When I Imagined Being A Parent…

  I pictured something entirely different than what it has become.  To my husband’s and my pleasant surprise, we found out we were pregnant just 4 short months after getting married. We were thrilled and I eagerly pictured the boy that he was going to be.  I knew he was a boy from the beginning and that was what I had always wanted first. Everything seemed to be normal throughout the pregnancy until my water broke 7 weeks early.  He seemed fine, big for a preemie, and because of lots of determination on the part of us, he only spent 4 short days in NICU.  He was healthy, but progressed slowly.  “He’s fine,” we said “Of course he will progress slowly, he was born almost 2 months early,” or so we thought.  He turned 2, and he still couldn’t talk or do any of the things that a normal 2 year old could do and we kept waiting for it to happen, the light bulb to come on and magically he would be caught up.  We tried everything… “We’ll put him in school, he just needs peer models,”  “I do too many things for him, I need to let him be more independent,” “He’s just not being exposed to enough language, we’ll read more,” and most of these things failed. He learned some things, like putting on his shoes and clothes, so we felt maybe we were on a good course.  At 2 ½ he finally started to say some words, and it was mostly repeating, “That’s how you learn,” we said, but at 3 he was still repeating.  We went to the doctor for something totally unrelated and they were used to him not speaking, so it was not a big concern for them, until he repeated something that the doctor said.  The doctor turned to me and said “If he is still repeating at this age, you need to get that checked out,” and I didn’t hear the rest, just one word registered with me…Echolalia.   To be honest, I was in hardcore denial, and I waited a few days before I even looked it up stubbornly refusing to believe that there was anything wrong with my son.  Eventually I relented and did some research. The first article I clicked on seemed promising so I began to skim through not paying a lot of attention, and then my eyes focused on a particular phrase, “…usually associated with Autism” and my world shattered.

Autism?  Autism.   “My son is not Autistic!” , I told myself over and over all the while blinking back furious tears as the realization gradually dawned on me, my son is autistic. I had never looked up the signs of Autism, but my heart and my mother’s instinct knew that I had my answer. I don’t remember how long I wept that day, or how many times I’ve wept since, wept for the difficult struggle ahead for him, the life that I felt he had lost, the death of all my foolish childhood fantasies about motherhood, and the day to day struggles that we encounter. Reality came barreling down on me full force as I thought “Oh no, what can we do?” In the beginning, I felt powerless. Would he ever be able to live by himself? Would he ever want to get married? What about school? College? What were we going to do? My mind was racing to all of the worst possible scenarios. I began to research the signs and some of the more obscure ones fit, but not some of the main ones. Preoccupied with spinning, check, repetition, check, quoting entire scripts from his favorite movies, check, and the list went on but the one thing that I couldn’t check was unsocial. He was extremely social and loved to be around other kids so I told myself that he was too social to be autistic. To get some perspective, I made an appointment with his doctor to talk about what was going on, I didn’t know what we could do but I knew we just couldn’t let him drown.  She didn’t rule out Autism, but she said that she didn’t see much to make her jump right to it.  She told me that she saw some really encouraging things, gave me a whole list of things to do, and told me that she was going to make an appointment with a specialist for us. We are very fortunate to within an easy driving distance of Amos Cottage, which deals with these kinds of things and the specialist had a year long wait, so I began to work on the rest of the list. We enrolled him in some programs and within just a few weeks, my son started to make sentences. His own sentences and not just memorized sentences that he repeated. As the year progressed, some things improved, while some actually got worse. When the time finally came for us to see the specialist, we came prepared. I had notes from his speech therapist, notes from his More at 4 teacher, as well as samples of his art work, or writings would be a better description, my own observations, and questions we wanted answered. I tried to make everything as clear as possible so we could get some kind of diagnosis as I was terrified they would tell me that they just didn’t know what was wrong with him.  Atypical Autism however, was what she told us, that he needed no special classes, normal kindergarten, and that by the time he was finished with 2^nd grade there would be no noticeable difference between him and the other kids.  He’ll always be a little quirky, a little bit weird but there will be no noticeable surface difference.  This was, of course, the best we could’ve hoped for under the circumstances.

 

