typed back:

We found him. He’s okay. Or the dog found him. He’s safe.

It was two days later, during lunch, when my brother Asi called.

“Amanda,” he said, “have y’all ever thought about getting a service dog for Kippy?”

“Definitely,” I said. “But it’s completely out of our range. They’re ten to twenty thousand dollars.”

“Whoa,” he said. “I didn’t know they were that expensive.”

“Yeah. And it’s a process, being matched with the right dog, months of training. It’s not just something you pick up.”

“I was just wondering,” he said.

I didn’t think much of it.

And then, one afternoon weeks later, Asi pulled into my driveway.

“The community pitched in,” he said. “They’ve raised fifteen thousand dollars for Kippy. To get him a dog. We’re opening an account just for his needs.”

I couldn’t speak for a moment. How had this happened?

Then I started remembering little things I hadn’t really noticed as unusual. Little kids with lemonade stands, shouting, “Lemonade for a dollar!” Teenagers sweating through hay hauls for neighbors. Cookies for sale after choir practice.

Nine months later, we stood outside the Dallas airport, scanning the crowd.

Two trainers stepped through the doors with a tall, apricot-colored standard poodle at their side, calm, poised, beautiful. He’d been trained in search and rescue. Trained to calm meltdowns. Trained to stand between a child and danger.

Kippy didn’t even see the people.

He ran straight for the dog.

He threw his arms around its neck and buried his face in its fur. It was love at first sight.

We named him Puzzle; he was a missing piece in Christopher’s puzzled world.

From that day on, Kippy never climbed out another window or scaled another fence. Puzzle was always there, watchful, steady, ready to alert us if he even thought about it.

And the scattered pieces of our days slowly started to fit back together.̰

Christopher, my fifth child, still wasn’t talking.

I watched my nearly three-year-old son lying flat on his back in the middle of the hardwood floor, arms out, palms open, as if offering something invisible to the ceiling. His chin moved slowly in rhythm with the ceiling fan above, turning like a compass needle on a fixed course. His wide, unblinking brown eyes never left it.

“Christopher,” I called softly.

Again, “Christopher?”

Nothing. His stillness deepened, as if he were underwater and I were calling from the shore.

It was almost as if he were deaf. And yet, I knew he could hear. The moment the air conditioner kicked on with its low, humming roar, he clapped his hands tightly over his ears and whimpered.

My other children whispered, “What in the world is wrong with Christopher?” “He’s still not talking, and he’s almost three.” “He just needs to learn.”

“Give him time. Some kids talk late,” I’d say, as much to myself as to them

“Actually,” someone chimed in, “Einstein didn’t talk until he was four. He’s probably a genius.”

But deep inside, I was worried.

As his third birthday crept closer, I made a silent promise: I would teach him to say one sentence. Just one: “My name is Christopher, and I’m three.”

And one scripture: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength . . . and love your neighbor as yourself. Mark 12:30-31.”

We practiced every day—in the morning before the sunlight crossed the wooden floor, the quiet rhythm of the rocking chair creaking beneath me, a baby nestled at my breast, and Christopher standing at my knees.

The strange thing about him was that he could echo anything. He could mimic birdsong from outside the window, hum classical pieces, copy every syllable with uncanny precision. But mimicking words was not the same as understanding them. Nothing he ever said made any real sense.

Still, I pressed on. I imagined the moment I’d surprise Dan—Christopher standing tall to recite his verse, bright-eyed with pride.

But he still repeated every cue, including the prompt itself.

“Christopher, say: ‘You shall love the Lord . . . .’ ”

And he would say, “Christopher, say: ‘You shall love the Lord . . . .’ ”

Every time. Like a record needle stuck in place.

Up until then, I always sat in the mesquite rocker, the one with a green leather seat and a gentle back-and-forth sway that had comforted my babies. Christopher would stand before me, mimicking the scripture, his eyes flickering sideways toward my mouth.

But that morning, I felt a shift. I said, “Okay, Christopher, we’re going to show Daddy your scripture.”

He came and stood in front of me, waiting.

“No, go show Daddy,” I said, nudging him gently toward where Dan sat.

He hesitated, his small shoulders tense, then shuffled toward Dan with his head ducked.

But when I prompted him to say the scripture, he turned and came straight back to me, as if tethered.

Maybe he’s confused, I thought. So I got up and went to sit beside Dan on the couch, my empty chair left gently rocking as if remembering me.

Christopher turned toward us, then turned back, drawn to the empty rocker.

He walked to it, placed himself exactly where he always stood, and began to speak the scripture—to the chair.

My eyes burned. I pressed my hand to my mouth and watched.

I went to him, took his hand, and gently guided him toward Dan. “Say your scripture for Daddy,” I whispered.

He began to tremble. His lips quivered. And then he ran.

He ran to his room, wailing, ducked under his bed, and disappeared.

