Transcript:

I want you to imagine a 16 year old young girl.

It’s the early 70s.

She is just coming into her own during the rise of flower power, bell bottoms and rose tinted sunnies. She falls hard for an 18-year-old guy and before you know it they really let peace and love take over and she’s pregnant.

This is a tricky time in history between the rise of feminism and hard tradition but her family leans more towards the latter and so she gets married.

Because she’s only 16, her parents have to grant permission for her to marry and her fiancée doesn’t tell his family at all.

This secretive wedding takes place at her parent’s home all the while her new in laws have no clue their son is a husband and that they are expecting a grandchild.

To maintain secrecy her new spouse goes back home that night. So she is just a small girl, hardly a woman, pregnant, falling asleep on her wedding night, alone, in her childhood bedroom.

A few weeks later, in the middle of another lonely night she starts to bleed. Now all of a sudden this potential loss of a secret baby can no longer remain a secret. She has no choice. She has to call her husband and his unsuspecting parents and deliver the news of not only a wedding but an unborn grandbaby that’s in danger.

That baby did survive the night and for years and years and years that baby girl felt like a mistake. Like she didn’t belong. The atmosphere in which she was conceived, the environment in which she was birthed, so volatile, uncertain, it just didn’t seem like she was even supposed to be.

This continued feeling of not belonging would follow her into adulthood until her own children would gift her perspective and purpose. 

That little baby girl is me. Mocha 10.

My childhood was complicated to say the least.

There was a lot of trauma. A lot of divorces. A lot of marriages. I wish I could tell you otherwise but it was far from a charmed life. With threats of child protective services getting involved, my mom had no choice and allowed my siblings and me to move in with my dad for our elementary years. Those years are a blur of hard things and this persistent sense of my life just being one big fat mistake.

My freshman year in high school I was granted permission to move back with my mom who I never stopped loving so deeply, so tenderly despite it all.

She was on her third marriage and this guy was a monster. There was abuse. A lot of abuse. All kinds. Meanwhile my mom was having an affair so she wasn’t head over heels either I assume.  

I think most of my friends and teachers knew that something was going on at home but no one really knew, you know? I was a cheerleader and athlete and my school days were drastically different then my home evenings.

I remember walking in from cheerleading practice one day and this monster of a man was directing his hate and abuse towards my little brother. Enraged, in front of my mom and this guy and my brother I yelled, “Why are you even with this guy?! You have a boyfriend!”

The next day, when I got home from school, all of my belongings were in garbage bags on my doorstep.

My mom took me to court.

She emancipated me.  

At just 15 years old, I learned to live with friends, from couch to couch.

So when my English class at school called for a creative writing assignment, I didn’t have to be creative at all. I wrote about couches. I wrote about court. I wrote about sleeping in my boyfriend’s truck.

Almost as quickly as I turned in that paper, I was placed into foster care. Foster care was my first glimpse into normalcy. My first view of what a loving home should be. My first experience of what a safe and healthy home feels like.

I really don’t know how, but I graduated high school.

College was always my plan and I actually had big dreams of becoming a doctor. I had a particular calling to help Alzheimer’s families and patients for some reason.

I’ve always been a helper. I am sensitive and a total empath. Helping is an impulse.  So I enrolled in college and claimed premed as my major.

I began to date this guy shortly after, and oh, oh you are going to be so upset but listen, I was just so vulnerable, ok? I was so vulnerable. So when he told me that he could not be with a woman who was a doctor, when he told me that I had to be a nurse, you know? When he told me that I had to switch to nursing so that we could stay together. I did it. I switched my major to nursing. Even as I share this, the humiliation comes in one crushing wave all over again. I was gaslighted by a really good gaslighter.

I eventually made my way out of that relationship and changed my mind and thought that I wanted to be a nurse practitioner. I got accepted into this great program at Vanderbilt which is so wildly known and to prepare I began to do some assistant work at a local teaching hospital.

I became fast friends with an oncologist who was funny and smart but, she was a church girl. She would invite me to youth groups and bible studies and I was like no freaking way.

I have tried church before and you know I never hated God I never blamed God for my childhood or all the horrible things that I saw and felt or went through, but I did continually feel like I wasn’t good enough. I wasn’t worthy enough. How could I walk into this place that was so pure, so holy with every single scar so visible and all of my dirty past that I carried with me every day?