When I imagined being a parent, I pictured something entirely different than what it has become.  Sure, that day I was happy with my son’s prognosis and I still am. My son is a brilliant, happy, loving, silly child with the most beautiful smile who loves to be the clown and make others laugh. I’m so proud of him and all of his progress and he amazes me everyday.  Although prognosis wise we are very blessed, how do we make it until the end of 2^nd grade?  I’ll admit it; I’m lost when it comes to dealing with him. What do you do when you are having 20-30 meltdowns a day, he’s almost 5 and still not fully potty- trained, and you can’t really communicate deeper than simple commands, and you are glad that the gluten free diet worked for Jenny McCarthy, but honestly what regular person can afford it in this economy? What do you do when you feel like you have dredged up everything in you that you can to try to help and it just isn’t enough, and it will never be enough?  I don’t have any of the answers to these questions. When we first started down this dark road, I came up with expectations, fantasies of how this would turn out, and like my childhood fantasies of motherhood I was wrong. I understand why the symbol for Autism is a puzzle. Nothing is ever the same, you really just try to find the right piece to make things work, and like so many puzzles we encounter, pieces are missing. You blindly search for them, but are still left with the glaring holes of an incomplete picture. My situation is good, and so much more hopeful than other parents who are wrestling with this, but I think what has really been the worst part of this is feeling alone. People just don’t understand, they mean well but at the end of the day they really don’t have a clue what you are going through. They never encounter the stares you get in the store when you are dealing with a meltdown from ignorant people who think they know how to be a better parent than you. “You’re just not disciplining him enough,” they say. They’ve never had to fight back tears at a park when a child comes up to you and says “Your kid is really weird,”  and you drag your child, in full meltdown mode because he wasn’t ready to leave from the park because you are afraid you will say something to this rotten little child that is probably undeserved. Perhaps it is deserved, but you hate it when people make judgments about your child without all of the facts and you don’t want to be guilty of the same kind of ignorance; after all he could’ve had Tourette’s or something, right? Your friends, and family their hearts are in the right place but they really don’t understand. I think if the truth be told, not all Autism parents will understand because of the vastness of the spectrum. I saw something one time that said,” Autism: it’s not a processing error, it’s a different operating system.” and it really stuck with me because it is so true. A different operating system, a puzzle, however it helps me to describe this, no matter how alone I feel…my story is just one, just one story in the thousands of nameless, faceless 1 in 150 I keep hearing about.  For every frustration I feel, every tear I shed, every failure in handling things, every battle I fight, every time I feel totally lost, every time I feel like I am not helping him progress I have a sunny, forgiving smile on the face of my son, my Autistic son and I find the strength to keep fighting. To keep trying, to keep living and to keep praying, to keep trying new things  and I hope that my story will remind everyone who reads this to do the same. 1 in 150, we really aren’t as alone as we feel. No, being a parent isn’t at all what I thought that it would be, but really is it such a bad thing?

 

Is Fantasy Escapism?

     I love to read. I have found that when the TV’s off and a book’s open, I feel so much more relaxed, and the evening goes by much slower, which is great when you’re dreading returning to work the next day. And I don’t always just read Scripture, or theology books, or “devotionals”, I read literature. I have sitting on the shelf beside my spot on the couch several books: The Christian Bible (New American Standard and English Standard), An Anthology of American Literature, An Anthology of English Literature, Moby Dick, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, The Canterbury Tales, Beowulf, The Lord of The Rings, and a few more. I leave those there so that every time the tube’s on, I see them and remind myself there’s probably something better I could be doing. Is it just entertainment, or is there something else in those pages?

     I love fantasy literature. I’ve read The Lord of The Rings five times. I know the biological differences between orcs and trolls. I have a map of Narnia hanging beside me right now. I’m a huge fantasy nerd. I’ve always preferred fantasy to so-called “main stream” literature. When I discussed my love of fantasy with one of my Christian friends in college, he told me he hated fantasy because it was “just a method of escaping reality.” I thought long and hard about this statement. Was I just pouring myself into childish make-believe because I was dissatisfied with reality? Was I wasting my life escaping from the stress of life? After much thought and study, I’m convinced that the opposite is true. Fantasy literature (or rather good fantasy literature) actually illustrates the most important themes of life and reality more accurately than most “main-stream” literature can.

     To be intellectually honest about  the question of whether fantasy is escapism- of course it is! All literature is escapism. There is an important feature of literature (memorize this) The map is not the territory. A piece of art cannot completely contain every detail of reality. Can you imagine trying to read a book where everything about a scene had to be described? Every single detail of every leaf of every tree, every thread of every sweater, every hair on every head would have to be described completely or it would not contain full reality. We can’t read a book where every character’s thoughts are traced, or every facial expression is written down. Literature is just a map of reality, not reality itself. So all literature, regardless of its stresses on realism, takes away from literal reality and puts us in the author’s creation to at least some degree. This is illustrated best in the short story (very short story), “On Exactitude in Science“ by Jorge Louis Borjes, which I will reprint here in its entirety:

. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

     In this wonderful story, we see the absurdity of trying to produce a piece of art which is an exact representation of the original subject. Not only is it impossible, it is utterly useless! As a map is supposed to be a manageable and comprehendible representation of geography, so is literature to be a manageable and comprehendible representation of reality. Don’t misunderstand me, good literature does not need to be realistic, nor does it need to follow any of the conventions of modern realism, but good literature must speak to reality in some form. Where mainstream literature leaves us desiring more about our souls, fantasy literature is happy to confront us about our deepest longings. I can think of no other genre which so frequently deals with suffering, immortality, the soul, life after death, or destiny. Nor can I think of any genre that deals with man’s virtue or man’s struggles as readily and accurately as fantasy. Thinking back to The Lord of The Rings I can recall virtues and universal struggles found in all cultures of people: trust, honesty, companionship, endurance, justice, faith, courage, hope, redemption, temptation, and failure.

