It’s the end of Autism Awareness month, and I want to tell you something I’ve learned recently from my son Jack, who was diagnosed at age 3 and is now 17. Jack has signisficant trouble communicating. Functionally, he is considered to be “non-verbal.” He speaks very little to us, and not at all to anyone […]
Today is Autism Awareness Day. Can I tell you a story about being an autism dad? It happened four years ago. My son Jack, who is autistic and doesn’t speak, was twelve at the time, and his neurotypical brothers were nine and six. The three of them share a bedroom, but Jack was going through […]
Dear Jack, All birthdays are special, but some are more special than others. The sixteenth birthday is one of the very best ones, because when you turn sixteen, you’re almost done being a kid. And on days like this, a lot of people start to think more about what they might be able to give […]
We need to talk about those screenshots. When Jack started texting me a couple months ago, I was ecstatic. He has autism, you see, and at fifteen years old, he still doesn’t really speak. We communicate, but we never converse. And I’ve always wanted to converse. Then, all of a sudden, there he was telling […]
Dear Jack, Over the past several months, you and mom have been working at the kitchen table with your communication device. Since spoken words are still so tricky for you, we’re exploring this other way of talking. You touch the screen and choose between picture icons, common words, and a qwerty keyboard. When you find […]
One of my heroes died back in May. He died again last week. I never met Ravi Zacharias, but he has been a giant to me since in my earliest years of ministry. I used to do the dishes with him back when podcasts were just becoming a thing. I’ve heard many preachers at the […]
I almost lost my dad last week. Covid-19 knocked over his door and pushed him into the I.C.U. He was alone in there for days and days. Even my mom, his wife of fifty-one years, could not be with him. I think of my dad and all those like him, forced into cruel medicinal isolation […]
Dear Jack, It’s been seven months since the world stopped. You were so sad in the beginning. You didn’t want to get out of bed, and you didn’t want to play. But the most shocking this was this: you didn’t want to watch movies. Do you remember that? It was the first time this has […]
It’s a drizzly morning, and Jack is taking a walk with me. He had a rough night, which means Sara and I had a rough night, and now we’re trying to shake it off by meandering the streets of our wet little town before it wakes. A pair of exercising moms offer us a good […]
This is Jack. He’s fourteen years old, and loves watching movies and playing on devices. He has autism, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive disorder. Jack is functionally non-verbal. The words he does have are mostly clumped in memorized phrases, which he deploys at predictable times. His current phrase—and the most troublesome—is, “cover your ears.” “Cover […]
Dear Jack, This morning, were were both up early, and we sat together in the dark living room in front of your favorite heater. You were wrapped in your soft blanket, and I had my cup of coffee, and you leaned in close and put your head on my shoulder the way you have since […]
Close your eyes and you’ll picture him—a rail-thin boy running from his puppy, shrieking with laughter and fear. He’s still learning to work his stretched out limbs, and his voice has not yet settled on a tone after its pubescent free fall. Everything about him is in transition. Our boy is covered from head to […]
She used to stand on top of a box, frozen in the rapturous potential of her wardrobe. I don’t know how we accumulated so many princess dresses, but she loved them all, and choosing one took time. At first I would hurry her. Getting dressed shouldn’t take all day, I was sure of it. But […]
Can I tell you of our last adventure with Janae? It was Christmas time. She gave us all winter hats and a night at the Oregon Gardens. The place was a yuletide forest wonderland, complete with ice skating, cider-kiosks, and a hundred zillion lights. She was giddy when we unwrapped the tickets. I told you […]
When Janae got embarrassed, things got funny. Like when she lived in the apartment above us, and she needed help with her luggage. I don’t remember where she was returning from–we were both working with a missions agency, and she traveled often–but I remember it was a short trip. Far too short to necessitate a […]