By the time I found him, he had stuffed himself—his whole body, his pillow, everything—into the pillow sham. Then he’d tucked himself in like a chrysalis, invisible, and rolled under the bed where light couldn’t reach him. His pillow poked out from under the edge, but he didn’t move. Just a mound of foam and fear.

I knew better than to try to pull him out. He didn’t want to be held when he was hurting. He wanted to disappear. To become unfindable.

That night, Dan and I lay in bed listening to the quiet creak of the house settling. I stared into the shadows. “Honey,” I said softly, “we’ve got to find out what’s going on with Christopher.”

The next day, I called my mom. I paced the front porch barefoot, one hand clutching my sweater around me, the other gripping the phone. The wood was warm beneath my feet. Bees moved lazily among the wisteria climbing the front porch railing.

I told her everything—the silence, the fan, the scripture, the pillow sham.

My sister-in-law had recently given me a book on autism. I had only ever heard the word in passing. But the more I read, the more I felt like someone was holding up a mirror to my boy.

“Well, Amanda,” my mom said gently, “we’ve been wondering for a while if something might be going on.”

“Really?” I asked. “When?”

“When y’all came up to Idaho. Last summer.” My parents sometimes spent the summer with our affiliated church community in Idaho, and we had brought the kids up to visit them there.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because,” she replied carefully, “some truths aren’t meant to land on us like a ton of bricks. We have to discover them one brick at a time. And we weren’t sure. But Daddy and I both wondered.”

Just then, my phone buzzed—another call. I blinked quickly and swallowed. I switched over to that call.

“Hello?” I said with practiced brightness.

“Hi, Amanda. Do you have those herbs ready for me?” It was Sherry, a first-time mom I’d been helping. My brain was blank as I groped the corners of my memory for what she was talking about. “The ones you said you’d have for my pregnancy?” she prompted.

“Oh! Absolutely,” I said. “Come by anytime.”

As I pinched the phone between my shoulder and ear and gathered up the little bundle of vitamins and herbs, it struck me—life does not pause. Not for diagnoses, not for pillow shams, not for worry. It just keeps asking things of you.

Later that week, Dan and I took Christopher to a specialist.

The doctor was kind, with steady eyes and soft hands. But her words didn’t soften the blow.

After the evaluation, she sat us down. “Christopher has classical autism,” she said.

She drew an arc on a paper. “This is the spectrum,” she explained. “Over here”—she pointed to one end—“are individuals who are highly functioning. They might live independent lives, and some may not even realize they have delays. Over here”—she pointed to the other end—“are people who never speak, never become independent.”

Then she marked a dot low on the arc. “I’d place Christopher about here. Just below the nonverbal line. His ‘talking’ isn’t true communication. It’s something called echolalia: repeating what he hears without understanding it.”

My stomach dropped.

“He may never say ‘Mommy,’ ” she added when I told her he hadn’t yet. “He may never want to hold your hand. But with therapy and pharmaceuticals there’s potential to manage meltdowns and possibly improve communication.”

I nodded, and we booked a follow-up for six months out.

On the drive home, I stared out the window at the blur of fields and fences. At last, I broke the silence.

“How can this be, Dan? I can train a chicken to go up into a roost at night. To lay its eggs in the right box. Christopher is smarter than a chicken! There has to be a way to bridge this chasm.”

Dan didn’t answer right away. He reached over and wrapped his fingers around mine.

After a while, he said, “Honey . . . maybe we need to stop aiming for what we view as ‘normal.’ I doubt John the Baptist or Elijah would’ve passed as normal in a developmental screening. But they played vital roles in the history of what God was doing. We just need to remove the obstacles keeping Christopher from becoming who he’s meant to be.”

Then he looked at me. “Where are you connecting with him?”

I thought for a long moment. “Nowhere,” I sighed.

He squeezed my hand. “Think about it. I bet you’ll think of something. And when you do, let’s start there.”

I thought about it all evening. And later that night, on my damp pillow, the memory came.

Whenever I pushed him on the swing, he would look back. Not just glance—look. Into my eyes. It was the only time I could think of that he made eye contact.

“We’re moving to the swing,” I whispered to the dark.

The next morning, I started early. The dew was still clinging to the grass, and the sun had only begun warming the boards of our old porch. I took Christopher by the hand, and we went to the swing.

“You’re swinging!” I said. “Up. Down. Swing! Mommy’s pushing you.”

Again and again, I pushed him. And again and again, he looked back, eyes sparkling, laughter spilling from him like water.

Everyone took turns. His big brothers and sisters and Daddy, we all pushed Christopher on the swing. Day after day. Week after week. Month after month.

And then one day—he looked back and said, clear and bright: “Up!”

It was the first meaningful word I remember him saying. And I knew we had found it, a tiny place, a flicker of light, a square inch of connection. A square inch of love. And we could grow that. We just needed that starting point.̰