Stress makes me not my best self. Of course this is true for everyone probably, but for me, an introvert with Asperger’s and a fierce attachment to my own personal space and large doses of peace and quiet, stress really makes me not my best self.

The past couple years, as I have tried to adapt to being the mother of a new person, a person who on his best day is still high maintenance, I feel like I have failed more than I have succeeded at being a pleasant human being and the kind of mother he deserves. I can clearly remember the day Jesse and I sat in foster training and we were handed that random child profile to study and discuss. I remember reading about this boy who was fourteen but was really about nine, he still needed to be watched very closely. He couldn’t remember not to ride his bike in the street. He needed constant help and reminding and refocusing to move through the basic tasks of each day. He was clingy and emotionally needy and hated being alone, due to an attachment disorder. And to top it off, he had violent emotional outbursts that had gotten so severe he had been institutionalized. I remember looking at my husband, terrified. I said, I don’t think I could handle this one. This one was clearly not compatible with my cool detached solitary independent nature.

Well. The joke was on me.

This boy ended up being the EXACT child God had already chosen for us, we found out a few months later, as he plopped randomly into our laps once again.

And for some unknown, highly irritating reason, I have been kicking and screaming (no matter how hard I try not to) ever since.

I keep trying to settle down. I try so hard to consistently be a nicer more pleasant person. I keep trying not to yell or have meltdowns. And though I have made a great deal of progress

I. Still. Keep. Failing.

So many days, the worst ones, I say to God, Why did you pick ME? Why did you give this precious little person, so fragile and broken and small and hurting inside… to an insensitive, non-cuddly, grumpy, irritable, hollering Aspy mother???????

And God always just says simply

Because I did.

I gave him to you.

I gave him to you.

I gave him to you.

And then I conclude, so it must be right. It can’t be wrong if God says it is right. Then I pick myself up, dust myself off, hug and apologize and move on to being better. Again.

I carry on day after day and do my best. Some days my best feels like a really great success (We have so many more good days now than ever before!) And some days it feels like, Well, we made it. Thank God it’s over. And some days it feels like I am an utter and complete wretched grumpy failure.

As this quarantine loomed before me and words like Homeschooling and here every single day began to present themselves to my consciousness (most of you know I have tried this before and it did NOT end well), I was gripped with a strange muffled terror. I went kind of numb. I did not know what to expect, I was determined to succeed, I was aware that I was going to struggle, and I had peace that God would give me grace. But way way back, in some part of me I didn’t want to look too closely at yet, I was definitely scared. More time with him putting stress on my precarious mood meant more times I would inevitably be my worst self.

He has changed. He has grown. So have I. I knew we could do it. But I was also afraid. Not as much for myself and the alone time I would lose, but for the person that this loss might make me. I was afraid for the mother that I was, already teetering most days between a lovely person and that demon-woman baking coffee cake in the kitchen. Some of my son’s friends are actually afraid of me. One of them literally tiptoes past me whenever he comes over mumbling things like I promise we’ll be quiet. I am not mean to them, but I have kicked everyone outside and locked the doors before, so they know I am not exactly warm and fuzzy.

Ultimately, these past weeks have gone well. I do miss my alone time. I do have bad days. But it is going well! We have a nice routine.

One of the main reasons we are succeeding so much these days is that I have found the balance between accepting who I am and striving to be a better person. These two things must have just the right ratio to allow a person to be healthy.

For instance, a person who has too much acceptance for her flaws and not enough desire to change will be a person who fails to grow, a person who allows changeable flaws to fester in the wrong direction. A person who just keeps on being unrefined and immature.

And a person who has too little acceptance for who they are and strives too much for change, will live in a whirlwind of guilt, shame, and failure. Will beat herself up too much. Will also fail to grow as a result, because shame is like a giant weight tethered to one’s ankle that limits forward movement.

But a person who has just the right amount of self-love. Just the right amount of, oh crap, I did it again, I’m sorry viewpoint on their failures. And just the right amount of desire to change what she can, better herself but not whip herself for slow progress or for personality traits that are not removable… this is a healthy person.