My doctor friend, she was so patient with me. She valued me. She didn’t give up on me. So I finally went. I started studying the Bible and I was that girl at a church Bible study that when we would be reading a particularly incredible story, I would be the one in the corner that would yell out “holy shit I never knew that!” HA! You know? Or I would read about someone in the Bible that wasn’t so nice and be like “man what a real asshole!”

It took me two years to commit to God and the doors just started opening for me. I was asked to go into full-time ministry leaving my family members at a loss. They were like, “oh, so you’re going to say no to a Vanderbilt acceptance because you want to pass out Bibles on street corners?” Not quite the same but I understood their confusion. At the time I was working at a medical office and this guy comes in. He works for LabCorp and he’s tall and handsome. The attraction was pretty instant but I had a pretty good mean streak of making bad choices by that point, you know? So I did the only thing I thought would make him forget me forever, I invited him to church.

And he went!

We dated on and off for about three years and we finally committed to each other and married in 1998, the exact same year that we both became ordained ministers.

We were sent to California to be part of a very large church where we would be in charge of campus ministries.  A couple of months later, I was pregnant with my daughter. She was gorgeous and at only five months old I found myself staring at another pink positive sign that was definitely not part of the plan. Baby number two was on the way and it would be a son. He was two weeks old when I knew something was different. The disconnect was so profound. I wept one day with a friend telling her, “I don’t think he likes me. “I don’t think he loves me.” “How can you have a baby that doesn’t love you?” He was so stiff and not present and it was such a stark contrast to my little girl, my little daughter who loved me so quickly, who was so warm and cuddly.

This baby boy was just different. No eye contact, no words, no babbling. I remember one time saying his name 75 times out loud just to see if I could get his attention.  It’s a little embarrassing to admit to you but I was so desperate and I just wanted him to respond. I would get pots and pans and bang them close by, nothing. I thought he was deaf but when a certain cartoon would come on, he would run to the TV, put his head between his legs and watch TV upside down. After bath time I would try to soothe him with songs and lotions, he would scream. He began to eat things that were absolutely not intended for human consumption. String, crayons, rocks, sand, dirt.

One day as I finished a quick bible study to start my morning, I heard a knock at the door.  I opened the door to find my neighbor holding my 10-month-old son. He had found a way out of the house, along a busy street, and was crawling on the sidewalk. As he was passed between our arms I was speechless. Shame that heavy, doesn’t come with words. I had a wanderer on my hands.

He was 18 months when I asked one of our babysitters who was in a special education program at the local college if she noticed anything about him. “In all of the time you’ve cared for him and watched over him have you noticed anything strange, anything weird?”, I asked her. She said, “actually if you really want to know, I’ve been talking to my professor about your son for months and my professor says that it really sounds like autism.”

Now this professor was world renowned at the time and had a crazy long wait list but by some miracle, she offered to give my son a free evaluation if I would agree that her class would be able to observe.

At that time, California was the only state that was diagnosing autism at 18 months and it was just a miracle how it all came to be. So after a 45 minute evaluation, my son was diagnosed with autism.

I wish I could tell you that I was grateful for the help. That I felt in good hands, but the truth is I was devastated. I remember driving straight to the book store the day we got the diagnosis and I bought a book. It talked about refrigerator mothers and said that all children with autism had moms that were cold, detached and everything in this book was awful. Your child will not read. Your child will not talk. Your child will not get married. Will not. Will not. Will not.

That same night I took him out of his little toddler bed and I slept with him. I wept for hours. I mourned. I grieved.

I felt like he had died. That is so hard to say and even harder to explain. I mean, I knew that I had him. Like I knew he wasn’t dead. He was breathing and beautiful but it’s like the image or the vision of what I thought my son would be, was gone. The way I envisioned his life and our relationship was gone. It’s like I was holding a stranger. It was one of the most terrifying times in my life not knowing his future.

That doctor wrote us a letter that gave us immediate access to speech and occupational therapy and applied behavior analysis. He was able to attend an inclusive autism center and the state paid for everything. I was never charged.  Not for diapers not for respite care. He got every single service. Free.

A couple years later we were asked to help out in a church in a different state. This state happened to be where my husband’s side and my father’s side of the family resided.

We were happy to be closer to family but I was suffering major depression. My husband was struggling to connect with a son that lived in his own world 24/7.

When we moved we decided to enroll my son in a special needs elementary school in our new town.

The first time I walked my son down the halls of that little school, I felt sick to my stomach. The inclusive center in California was bright, beautiful, high tech, innovative and colorful. This was a small, old colorless building. The hallways lined with wheelchairs. The smell was particular, distinct.  

