Of hidden blessings and double portions.

Chrysallis on bottom right of picture

In our "Life with Autism" I often have to work really hard to stay positive, to remain mentally steadfast.  The abyss of insanity calls me often, and calls me loudly.  It taunts me and dares me to just slowly and gracefully slip into its presence.  It would be so easy to do that.  Some days I don't want to fight it any longer, I want to just run to it and get lost in it and never return.

I guess that's why God has given me a season of such deep appreciation for nature.  A season of planting, growing, reaping.  A bountiful harvest of pictures to take of His creations as I wake up each morning and find a new Kodak moment.  I am often stunned by the sheer joy and wonder and miracles of His creations.  Of his love.  Learning patience in the waiting and the watching, and then the reward of seeing -- the miraculous moment of when HOPEISM Blooms in a vegetable, a flower, a Monarch Butterfly.

The first picture is of a Monarch caterpillar that has just emerged.  I've had the joy of watching the caterpillar from a tiny baby, into a growing caterpillar stripping my Milkweed plants bare, and then to hanging upside down from a limb anchoring himself to form a chrysallis to later emerge as a Butterfly. I've had the blessing of seeing four such life cycles from start to finish.  

It's like I've been living in two worlds.  One, autism.  So often a harsh, cruel world where despite the number, urgency, or desperation of my prayers, they seem to never be answered in how I need them to be for Brandon.  Or for Matt for that matter in some ways.   I see one of them struggle to simply survive seizures, the other one working so hard toward his dream that has had an equal number of roadblocks and setbacks.  In so many ways, this world seemingly devoid of the HOPEISM I so desperately seek for one to experience and the other to achieve.

The other world, this garden of HOPEISM.  Here, there is such abundance.  Such bounty.  Each day that I get a few moments to walk out in my yard to explore, I find some picture perfect moment.  A bountiful harvest of vegetables, a beautiful bloom, HOPEISM emerging.   Many aspects of my garden are not perfect.  There are things that didn't make it, things turned brown and ugly from wilt or humidity, blooms spent and in their final stages before returning to the dirt.  There are bugs that destroy.  But always, always among all that, I find some HOPEISM in a good bug, a great shot, and a gloriously large bloom in my Sunflowers.   I suppose God is speaking to me in that.  Teaching me how to apply that to my autism world.  To find beauty and joy despite the ugly moments.  Focus my camera on those, capture that beauty among the seizures, the meltdowns, the setbacks.  And always it seems, on a day where it's really bad in the autism world, it's really good in my garden world.

Like today -- the past couple of days, Brandon has been so off.  Above and beyond the "off-ness" of autism and seizures.  I remember when we just had autism.  Little did we know how "good" we had it with just that.  The when seizures came we were wishing we could go back to "just autism" because that was better than autism and seizures.  In all that, we were always thankful that unlike many of our friends, we didn't have aggressive behaviors.  And now, these past few days, we've had autism, seizures, and aggressive behaviors.   Oh, for the days of "just autism and seizures."

But what has kept my sanity, is going out in my garden where HOPEISM blooms.  No matter how bad I feel, I always feel so much better out there with my camera hoping to capture some joy. Some HOPEISM.  We've been watching one chrysallis so closely as by number of days, it was so close to emerging.  Every night we checked it, and every morning we went out there to see if the Monarch emerged.  This morning my Mother-in-Law came upstairs to tell me it did!   I was so excited.  Some joy, some HOPEISM in our "Life with Autism" that has been anything but those things lately.

And then as God is always in the business of doing, He went above and beyond.  I was watering some Crepe Myrtles and found another Monarch that had emerged that morning as well.  I never saw that chrysallis on that bush. But there it was on a limb, an empty chrysallis and only a few steps away, the Monarch that had just emerged and was waiting for his wings to dry so he could fly off.  Not one blessing this morning, but two.  I guess one for each world I've felt like I've been living in.  God allowed me to be surprised by that Monarch I didn't even know was there in the chrysallis, forming out of my sight.  God's miracles working where I didn't even see.  I guess to remind me that even in this often dark, HOPEISM-less "Life with Autism" I sometimes feel stuck in, God is working.  There is a chrysallis of healing forming even though I cannot see it. There will be a miracle of HOPEISM emerging that I will one day see.

Dear Lord,
Thank you for the blessings of my garden... Thank you for speaking to me through these moments in watching and being in awe of the wonders of your creations.  Thank you for allowing me to see such HOPEISM in watching the chrysallis each day and then the miracle of when the Monarch emerges.  And thank you most of all, that you are working even though I cannot see that chrysallis of answered prayer in healing for one, and fruition of dreams for the other forming, that I know will emerge one day as a double miracle for my sons.  Thank you for always being at work, even when I cannot see or understand your works.  And thank you that when the Monarch flew away, I held out my hand and he briefly landed there so that I would know beyond any shadow of doubt -- that you are near.  That when we extend our hearts and prayers out to you, your grace and mercy and love will land there.  You are there.  You do hear.  You do answer.

Zechariah 9:12
Return to your stronghold, O prisoners of hope; today I declare that I will restore to you double.