Dear Friends, I wonder if you recall the great “unreached people group” boom of the 80’s and 90’s. I was growing up in a missional community back then, and we were always talking about completing the Great Commission. We would lay giant world maps over the floor, praying for the tribes and nations who had […]
Dear Jack, A week ago, you started sneaking the scissors into the living room. You’ve had two missions as far as we can tell. The first was to cut your own hair. We always liked it floppy, but mom caught you hacking custom alterations while standing in the middle of the floor. “I can help […]
It’s late January, and I just finished my morning walk. Early rising has always been hard for me, as it is for most. But I don’t hate mornings. If anything, I adore the pre-dawn stillness of the world. It’s a shame I don’t pursue it more often. Wait — I just wrote that last sentence […]
Dear Jack, On this day one year ago, your mom and I put you into a hospital gown, and you let us do it. You knew what was coming. We had talked about it for weeks. Then, a nurse came and poked you, and you got sleepy. They wheeled you into another room, and when […]
In a shocking turn of events, I turned forty yesterday. And when a writer turns forty, he has an obligation to do one of those “letters to my younger self” articles. Those letters, however, are usually kind and gentle. My younger self needs a stern talking to. So here is my “strongly worded letter” to […]
It’s transition season in Oregon. The mornings have settled on being cold, but the afternoons remain indecisive. Autumn is crowding the portcullis with her pitchforks and battering rams, but summer is rallying for one last defense. Jack and I sit outside in our short sleeves, watching our breath and waiting for the morning to turn. […]
Last month, I had one of those ugly self-revelations that was so obvious, I couldn’t believe I had never seen it before. It happened when I helping my wife with her duties as children’s pastor. I was running around playing keep-away with a gaggle of grade school boys and a nerf football (because I didn’t […]
This summer marks six years since I fired up this little blog. I only did it because I wanted to build a platform for fiction. Yes, fiction. I am a storyteller at heart, and my plan was to start posting short stories, then move toward novels. But soon, two unexpected things happened. First, I wrote […]
Uncertainty is a humiliating reality. Just when we begin to wrap our minds around a situation, a new question flies in out of left field to make sport of us and our silly conclusions. So we try again and it makes sense for a while, but then comes another baffling surprise to humble us. And […]
It’s early in the morning, and I’m sitting in my living room when I should still be in bed, because Jack’s OCD overtook our night again. This has been happening for weeks now. Our boy is twelve and severely autistic. In recent weeks, he’s been waking up in a panic and running into our bed […]
Dear Jack, You’re turning twelve today, and that brings me all kinds of feelings. It brings happiness, because you’re growing taller and stronger; not as cute but more handsome. It brings sadness, for all the same reasons. And it brings fear, because we have lots of questions about your future. Last month, though, you showed […]
I remember the light from our closet, and Sara rustling around inside. It was early. Too early. “You okay?” I asked. “My water broke,” she said. We were just twenty-three. Babies, it seems now, having babies. I tried to help get her ready but there was nothing much I could do. Her bags were packed […]
“So, what’s the story with these pictures?” That’s one of the first questions people ask when they step into our living room, and for good reason. Variations of this image line our bookshelves. They belong to Jack, of course, my eleven year old with severe autism. They are screenshots of his iTunes movie library, his […]
Really, it was a small thing. Just a silly text message. My son Jack, who has autism, is a child of routines. He wants to know what’s happening so he can know what’s happening next. Over the past month or so, he has added something to his Sunday routine. He’s started watching football games with […]
I had to close my laptop this morning. I couldn’t take it anymore, and that’s probably a good thing. Man cannot live on bad news alone, after all. We can’t survive on a steady diet of devastating exposés. But how can we avoid them? Our lives are full of open windows. National tragedies, investigative reports, […]
Our church’s special needs classroom used to be a safe haven for my autistic son, Jack. It was a respite for him; a twenty-third Psalm reprieve from the throng of kind, caffeinated congregants hoping to win a “good morning” from him, or at least a hi-five. Not anymore. Six months ago, we moved his beloved […]
