This past weekend my husband and I spent a few restful days in the bluegrass region of Kentucky. A verdant land of rolling hills, miles and miles of three-rail fences, horse farms that look like something out of a fairytale, and sleek thoroughbreds grazing in the fields, some of them nursing foals. Gorgeous.
It was so good to get away. Our son, Joel, who has autism, has been in a manic cycle for the past six weeks. Even though we only have him on the weekends, we were both tired out, emotionally and physically.
One of our stops was Shaker Village, a living history museum. I’ve taken Joel to Shaker Village many times over the years—mainly to ride their riverboat on the Kentucky River—and I was looking forward to the boat ride with my husband. Unfortunately, the river was flooded and the boat ride cancelled. We walked and drove the 3000 acre property instead.
Coming around a curve, I made my husband stop the car. An old stone wall was calling my name.
I climbed out of the car and stood there, taking in the sight of that Kentucky limestone wall undulating through the landscape. It seemed to stretch on forever. Suddenly, I remembered a metaphor my husband once used in a talk he gave, describing his prayer life as the father of a son with autism. This is what he said:
“I don’t feel like I’m real good at intercessory prayer. My prayers are not pretty. They’re short and sweet—Lord give me patience. Lord, give Joel peace. I love you Lord. My prayers are all the same size and shape. They’re heavy, like bricks, and I give them to the Lord, one by one, and He uses them to lay a path for me and my family to follow. I believe that all the prayers others have been praying for Joel have been used by God to lay that path also. Twenty years is a lot of brick, and I am still walking the path that God has set before me. Without that prayer, I would be lost. And we have seen amazing differences in Joel because of the power of prayer. We can look back, in hindsight, and know that yes, our prayers are being answered. Jesus said to ask, seek, and knock. We’ve been doing that together for a long time, and the Lord has been faithful in return.”
I look at this wall, just one of thousands so painstakingly built in the mid-1800’s by Scots-Irish craftsmen throughout this region of Kentucky, and I think, that’s a lot of prayers. It’s been 34 years now, fourteen more than when Wally gave that talk. Since then we’ve navigated Joel’s early adulthood, helped to establish a farm for adults with autism, moved Joel from our home into that farm, dealt with the fall-out when the farm did not turn out to be a good fit for Joel, bought Joel his own home, set up a unique, individualized day program for him, found staffing for that, and on and on it goes. And, of course, there has been the rest of our lives, the parts that don’t revolve around Joel, which are rich and relentless as well.
