Once upon a time...

This is a post that was sent to me by a dear friend from back in the vegas days. I still remember you instructing little jack at only a few months old, while we were all at worship team practice. Even though you were a new mom then,(I was still unmarried), and jack was so young, you were so committed to instructing him well, communicating so beautifully with him as you seek to lead him to our father. A beautiful mommy, indeed. thank you for sharing your moments with us. We all pray for such moments of divine imaginations with our children.

My favorite Mommy moments are different with each of my boys. With our elder son, they often come at the end of an intense period of battle in the shaping of his will. Jack is a fresh six and fresh may be the operative word in describing him lately. He is beyond strong willed. (We were actually told that in the course of his being diagnosed.) Jack is on the autistic spectrum and the shaping of will and the development of social skills are always on the forefront in our dealings with him. This has been a particularly tough week with him in those particular areas. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s the incessant rain that has made his heart restless and wanton in the assertion of his own will more appealing than submission to that of his parents. Perhaps the earth is tilted at a slightly different angle. It could be any number of reasons.
Last night, however, I went to a recipe exchange, while my husband, Dez, stayed home with the boys. My evening out was lovely. His evening in was not. I returned home to a frazzled husband with one boy in bed asleep and the other vocally refusing sleep from now until the end of eternity. Apparently, the evening was a series of time outs with intermittent periods of peace for tooth brushing and pajama donning. Clearly exhausted from the evening’s earlier activities, and our home most certainly in need of peace (as slamming bedroom doors threatened the waking of younger brother, Nate) Dez asked me to see whether or not I could calm Jack enough for bed. So, up the stairs I went.
Jack’s room was ransacked- covers and pillows strewn across the room and its inhabitant… AWOL. A little quick detective work uncovered our boy hiding beneath the bed covers in our room. I took his hand and led him back to his room talking all the while about where he should have been instead and the utter importance of obeying Dad. I re-covered his bed and scooped him up, telling him how much I loved him. He protested for a few seconds and then sank into snuggling, thumb in mouth. As I placed him beneath the covers, he asked me to read him a story. I opted to tell him a story instead, pausing periodically to solicit input as to characters’ names, actions, etc. It was a first time event. You see, Jack frequently “talks a story” to himself as he walks about in circles. He acts out every character, but he becomes very upset when someone else tries to break into the story, even when that someone is one of the characters within it. Last night was something that we did together, though. I can’t really explain it, but for a few minutes we were part of the same moment and it was heaven! Our story was about dinosaurs (his choice) and the characters were Tommy and Detective Jack (the name that he insists we call him at home). As we walked together through the events of the story, it was the stuff of miracles. Our bug-catching friends (which is Jack’s favorite past time) disobeyed their Mommy’s instructions. In essence, he was able through the framework of our story to tell me everything that had happened that night and the consequences of his sin.
We hugged and snuggled. Then, I prayed over him, asking the Lord to give him the desire and Divine intervention to make right choices. It was then that he turned to me and said, “I love you Mom.”
It was the banana split of Mommy moments, cherry atop not withheld.