Hawaii

My heart has been heavy again since our encounter with the old Andrew the last three months of 2008. I noticed my life seemed to look thru the autism goggles. Nothing I saw or did was untouched by it, I knew that I wasn't seeing my world thru God's eyes anymore, but thru the eyes of our situation again.

It was four years ago that I came to Hawaii with Dad and where God mercifully gave me freedom from the "autism goggles" I had then. Those goggles were tinted a little different - anger - bitterness - pain - fear. When Dad asked me a few months ago if I would come with him to Hawaii again, I jumped at the chance. I knew if there was one place that I could get these goggles off it would be here.

On Wednesday, we were scheduled to fly to Honolulu for a night because Dad had several meetings for us to attend. But on Wednesday morning we were invited to a time of prayer with the University of Nations advirsory board. There were several couples from Washington that were there to pray specifically for this group of people and Dad and I had an hour to spend with one of them ourselves. This week we officially had shut the doors of Progress Land so they spent about 45 minutes praying with Dad regarding his future, he stopped them then and asked them to pray for me as well.

The wife of the couple said she saw me walking into somewhere new with two suitcases in my hands. I had a sense of awe and excitment on my face and I was there to pursue a new passion. The two suitcases when opened contained all the things that had prepared me for this new passion. I've been asking God for a few months to ignite in me a passion - passion for himself, passion for my husband and children, and a passion for something with spiritual significance. Then she said she saw a string of cans like they put behind cars after weddings, and one string was attached to each of my ankles. Our time of prayer showed one ankle of cans to be my feelings of failure as a parent. I have long struggled with feelings of inadequacy regarding my mothering skills - I asked for forgivness for believing the lies and let go of my inadequacies. The second group of cans represented my guilt over wishing things were different - wishing my life was different and that Andrew was normal. I guess I never really thought I had guilt about it, never thought those kind of thoughts would impact my spirit in such a way. Again I asked God to forgive me for the guilt, to acknowledge that I was truly feeling this way and recognizing those feelings were real but that I don't need to have them anymore, because God doesn't make mistakes.

Ahhhh....the sweet place of freedom and joy. Again, this place has led to my "autism goggles" being removed so that I can see my world thru the eyes God intended for me to have. This has also taught me to take captive every thought - I never imagined that my thinking "Why does Andrew have to be autistic?" would have put me in such a place as it did. I am so grateful to be here, and for the people who are on this campus that are such a great example of faith.

I am excited to head home and to make some changes!