My son, more than anything else, knows me. Warts and all. He accepts me as I accept him. Two flawed people linked by a strong bond, filled with forgiveness and given the opportunity to exercise it regularly. One of the most powerful aspects about our mother-son relationship, in fact, is that we are both deeply flawed and therefore we have no choice but to delve headlong and powerfully into the realm of unconditional love. A kind of love that, as it turns out, my son has seen very little of in his experience of being moved around from place to place. During long horrible years in foster care, though many people did the best they could, he has been sent away for being flawed more times than he was ever just loved and kept despite it, in his mind at least.

And this relationship, no matter how much I might think I am failing at times, has transformed him. This is what he sees…

I am flawed. I mess up too. Here is how we fix it. Here is how we move on. Here is how we grow. Here is what true security feels like. Here is what true life looks like. Here is what real family looks like. Here is how you respond when you mess up. Here is how you respond when someone else messes up…

All of this is teaching his brain and his heart about real love and real life and real problem solving and real growth.

We joke with each other about our flaws, rather than sweep it under the rug and let a chasm grow there. I may say jokingly something about loving my brain-dead boy when he does something dumb and he will say how much he loves his Autistic mom too. It works in a really special way. Just yesterday he was gone all day with a friend riding their dirt bikes in the mountains. It was a glorious day. My first alone day in a very long time. I reveled in every minute of it. When they pulled in around 4:30, I wandered out to the deck overlooking the driveway, I leaned on it smiling as they unloaded Jack’s dirt bike, not saying anything, just watching and smiling in the sun. Jack looked up at me after awhile and said, “What’s up, mom?” I shrugged and said, “Nothing.” His friend, who I had never met before, said sweetly, “You’ve been gone all day, she misses you.” Both of us laughed heartily. Jack said, “No, she doesn’t. She loved me being gone today!” It was the perfect illustration for the acceptance and the bond that we have, special to us. I’m not that kind of mom who misses my kids, I’m the kind that says, aren’t you leaving soon? And he knows it, and it’s not only okay, it’s perfect. Because it is ours.

There is an ease to our relationship that is wonderfully balanced, filled with forgiveness and acceptance despite anything that is said or done in a bad moment, a family bond that he knows can never be severed, a mother that he knows he can never lose, a peace that comes from not being the only flawed, special-needs person in the household, and a desire to become a better person, to put effort into treating one another with respect and striving to grow every day. There is also a bond that grew in the worst moments we have shared together, the kind that reprograms the perspective. A kind that says, Well if we made it through that, then we can get through anything. The really really bad fights that used to send dogs hiding and left screen doors hanging from their hinges never even happen anymore. They have no place in our lives now.

He feels so safe now that the insecurity programed into his heart from a life of rejection, which used to send him into horrible fits, is no longer there– I am unconditionally loved, they even kept me after THAT happened!

And he is not afraid of my moods anymore– that’s just my mom. My mom is like that. Can I have a muffin?

And this love and safety slowly worked its way through his nervous system and healed parts of his brain where fear used to govern his behavior. He has moved out of his brain stem, out of fight-or-flight mode and finally settled safely and confidently into just living in a good place where there is nothing to be on guard for. Protected, provided for, not going anywhere, no matter what happens.

He loves his mom, warts and all. And he does not fear me. He does not fear losing me. This tells me that perhaps I am succeeding more than I am failing after all.

And every time I start to feel that heavy burdensome sensation that I am not good enough for him after one of my particularly moody days, I turn to the other side and observe what it so clear in my household…

Boy oh boy do they love me. I must not be as bad as I think. Then I recenter myself, finding that lovely perfect balance again, in my heart and my mind, between accepting who I am and desiring to always become better, day after day, year after year. Growing, but not wanting to cut out parts of me that for some reason God sewed into my personality, and that for some reason my boys love anyway. All I have to do is leave for the day and come back to be reminded, as a husband, two teenage boys, and two dogs scramble over one another to get to me, that they not only love me, they like me too. Right now.

And I feel the same way about them.

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