The Sweetest Moment

               

               A few years back I was waiting with other parents from my son’s soccer team as the team was getting their group picture taken.  This wasn’t just any group picture. This was a picture of eight wriggling three and four year-olds.  If you are familiar with a three or four year old then you’ll be able to imagine, at least to some degree, of the chaos that was taking place.

                There were two rows of children.  The first row was seated on a bench while the second row was arranged standing behind the kids in the first.  My son was one of the smaller children and he was placed on the bench in front.

                Just as the photographer would get one child in the correct position, another child would move.  The toddlers fidgeted and squirmed like little jumping beans in their places.  My son, not understanding why he was asked to sit still for so long, decided he’d had enough.  He stood up, leaped into the photographer’s unsuspecting arms and gave her a big hug.  The look of surprise on the photographer’s face was short lived for the other children all thought this looked like great fun and joined in.  The photographer was buried in a mountain of cuddling children.  It took only a few minutes for the hugging mass of children to be relocated back to their places, but the memory was permanently stored in the treasure house of my mind, and my heart. 

                The photographer laughed and said that it was the first time that had happened to her.  Her smile was just a bit brighter when she said it.  Spontaneous group hugs can do that.  Children with autism do not always understand when they shouldn’t do things, or follow the rules as everyone else does.  They usually have their own way of doing things.  While in many ways it can be viewed as a disability or a disorder, I am in agreement with Emily Coleson as she states in her book “Dancing with Max” that autism is “a gift.”  It is not a gift that comes in frilly packaging.  In fact, sometimes just the opposite.  Sometimes my son will do or say things that will make other people stare.  It is in the awkward moments that I wish people could see sweet moments like this one, when we are reminded that there is more to life than busy schedules and protocol.

                This Christmas I have many gifts to be thankful for, and none of them came wrapped under a tree.  The best gifts often come without any wrappings at all, like the gift the world received on the very first Christmas long ago… in the form of a baby sleeping in a lowly manger…out in a stable.  Who would have thought that the world’s savior would come like that? 

                What gifts are you overlooking this Christmas?