#hopespoken

I met a woman last night named Hannah. She has a boy named Elijah.

Elijah is autistic. He’s a seven-year old kindergartner who recently began speaking.

Did you catch that? He just recently began speaking.

Well, I should clarify. For many years, Elijah only repeated others’ phrases, especially those he heard in movies or from books his parents read to him. Counselors and therapists said those repeated phrases “didn’t count.” Not until he could formulate his own phrases would Elijah be considered verbal. Don’t engage those repeated phrases as though they are conversation, they said.

Hannah and her husband went along. They were out of their depth, and they knew it. So they did what we all do, and let the voices of expertise drown out the shouts of their own insecurities. They ignored their intuition and kept to the plan. Make Elijah come into our world rather than descending into his.

After many years, they stopped. “Bull crap,” they finally said. Hannah and the mister looked at each other one day and said, “Let’s get to know our son.” So they listened and paid close attention.

And found a miracle.

What had seemed like nonsense verbalizations turned out to be the real deal. Elijah was communicating, over and over again, accurately choosing characters and settings and plot lines to tell his parents what he was thinking and feeling. Those phrases turned out to be a remarkably clear window into Elijah’s mind.

But that wasn’t the miracle. The miracle was this: as soon as they entered Elijah’s world, he joined ours.

He began speaking his own words.

How very like Jesus this is. He comes into our world, hangs out with us here, and then invites us to join him in his. Not the other way around.

I’m at a cool women’s conference called Hope Spoken. This weekend, I’ll hear women at the stage describe how God has moved in their stories. It’ll be nice, and I’m happy to be here.

But if no one says one more interesting thing to me all weekend, I’ll still leave full. Because look at Elijah, how very like he is Emmanuel, “God with us.” God meets us here, right here, in the kitchen, in the work, in the fight, in the rest. We don’t have to speak his language, because as it turns out, he inhabits ours.

#hopespoken