Snapshots

I should have known better as soon as the slightly smug smile crossed my lips. "I really don't need a Bible study on forgiveness," I told my friend, explaining my absence from our Tuesday morning study. "I've wrestled that beast and come out the other side."

Should have known better than to think I didn't need God anymore in that struggle.

It didn't hit me that day, or the next. It didn't come in a slow realization or a meditation on God's Word. It came in the form of a series of pictures that I unearthed from the basement.

"Before" pictures of my oldest son. Smiling, happy, engaged. Holding up a toy for me to see. (Do you know how many years it took us to teach him how to do that when "after" happened?)

In a millisecond, it crushed me. As if a physical weight had been tossed on top of me, my breath rushed from my lungs. Guilt. Awful, terrible, ugly guilt.

"He was fine!" I moaned aloud, touching the picture lovingly with my finger as if I could reach out and caress my twenty-month old son from the past. And just like that, all the old thoughts came tumbling through my brain...accusing me of not being there, not being good enough, not knowing enough, not getting help fast enough. WHY couldn't YOU SEE?!?! the voice screamed in my mind.

As I doubled over with emotional pain, my husband lovingly took the pictures from my hands. "It was God's plan for Joseph to have autism," he told me as he folded his arms around me.

And just like that, the physical photos that seemed to be seared into my mind were replaced with different snapshots. Snapshots of my After Joseph that I wouldn't trade for all the typically-developing memories in the world:

The first time he looked me in the eye and said, "I love you, Mom." Click

Sitting, in shock, across a hospital table from my practically non-verbal son as he clearly met my gaze and miraculously said, "Thanks, Mom, for helping the doctors fix me." Click

Joseph and I crying together in the bowling alley parking lot after I had carried him kicking and screaming from a birthday party that had too much noise, too many lights, too many people...my little boy feeling broken, but clinging to me because somehow he hoped I held the answers. Click

Defying every human statistic and praying with my son as he accepted Christ as his Savior. Click

"What will I do when you're too old for this?" I asked him as we walked across the parking lot of his favorite restaurant this week. "Don't worry, Mom," he answered, squeezing his fingers around mine. "I'll always want to hold your hand."

Click. Click. Click.

Pictures of love. Snapshots of Grace. Memories that took the guilt I'd felt and exposed it for the fraud that it is.

God doesn't make mistakes, and He doesn't punish our children with autism when WE make mistakes. When he knit Joseph in my womb, He knew and loved him just as he was, just as he would be.

When He created my son, He knew that all those snapshots were coming. And He knows the ones that we haven't seen yet...the future that will become memories that we will cherish forever.

I know now that I probably won't ever have the beast of forgiveness defeated. But the truth is, I don't have to.

Because Jesus died so that he could slay that monster for me. I just give it all to Him, and He takes care of the rest.

Leaving me with plenty of time to flip through my snapshots.