In a Moment's time...

Today is Autism Awareness Day...

I could say so much about that.  And I have.  On each of my blogs:
Life with Autism
Thirty Steps in our Shoes
Life with Autism in Pictures

You can read about our Journey those places.  And if you are a person of faith, you can read how I share our "Life with Autism" and how it has given us a deeper faith through this blog, God's word Day by Day.

But for today, I want to simply share this video.  It is typical of our daily drives home from school each afternoon.  Brandon loves the beat of the music.  He has his favorites.  Typically we listen to Country Music, but when we don't like the songs playing, we switch it to Christian music

These are the lyrics to the song he is rocking out to.  He was literally shaking my car.  And I drive a big car for just that purpose. These lyrics will become much more meaningful to the video once you have read them...

Where I Belong:

Sometimes it feels like I'm watching from the outside
Sometimes it feels like I'm breathing but am I alive
I won't keep searching for answers that aren't here to find

All I know is I'm not home yet
This is not where I belong
Take this world and give me Jesus
This is not where I belong

So when the walls come falling down on me
And when I'm lost in the current of a raging sea
I have this blessed assurance holding me.

All I know is I'm not home yet
This is not where I belong
Take this world and give me Jesus
This is not where I belong

When the earth shakes I wanna be found in You
When the lights fade I wanna be found in You

All I know is I'm not home yet
This is not where I belong
Take this world and give me Jesus
This is not where I belong


Now, watch the video...

Click here to view video

Such happiness in those moments driving home.  No other song that played did he have such a reaction to.

We went home and with it being such a beautiful afternoon, we went out back so he could jump.  I went inside to start his dinner, then heard a thump.  I knew what that meant.  I ran outside and found him face first in the middle of my garden having a Grand Mal seizure.  In that split-second of getting to him and lifting him out of the dirt I can't even tell you what I thought of what this day means to me.  The unfairness of it.  The wrechedness of it.  The evil of it in this sweet boy who was rocking out just a few moments earlier, who was now, in just a moment's time later, face first seizing with a mouth full of dirt.

All I could think of was that song.

So when the walls come falling down on me
And when I'm lost in the current of a raging sea
I have this blessed assurance holding me.

All I know is I'm not home yet
This is not where I belong
Take this world and give me Jesus
This is not where I belong

I can say this.  I am thankful he landed where he did.  I just built that little garden last weekend.  The dirt in it was soft and fresh.  He could have landed a few inches away and lost more teeth on those cement bricks.  He could have landed a few inches above where he did and had his eye impaled with the tomato marker there.

But he didn't.

His head landed in the soft dirt in the middle of that oval garden bed you see in the picture.

I rolled him to a flat spot, dusted off all the dirt I could, and I sat there beside him in the soft breeze on this World Autism Awareness Day and waited for his Daddy to get home from work to help me get him inside.

And as is so fitting on the day people were asked to "Light it up Blue" -- I remembered these lines from that song....

When the earth shakes I wanna be found in You
When the lights fade I wanna be found in You

Those blue lights will fade tomorrow, and nothing will have changed from having lit them.  But everything in the life of someone with autism can change if each person directs their time and energy into something that actually matters and makes a difference.

Watch that video again.  Then look at the picture.  That all happened in just a moment of time. 

Today was that kind of moment in time.

One where so much could have been done by Autism Speaks.

But yet again, nothing of any lasting meaning was.