Trusting God is believing that He is at work, even when you can’t see anything happening. And we weren’t seeing anything happening with Connor. It had been a year since his diagnosis, and even though we had behavioral and language specialists working with him, he was not progressing. He still was not speaking much at all, and when he did, it was a grunt or maybe one word.
When you have a child with special needs, you tend to focus heavily on that child. We had two other children, Courtney and Cory. They knew life had changed but didn’t fully know what it all meant any more than we did. I’m sure at times they felt the attention of their parents had shifted in another direction. We did our best to keep them from feeling that way, but Connor consumed so much of our time that it had to be weighing on them, though you would never have known it.
I never once heard our children complain about the situation. Oh, they could have, and they would have had every right to. Many times, when other kids were going to the mall, my children would offer to give Sam and me a respite and watch Connor. It meant so much just to be able to go out on a date or run to the store. Courtney and Cory always stepped up—and still do. Their maturity and selflessness is beyond their years.
When we found out that Connor was on the middle of the autism spectrum, Sam began to attach herself to Connor. He became her mission. She was on the Internet, reading books, searching everything she could find for ways to help our son. Moms have a natural instinct to take care of their children when something is wrong. Mothers of special-needs children will bond with a special-needs child in an even stronger way than with a typical child, but they often find themselves having to try to avoid neglecting their other children. Sam did an amazing job giving her best to Connor and giving her time to Cory and Courtney. Truthfully, I don’t know how she did it.
In my experience, the challenge for parents of special-needs children is that while moms are maternal and instinctively attach themselves to the children, dads connect with their children most emotionally. When their child shows little or no emotion and stops speaking, it is very difficult for the father to connect the way he once did. He loves his child, but he’s trying to figure out a new way to connect with his child again. This in turn frustrates the mom when she doesn’t see in the father the same attachment she has for the child.
She looks at her husband and wonders what is wrong with him. He’s looking back at her and thinking, I’m just trying to figure out how to connect with my child again. This can easily put a wedge in the relationship, and if they have any other issues in their marriage, such as communication or finances, it can pull them further apart. The divorce rate for marriages with special-needs children is typically higher for one simple reason: they have more issues to deal with.
The pressure of daily life can be overwhelming, and if the husband and wife can’t come together and get help when they need it, that pressure can fracture the marriage.
A single mom with four boys shared with me what happened when her marriage was caught in the tug-of-war of autism. Her twins were born via C-section—both healthy boys weighing six pounds, seven ounces. She had stopped working to take care of her boys, she had no family support, and her husband had to work seven days a week to make ends meet.
The twins were growing perfectly, and she was a proud mom who always kept her doctor’s appointments, making sure her children got their vaccines on time. She decided to go back to work because the family was living paycheck to paycheck in a two-bedroom apartment—the twins sharing a crib, and the older son with his own bed. That’s when she noticed her babies were changing. They were getting sick more often, and she noticed that other younger kids were talking and doing things the boys had stopped doing or had never done.
She and her husband thought that maybe the twins were just slower than the rest of the kids. After they turned one, however, she knew something was not right. Taking the bottle away from them was almost impossible, and when she started to potty train them, she knew they did not understand what to do. If she left them alone and they had an accident, they would taste the feces and play with it. As the twins continued to grow, she got pregnant with her fourth son. She had to cut her work hours, and her mother stepped in to watch the twins. One day her mother mentioned that she thought the boys might have autism. It was hard to acknowledge, but the woman knew it was possible. Her husband was against investigating it; he’d had challenges as a baby but grew out of them, and he thought the twins would be fine, just as he was. Nevertheless, the worried mother got a referral to Texas Children’s Hospital.
While she was waiting for an official diagnosis, the therapist suggested she put the twins in a private school where they could get help. She did exactly what was recommended, but with no support from her husband. He kept saying she was exaggerating and being overprotective with the twins and that they were going to be fine.
She was going through this all alone while her husband worked. The truth was, he had detached from them. He was embarrassed to say that his kids were not normal, so she was never able to cry with him. She also took criticism from other family members who said she was spending too much time taking care of the twins and not caring for her other two boys. The twins were having major behavioral issues and took much of her energy—especially when she was caring for them most of the time by herself. Because she was so tired, and her husband was so detached, their intimacy decreased. He used that to make her feel guilty for not being a good wife. She knew he loved the boys and her in his way. But it was hard for him to admit that they were not going to be the kids he wanted, and she was not going to be the wife he expected. There was a lot of arguing and a lot of anger. She asked her husband to buy insurance so they could get the twins help they needed, but he refused.
Finally the time came for the twins’ diagnosis, and the couple went to the hospital. They were told that the boys had autism and that their minds were like the minds of three-month-old babies.
