The Autism Bucket
In the movie Amazing Grace, about the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade, John Newton’s character says that “God sometimes does His work with gentle drizzle, not storms. Drip. Drip. Drip.”
Over the last five years, if I’ve learned anything, it’s that change and growth happen one drip at a time. This is not how I operate. We have a pool in our backyard. I never touch the water before I dive in. I just go head first. When I received Evie’s diagnoses, I dove into the proverbial ocean. I was drowning in information, resources, and options. The information, both the content and the volume, was suffocating. I guess it felt a little like drowning.
The late Timothy Keller said “God will only give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything He knows”. God has slowed me down. He has graciously paced me. He has has brought podcasts, friends, random conversations, therapists, doctors, books, and conferences into my life, dropping singular but robust insights, one at a time, into my bucket. I now refer to this as my Autism Bucket. Drip, drip, drip. They come when I need them and when I have the capacity to implement them. Sometimes my bucket feels overwhelmingly empty, and I want God to turn on the hose, but he knows that in order for truth to settle into action, and for action to become habit, I need one at time.
I’m thankful for these drips. They are bringing about change and growth, healing and hope. Based on this principle, this gift, I’m committing to working on one skill/concept a week from my own research, based on the approach we are taking in terms of Evie’s treatment (Uniquely Human: A Different Way of Seeing Autism is a great place to begin to understand that approach). My hope is that sharing these drips will help our friends and family come alongside Dave and I, and to love Evie well. I could do this privately in our family group chat, but I’m sharing publicly in humble hope that another neuroradiant family might find these insights to be a gentle drip in their own buckets.
xo,
Em