Faith of a child

For his eighth birthday he wants a heart shaped cake with white frosting and "I Love God" written on it in red letters. He wanted red frosting, but I put my foot down when it comes to red food dye in large quantities. So we compromised with the white frosting and red letters. The "I Love God" was not negotiable.

Why did he decide that's what he wanted on his cake? I don't know. For the past 6 months or so he has been exploring what faith means and what it is to be a Christian; I think this is just one of his ways of stating something that is occupying his thoughts.

When we first started to notice the language delays, when it progressed into realizing that Gates would never see the world in the same way that most of us do I wondered what effect it would have on his ability to develop a strong core of faith. Would he be able to understand what it means to make a decision for Christ? Where does God fit in the mind of someone who is wired to think in logical fact patterns?

Since those early questions I have come to several conclusions. One is that I am no longer comfortable being a proponent of strict decision theology. Are there people who have radical, defining salvation moments? Sure. But for many of us, adults and children alike, the path of faith is a winding one and we can never say exactly when we stepped on the path, only that we know for certain we are on it. If I were to stick to the strictest of decision theology moments I would say that I stepped on that path in third grade when the traveling revival show came to town and scared me with their illustrations of mice, bear traps and pencils snapped in half. OH MY GOODNESS I HAVE TO BECOME A CHRISTIAN RIGHT NOW OR I AM GOING TO HELL!!!!! Or perhaps I could pick the moment in my college years when I decided that my initial decision meant nothing because it happened out of fear, so I was going to choose to believe in God as a loving Father. I am not sure that either of those moments was THE defining moment. Rather, God has slowly drawn me onto the path, with each simple prayer prayed, with each step of faith, with each dawning realization of the depth of His grace.

And so I am comforted by this, by the idea that even if he does not dot all the i's and cross all the t's demanded by many churches, even if he never follows an altar call, even if he never prays the specific prayer of salvation, Gates is learning what it means to love God as evidenced by his desire to declare it on his birthday cake. As he matures he will begin to understand it with more depth. He will understand what sacrifice means and he will understand the grace that has been given to him.

We serve a God of immense and powerful grace, grace that defies the boxes we try to put it in. Maybe that makes me a heretic, or maybe it makes me the mother of a child who will experience God in ways I can't begin to understand.

Connections

I think that Gates was almost three when I truly began to realize that something was not quite right. He'd hit all of the normal developmental milestones right up until it came to talking. And there he stuck. Our communication consisted of one word statements. Tractor. Ball. Milk. I waited and waited for the burst of language to come. I blamed myself for not talking to him more, for putting him in an infant daycare where the husband was partially deaf, for not being proactive enough in developing language. Car. Truck. Book.

He had amazed us shortly after turning two by being able to name every letter of the alphabet. "My child is a genious!" I thought. Juice. Grandpa. Kitty. Slowly his vocabulary grew and he expanded to short sentences of several words. But he wasn't communicating with me. There was no give and take.

His vocabulary continued to grow, but so did my sadness at not being able to truly communicate with him. I talked to him and it was as if he didn't understand at all. At age four I finally took him to be evaluated.

"He meets the criteria for being developmentally delayed in receptive language," they said. "He is also significantly delayed in his gross motor skills."

"No," I thought, "not my child. He could say the alphabet when he was two. He has a great vocabulary." Did he really need special services to help him? Sometimes as parents we beach our boat on the vanishing sandbar of denial, knowing it is eroding beneath us, but not willing to launch ourselves into a sea of desperation.

Eventually I accepted it; I enrolled him in the early childhood education program, speech and occupational therapy. And one day we had a conversation. Not just me talking at him, but him responding as well. Four years later we know he has Aspergers Syndrome, we know that social communication will always be a struggle for him. He can fill your ears with incredible repetitions of facts, questions, rambling while failing to really connect as a person. But for every step he takes in learning to connect, we are right there, waiting, delighted, rejoicing at his efforts.

Sometimes we approach God as if we had Aspergers. We have memorized incredible amounts of facts about him, we can talk about him ad nauseum, we can talk AT him. But we stop short of the give and take of true communication. Communication. Communion. Combined.

And God waits. He waits through the developmental stages of our early faith, when we are exploring this world of "Christianity". He waits as we mature, as we develop a bigger vocabulary to talk about him. He waits as we learn words like "Exegisis," "Dispensationalism," "Calvinism."

Sometimes we stay there, content with our impressive knowledge, our ability to talk about God, even our ability to ask the deep theological questions which we rarely have the patience to wait for the answers on.

But sometimes within our Aspie little selves is that desire to make a connection, the understanding that communication is more than words. Sometimes we look God square in the face and say "I love you." Sometimes we have the patience to stick around for him to answer back. Sometimes we listen. Sometimes we reach out. Connection. Communion. Worship.