They took it hard. After leaving the hospital they went to the husband’s family’s house, where the family began criticizing the wife, telling her she wasn’t a good mother and that she was not paying enough attention to all the boys.
On the long ride home from their house she cried, feeling like a failure as a mom and a wife. Her husband said nothing, did not hold her hand or promise they would work through the crisis together. Instead, he told her how badly she behaved in front of his family and reiterated what they had said about her.
The arguments got worse over time, until the couple finally separated for two months. He saw the boys twice but did not know how to handle them. He finally left the country, and they are not together anymore. Now she is living day to day on income that comes from the boys’ Social Security checks and child support. She has a job cleaning houses for two hours a day while the boys are in school. She and her other boys mow yards, watch dogs, and help friends host dinners or parties on weekends.
It’s hard to come to grips with their life without their dad, the woman says, but she clings to the promises of God and attests to the fact that He has been with them since the beginning and will not leave them.
In this case, the husband’s inability to deal with autism was the wedge that drove husband and wife apart. Think of it like splitting a big block of wood—an axe isn’t enough, so a wedge must be used. With every hit of the hammer the wedge begins to slowly split the once unbreakable block of wood until, with one last swing, it splits in half. One strike will not do the job. You have to swing multiple times to drive the wedge in. In the same way, the Enemy tries to chip away at marriages. He wants to drive a wedge between the husband and wife. Before you know it, trust is broken, and all that remains of what was once beautiful is split in half.
Because this happens so often in marriages of special-needs parents, we have to make a concerted effort to not only trust that God is working in the child’s life, but that He’s working in the marriage. And we trust each other, too, acting with the knowledge that God will bring us through. Sam and I had our issues, but we made a key agreement: never back away. Always keep moving toward each other. The more we stay together on issues, the less the Enemy can put a wedge between us. He can’t hit us if we don’t give him a target.
One of the most vital ways to move toward each other is to pray together. No matter what, we had to come into agreement first with God and then with each other. There is so much power in a marriage when couples learn to pray together instead of separately. Every time the Enemy would try to swing a hammer and drive the wedge between us, we would block it with prayer. The more we blocked it, the more tired the Enemy got.
When you do this, soon the Enemy must move on to someone else because he knows that no matter what he throws at you, it cannot penetrate the bond God has set between you and your spouse. It doesn’t mean you’re perfect or you do everything right. It just means you’ve learned to come together before the Enemy can pull you completely apart.
Another way to block the wedge is to let each other heal. Around the time Connor was four years old we started having special moments with him, when it seemed God had cleared the cloud over his brain and given us glimpses of the boy we knew before autism. We called them “Connor Moments.” It would be like God snapped His fingers and instantly Connor would make eye contact with us or smile at us like we had seen him do a hundred times before. Before autism we had taken videos of Connor talking and playing with our dog Chelsea and looking at us and waving, saying, “I love you, Mommy and Daddy.”
For Sam, watching these videos was therapeutic. I understand. Each spouse has his or her own process for working through difficulties. It’s important for the other spouse to give that space and not put their spouse down because he or she doesn’t respond the same way.
For me, however, watching these videos was too difficult. It brought up feelings of what might have been, and all I could handle, on top of everything else that was going on, was to take it day by day. I could never open my heart to what could be by rehashing what could have been. It’s not easy to let go of what could have been. Letting go hurts, but not letting go will cost you a lot more than pain.
As we let go of what might have been, we were quickly met with the here and now. And we were about to learn about trusting God in unexpected ways.
From the time Connor was three years old to the time he was five years old, although he was growing physically, he operated as if he were two years old. Every day during those years, we tried to potty train him. No matter what method we tried, it just would not click. We had taken him swimming a few times, and we would always use diapers underneath his swimsuit in case he had an accident. We weren’t worried about a number-one accident; we were worried about a number-two accident.
At one point, when he was four, he’d managed not to have an accident in the two times we’d taken him swimming, so we hoped he was learning to hold it while in the water. For us, it was a big deal. Because we were watching him all the time, and it seemed that no matter what we did, nothing changed— and then something did, and it brought a glimmer of hope.
That glimmer was gone in a blink of an eye when the third time we took him to the pool he had a major accident. When it happened, I could see the anguished look on my wife’s face as everyone stared at our son. They had to shut down the pool and make everyone get out so they could clean up the mess.
When all eyes are looking at your child like he’s a freak, and most everyone is wondering how his parents could have let this happen, it’s very hard to explain those emotions. You’re trying to help your son, and the only thing you can think is, Let’s get him cleaned up and go home so we don’t ever have to experience something like this again.
It was like stepping out in faith again, only to have the rug pulled out from under us for trying. We had to choose if we would get back up, step back out, and trust.