My soul and mind were just not in sync as my brain took snapshots of the hallway images and registered the aroma as unpleasant for sure and while my heart was yelling, “Is this our life? No. It can’t be our life. Can it?”

Luckily the physical building was in no way a representation of the beauty and colors and kindness of the hearts of the teachers who were right inside.

At home, we did go through an epic phase of fecal smearing that had me and my husband cleaning a basement two or three times a day.

But my son’s wandering was way more devastating than smeared feces on walls.

These were hands down some of our hardest days.

The city police and firefighters, they knew us well.

He was lost more times than I can count.

He was found following garbage trucks at 4am, splashing in wade pools in the middle of lightning storms. He would climb trees so high it would require firefighter intervention.

One day after a frantic search, I walked outside to find my son straddling our second story dormer window. He was in a pamper, pretending he was riding a horse. He was 4 years old.  I can still remember the jolt that shot through my body as my knees slammed the pavement.

There were many an afternoon of screaming through the streets, yelling, calling, praying, mothers walking out of their homes joining me in weeping and praying and searching.

With every ounce of strength I could muster I would ask my friends to check the bottom of neighborhood pools for me.

But the last straw, the last time that really stays etched in my brain…

This was the longest search I can remember. For about 45 minutes the neighborhood searched for my son. Neighbors, friends, fire trucks, police, all lined the streets as I began to lose hope.

We lived in a house that was right next-door to brothers. One brother was quadriplegic and the other brother cared for him when he was not working.

All of a sudden one brother comes out of his home holding my son, with outstretched arms like he was holding a ticking bomb. At 5 years old, my son had found his way inside the neighbor’s home, discovered this man lying in bed and decided to get into bed with him and watch TV.

All the while this man could do nothing. He couldn’t move or speak.

As they placed my son back in my arms my body began to shake. Hard.

I remember right then and there telling God, I cannot live this way anymore. If it is your will that my son will die than he will die. If it is your will that my son will drown then he will drown. If it is your will that my son gets lost then he will get lost I mean whatever happens… it has to be God’s will. I had so much PTSD in my own life, my own upbringing, that I no longer had the capacity to bear this too. The word that comes to my mind is surrender. I just surrendered. I remember totally relinquishing responsibility for his life. I would continue to protect him as much as I could of course, but all the while understanding that ultimately his life was not in my hands. It was a turning point for me and gave me such clarity. I was more present with him and others. I remember it immediately and permanently shifting my view from seeing autism on legs to seeing my son as a person. A whole person, a whole separate person beyond the autism.

So all you mommas who are there right now… in the hard…let me tell you… my son did talk. He called me “good morning” for years because of the way I said “good morning” to him each day upon waking. But eventually I was called “momma” which I dreamed of for years.

My son was mainstreamed in middle school. We were blessed to have the teachers we did year after year. But we absolutely did our part as parents and stayed human, present, and connected. We wanted to make sure my son was never just another file in the special education department.  

My son is intelligent and graduated high school with honors.

He has a sister who loves him dearly. She maintains a hard requirement that to be her friend a boyfriend or husband you have to also know that her brother will be a part of her life forever.  She’s artistic. She’s a musician. She dreams of opening a school of arts for special needs children one day. I attribute some of this to the fact that growing up we included her in everything. Every decision. Every brainstorm session. She even gave her input before IEP/ARD meetings.

As for the future,

The other day my son called me at work and he said “Mom I’m gonna go take a walk.” Instantly I could feel my heart beating in my toes. What if he is walking and gets hot and takes off his clothes? What if he hears a baby cry in a stroller and asks the mom “what did you do to him?”

It is so hard to dream big for an adult son that is not safe taking a walk by himself. But I do dream for him. I dream that he will get to do what he loves to do in his life and that he finds the level of independence he is worthy of.

Fear? yeah I still have fear. I fear I haven’t done enough. Have I worked hard enough to help him reach his full potential?

In this whole story, our entire journey up until now, I regret that I didn’t let people in. I didn’t ask for help enough. I should’ve let people in quicker, sooner I should’ve asked for help faster and I should have known that not everybody should help or be let in but you have to trust yourself to know who and when and how.

My children have unknowingly gifted me profound perspective on the life of my mom. The childhood that made her. The trauma that followed. With only an eighth grade education and equally broken home, I have come to peace with the fact that my mom, she deserves grace too.

In the end, maybe even forgiveness is all about the surrender.