Moses and Autism

When God decided to give Moses to the Hebrews, he had his mother put him in the reeds of the Nile River to save his life from the Egyptian king. When his mother did this, the Egyptian princess took him out of the water and called him her son.

So, Moses learned all about diplomacy from the Egyptians. After he came back from his exile to the desert (to free the Hebrews) Moses was already accustomed to the Egyptians …He knew their laws…He knew how they reacted to things. So basically God’s plan was to have him know; not only how speak to the Hebrew’s, but to Egyptian’s as well. He would already know how to deal with them and how the court in the pharaoh’s palace worked…And the pharaoh would, most likely, already know him because he was raised in the court of a pharaoh.

God works in mysterious ways.

My cousins for example.

My one cousin was so very profoundly mentally impaired that she could not walk or talk, and had the mind of an infant. I didn’t see her until she died. However, I knew of her. She responded to music, I remember, I remember talk of my aunt and uncle having to travel to see her. However, for all my life, until she died in her late thirties, I only could imagine her face. More the pity. My mother told me that when they had her put in a psychiatric hospital as a child, that my mother and my aunt were so affected by the tour of the hospital, that they came out of it clinging to one another as if they had been through a Halloween House of Horrors.

Even though I never met her face to face, the sharing of that knowledge of their experience was so raw and powerful, that I vowed that Booga would never be institutionalized, not if I could help it.

My other cousin was born with a debilitating anomaly that she dealt with, with amazing courage and humor. She defied all odds by doing things like running, dancing and having children. She put to shame the doctors that said she might not live but a tiny march of months, by becoming a beautiful, intelligent woman and by avoiding the fate of other’s born with the same deformity.

I believe she did this through her faith which, though others might not realize is actually quite strong.

I say this because people and especially children, are cruel and did not make her life easy by any means. She was teased and ridiculed for something that she could do nothing about. She was victimized for being born with something that could have as easily happened to anyone in the world; for something that was as chosen as the color of her skin.

All these things I believe, these things, and the loss of my baby sister at birth, prepared me for my son.

I was eighteen going on nineteen in 1981….

I sat in a guidance counselor’s office at college after taking a career aptitude test. I waited as his eyes scoped over results and finally he looked up at me, he asked, “How would you feel about being a teacher of children with special needs?”

And like Moses faced with God asking him to go up against the Egyptians, I said, “I don’t think I would have enough patience to do that.”

And like Jonah….God had me spat out by the fish of fate, on to the shores of Autism.

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