Just as any performer will tell you, when you put yourself out there, sometimes you bomb, and sometimes people applaud. In those moments of failure, if you don’t give up, and you keep getting back up on stage, you may even get a standing ovation. But you can’t get the ovation—the miracle—if you don’t climb back up on that stage.
After that exasperating experience with our son, we had a choice to climb back up on the stage or to hide behind the curtain. Two days later the weather was hot, and Connor didn’t want to be in the house, so my wife and I began to pray, “Please, God, help Connor to not have an accident when we go back to the pool. All we want is a good day playing with our son.” Our family got back on the stage. We put on his swimsuit, took him to the pool, and hoped the same people who were there last time were not there. We watched him like a CIA surveillance team watches a suspect, in case he made any funny faces before “you know what” could happen. The end result was that we had a great day!
Why did we return to the pool after Connor had a nuclear explosion and we were so embarrassed a few days before? Sam and I figured it was a new day, and no matter how soiled (pun intended) Connor’s past was, his future was spotless. In life, you have to get back out there. You can’t let a crappy day (pun intended again) ruin everything. We ended up having a great time swimming, and when we got home, we gave Connor a standing ovation for not pooping in the pool. I don’t know about you, but I think I’d rather look back at my life and say, “I can’t believe we did that!” than say, “I wish we had done that!”
That wasn’t the last time we had to get back up, of course. When Connor turned four he started to act out in ways that terrified even Sam and me. As a father, it’s hard for me to share this in a book. To watch my son hurt himself when he would get frustrated, because he couldn’t speak and express his feelings, was very difficult.
Even scarier was the fact that we didn’t know when he was hurt because he couldn’t tell us. If he fell and bumped his head, we would only know it if we saw a visible bump, mark, or bruise. He didn’t express his emotions by crying, and he couldn’t say where it hurt. The only way we knew he was sick was when he lay down on his bed and showed visible signs of illness. I cannot tell you how helpless we felt as parents. You want to help your child, but you don’t know how. At times, this would bring my wife and me to tears.
When Connor got frustrated and acted out, he would scratch himself, bite himself, bang his head against the wall violently, or press his chin down against his fist so hard he would shake. These fits started sporadically, but by the time he was five years old, they were getting progressively worse.
One night, having finally put him to sleep after multiple episodes, my wife and I laid our heads on our pillows and looked at each other with tears rolling down our faces. That night we’d had all we could take. We cried until we couldn’t cry anymore. What do you do when you have no more tears left to cry? You look up and know that God saw every tear that fell, counting them one by one so He could replace each tear with hope and each sorrow with joy.
The next morning we got up, worked out, took showers, got dressed, got Connor ready, ate breakfast, and did our devotional time. Our time with God helped us look up, even when everything within us wanted to look down. I left for work and stopped by Starbucks for a chai tea latte. (Real men drink chai tea, by the way.)
As I was going through the parking lot, a lady was driving so slowly over every speed bump that I thought, Dear lady in front of me, it’s a speed bump, not a land mine. Go! Then further on down the road, I came to a red light that was taking forever, and out of sheer anxiety I honked at it. (By the way, that doesn’t work.) At the next light, I honked again, and this time I yelled at it too! Once again, the light did nothing.
I could feel the rush of years of emotions coming to a head as I got on the freeway. I finally came to the point at which everyone who has ever been through a storm asks, “Why?” I wasn’t asking God why I had my son. I loved my son. Instead, I was asking God, “Why is my son struggling so much?”
I spoke out loud to God while driving. With tears rolling down my cheeks I asked again, “Why is my son struggling so much?”
And then I heard God speak to me so clearly in my spirit, Craig, your child is not a burden. Your child is a gift.
It didn’t register with me at first.
I said, “I know my child is a gift. I know what you’re saying, but Father, he is struggling so much right now.”
Again, I heard Him say, Craig, your child is not a burden. Your child is a gift.
This time though, I heard it louder in my heart. “What do you mean, Lord? He’s struggling so badly right now.”
Then, like a gentle whisper, God said, Craig, you’re looking at everything that’s wrong with him. You’re not looking at everything that’s right.
As I tried to wipe my tears, I spoke with a broken voice, “What do you mean, Father?”
Then God spoke clearly: I am going to use your son to reach millions of people.
This was hard for me to fathom. I was in a very vulnerable place. I spoke from my brokenness and asked, “How is my son going to reach millions of people? He can’t even ask for a drink of water.”
God asked me a question. This is the question He will ask whenever you are in a hard place and it seems there is no way out.
He asked, Do you trust Me?
To be honest, I didn’t give Him an answer you would expect from a pastor, such as, “Oh, great God of the stars, skies, and universe, I trust You in my time of need.”
Instead, I spoke from my broken heart, “Father, You’re all we’ve got. I do trust You.”
Little did I know that He was about to bring us to a breakthrough.