Dear Jack, I heard your footsteps at midnight last night, fast and frantic. They took you to the sofa in the dark. I found you there and asked if you were okay. “Did you have a bad dream?” You didn’t answer. “It’s okay. It wasn’t real, buddy. “ I tried to lead you back to […]
There were fingerprints all over the screen, and the NBA Finals game was about to start. I tried to scrub them off, but they were sticky. “Jack, this is gross. You’ve got to stop touching the screen, especially after you eat those cookie balls.” He wouldn’t acknowledge me, except to parrot back a few words as […]
It was twenty years ago. A lifetime. We were walking the streets of Manhattan late in the evening after a Broadway Show. There were ten of us — seven graduating seniors from a tiny Christian school in east Texas, and three adults. The big city awed us southern kids in all the ways you’d expect: the bright lights, […]
Sunday afternoon, our whole community showed up to support him. Monday evening, he melted down again. Anxiety attacks have haunted Jack nearly every day this month. They’re not temper tantrums. Rather, they’re like onslaughts of sheer, icy panic; floods of emotion he can’t hold back. He runs toward the nearest glowing screen and starts pushing […]
Note: Good Friday posts have become somewhat of a tradition for me over the last few years (I’ve put past poems and stories here, here, and here), so I’ll add to it today. This is one of three pieces I wrote for tonight’s vigil at my church, and I can’t wait to see my friend Karli perform it onstage. […]
There was an article in the Boston Globe last week about how men tend to let friendships slip away over time. The resulting loneliness has dramatic implications on our physical health, to say nothing of mental health. Why? Because we are hard-wired for “phileo”. We talk a lot about the need to be loved, but […]
If you’ve read anything I’ve written this year, you know that Jack, my autistic eleven year old, loves the movie Cars 2, and I don’t. I’m a grown man and a Pixar apologist (there should be a badge for people like me), but I cannot abide the studio’s version of The Fast and The Furious. […]
We all heard him screaming; not everyone knew who it was. But I’m Jack’s dad, and I know his voice. I was in the auditorium, teaching a Wednesday night class on the book of Acts. He was in a different classroom across the hall. It’s our church’s special room for kids with developmental delays. We […]
“What do you want to talk about today, Jack?” my wife asked our autistic eleven year old. “Cars 2.” Sara is good at this “work time” thing. She takes him into his room, pulls out a big alphabet stencil, and asks him questions. Sometimes he waits for options before he answers. He likes picking options. […]
Dear Perfection, It’s an honor, first of all. I mean, there are so many of us who are online begging for your attention, so it means a lot that you would read this. I’m talking about the Valentine pictures, friendaversary videos, and those filtered collages of vacations we actually hated. You know what the good […]
Dear Jack, You told us something the other day, something that broke our hearts. Mom pulled out the paper and pencil and sat you down in your room. She asked you how you were feeling. You said “sad,” and that you didn’t want to go to school. She kept prodding you, and you said the […]
It’s not supposed to be snowing. Not like this. And yet here we are at the base of Oregon’s mild Willamette Valley, with windfalls of white drifting down like cotton silver dollars. My boys are behind me in a sled we thought we bought for the mountain pass, and I am pulling them down the […]
We were standing on a narrow beach in Northern California, my family and I, when came my favorite moment of the year. The girls were exploring the fresh water stream with their mother and the little boys behind me, and I was staring over Jack’s head at the swells of water elbowing their way between […]
I have this old pixelated video of twelve month old Jack learning to walk. He is stumbling back and forth between me and his two sisters like a tipsy teddy bear, his mouth wide with triumph, and his eyes alive with laughter. They are so clear and cloudless. Sara is behind the camera offering whoops […]
Dear Jack, Up until now, I’ve only written you letters on your birthdays, but I’m going to change that, because you might look back on days like yesterday and wonder, “what was that even about?” Well, I’ll tell you. Mom woke you up at midnight and wouldn’t let you go back to sleep. She pulled […]