Once upon a time, Sundays were a treasure for our family. We would get out of bed and get all duded up and go to church, eager to see our family and friends and spiritually rejuvenate after a long week of work, child wrangling, chore doin', and errand runnin'. We would come home and my husband would grill some wonderful meals...my favorite, ever, was the salmon, with the corn on the cob, or something he likes to call an Uber Burger. The Uber Burger involved a special trip to Central Market the day before and some specific ingredients and it was very Uber. Or we would make a big spaghetti dinner.
We don't do that much anymore.
Our church services typically run about three hours long. It begins with a sacrament meeting. Everyone meets in the chapel, we sing hymns and listen to speakers. That lasts an hour. After that we have a class. The kids go to their classes, called "Primary", and the adults go to their Sunday school classes, if they aren't teaching elsewhere. Then the women go to Relief Society and the men go to Priesthood.
Because the chapel is big...it's not huge, mind you...we don't worship in a cathedral...and there are a lot of people talking, and organ music...Logan becomes agitated. He will often yell or cry out during the quietest times in the service. This is cause for some amusement, especially when he yells, "I want taco bell!" or "That big kid is not being reverent!"
So, it's really hard for Logan to get through even an hour of this. We count ourselves lucky and blessed if we can make it all the way through one hour of church. We have gotten to the point where we bring two cars to church. If Logan can't handle it, my husband or I will bring him home. Of course that means one of us misses church, for the most part. I have at least one friend who does not bother to take her autistic daughter to church really, at all...she and her husband take turns.
Well, I especially dreaded today. My husband is in the military and he was going to be gone this weekend. I had already missed one or two weeks of church and I was starting to really feel it...so today, I thought, I'll take the kids (all four) and try to get through an hour.
You see, most people just go to church and don't worry about it. They can sit there and listen, or snooze, or whatever they do at church. Me? I want to be there. I really, really want to be there. It's just not always possible.
So, my two oldest were tired but they got up anyway with very, very minimal complaints. Logan was a different story. He crawled in my bed and pulled the covers over his head. Whenever I asked him to get up, he would yell, "No!" All of us were already up and dressed, my feet were squeezed into my heels and I was stuffed into my sausage casing (pantyhose. I hate pantyhose)...and he wouldn't budge. Nathan, my oldest son, my tween-ager...came into the room and very sweetly tried to talk his brother into getting up. No dice. I left the room to get something and when I walked back through the house, there was Nathan. He had taken a blanket, wrapped up his brother, and carried him to the front room. I almost burst into tears...it was so tender, and so sweet, and he was so patient and kind to his brother. We left and throughout the entire service, Nathan held Logan on his lap and whispered to him to keep him calm. We finally reached a point where Logan got tired of it...and that's when MY brother took over. He was sitting on the row in front of us, and he reached back, took Logan by the hand, and led him to the seat next to him. Logan didn't know what to think of that...and because he didn't know what to think he was quiet for the rest of the service. At that point Nathan reached out and took the baby and held her in his lap. She had been sitting with her big sister for the most part until then. Afterwards, Nathan took Logan to his class...and my sister in law and also a good friend kept their eyes on him until he really did have enough and it was time to take him home.
Autism requires sacrifice. It's a fact. You sacrifice time and money. You sacrifice a lifestyle. You sacrifice dreams and you have to make new ones. In situations like church or school, it's always a roll of the dice how it's going to go. It's stressful and you can never approach a situation the way another family would. You have to make allowances, exceptions, and change your expectations. You have to plan ahead...a lot....for situations that don't require much thought from "normal" people. What my children did today-Nathan and Sarah both-I did not ask them to do. They saw what was needed and they did it. I am so grateful for what they did and so thankful for them. If having children is also a roll of the dice...then I got lucky. As lucky and blessed as one mother could ever possibly be.
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