     As beings made in God’s image, we are designed with a desire to create beauty. Christians don’t have to only write cheesy allegory and bad life-lesson novels. Do you remember God’s instructions for the construction of the temple? There were objects in the temple that were only for beauty, such as the pillars which supported no weight, or the jewels which had no practical purpose other than aesthetic beauty. We have fooled ourselves into thinking that art is worldly, particularly in the area of fantasy literature. Think back to the harsh and unfounded attacks Christians made on Harry Potter and its author, J.K. Rowling. We are made in the image of the Great Storyteller. It is part of our nature to create wonderful stories for our pleasure. Those of us who love to create stories and write them down should know that God has blessed us with this ability and He is happy when we write. As creatures who have had our minds set free from the curse of sin, our imaginations should soar beyond the heavens.

     So what about escapism- that vice of the mind that threatens to destroy our souls? Well honestly, I’m not sure what’s so bad about wanting to escape for a while. We take physical vacations away from life, bills, work, too-close inlaws, and so forth. Why not take a mental vacation and give that greatest of organs a much needed break? What’s the big deal? More importantly, just because the book I’m reading has a horse with wings or a Dark Lord doesn’t make it an inferior book. It can teach and stimulate thoughts about reality and truth just as effectively as Faulkner, Hemingway, Morrison, Oates, or any of the other great masters of modernity. So begone naysayers of Narnia and meddlers in Middle Earth! I’d rather be questing! Bring me my staff and pointy hat!

100 Hits In One Day!!

One hundred hits in less than one day! Thanks to all those who visited on our first day. We’re looking forward to many great posts in the future. Keep coming back!

What is Christian Art?

Should there be a difference in the art a Christian produces and art of the general culture? I’ll narrow the question more specifically. Should Christian artists make a conscious effort to produce art that is in a fundamental way an ”answer” to culture and distinctly different from pop culture.?

Good art represents the artist. We don’t have to think consciously about what we’re producing to have our art represent our thought. An existentialist artist doesn’t sit down and say, “I’m going to make existential art.” It is in the air he breathes, so it naturally comes out.

Making art of any form is more than just an artist being a product of his culture and producing art. Art reflects where the artist is as a person. Gauguin’s noble savage shows where he was. Gauguin believed that man was better off outside the realm of society, and that if we returned to a “savage” state we could be free from greed, murder, you name it. He tried to return to a less civilized situation himself and it failed ultimately.                  

     

If as Christians we are going to study art or try to be artists, we need to understand what is going on in our culture. In Christianity, we have made the mistake of thinking that art is in a totally separate category from the rest of life. Since the Romantic period of the 18th and 19th century, the arts have been elevated away from the normal thinking of men, so that an artist can create a really atrocious piece of work, but if they are considered great artists, the work is excused. The Romantic period had a very skewed view of the nature of art. To the Romantic man, good art was really only produced by suffering people, and art had to communicate the confusion of life. Romantic art failed because it couldn’t show the beauty and glory of the reality that existed all around them. Men in their deepest thoughts know that the world contains great beauty.  For the same reason, the Grunge movement and the Gothic movement of the 1990’s arose. They saw only emptiness and brokenness and showed only that in their music and art. Romanticism, Grunge, and Goth all developed conventions of what art should be, instead of allowing the art to come out of who they really were. In reality, art should encompass all aspects of life, good and bad, because it is a reflection of the artist and his innermost person.

  An example of how art is separated from the artist is Sylvia Plath. The writer Sylvia Plath committed suicide. She had a fantastic ability to communicate the condition and dilemma of man, that we don’t know who we are or why we’re alive, or anything really. Critics of her writings will say that it is not necessarily bad that she killed herself, since her writing was so fantastic and that was what was really important about her. This is terrible. It would have been much better that she had been just a mediocre artist and known the answers to her questions. We’ve separated the art from the artist, and have dehumanized him or her into a production machine. The humanness of the artist has been removed from his creation.

If a Christian decides to produce art, he will often say, “I am a Christian, I am an artist, this is how I will work.” This is a misunderstanding of the nature of art. Because art really does express what we believe and where we are, (I’m not speaking of superficial art. Drawing a picture of a doggie or a kitty is not what I’m talking about.) we can’t just consciously apply Christian conventions to our art to make it look Christian. If we are Christians, then our art, be it paint, marble, film, poetry, novels, or whatever, will contain the characteristics that define us as Christian humans, not Christian robots.

We should never set out with the goal of painting a Christian picture, or writing a Christian book, or making Christian music. That is dishonest. The life that truly reflects Jesus Christ will not have to put on fake methods to force his art into Christianity. Christ lived on this earth as a genuine man. He never had to wake up in the morning and remind Himself, “Okay, today I’m going to act like a Messiah.” That’s absurd. He behaved like the Messiah because He was the Messiah. He never consciously “acted” like the Messiah. He never changed His behavior to live up to the cultural conventions of what made a good Messiah. Christian art is art that is produced by Christians, not art that looks like Christian art.