I have always wondered what love sounds like. I know what it looks like, and I know what it feels like, but if I could pin down a sound for love, what would it be?

I grew up in a house full of kids which meant we had a noisy house all the time. There would be frequent chats in the kitchen at midnight where all the hungry teenagers would gather with my Mom, and we would all recap the night’s events, joking and laughing, regardless of who was trying to sleep. We knew it was too much when we would hear my Dad’s loud stomps on his bedroom floor, signaling to us that it was time for bed. I became accustomed to falling asleep to the sound of laughter and conversation around the clock, and over time it was actually quite comforting. I knew my home was a safe place, and that I was never alone. These sounds all had love in them. If I could go back in time, I would record those sounds, create my own white noise, and call it Home.

My first encounter with Silence happened in college.

I arrived at my apartment one night before the rest of my roommates, and for the first time I was trying to fall asleep in a dark room by myself. All I can remember is the silence. For someone who spent her whole life sharing a room with one or two of her siblings, one would think that it would have been a long awaited, peaceful slumber.

However, the quiet was seemingly loud and foreign to me, and I laid awake for hours. It was only then that I realized how much I preferred the noise of company to the deafening sound of silence. I couldn’t find any love in the stillness, I only felt lonely.

Bedtime wasn’t the only time silence and I clashed. I was 16 years old, and had stayed out way too late with a boy I thought I loved. A minor misstep occurred, and I had confusion and guilt about it immediately. If that was “love” why did I feel so empty? I wanted to talk to my Mom about it right away, but I was scared. When I could muster up the courage, I calmed my nerves and called her at work, catching her at a down time. In a choppy, choked up voice I told her what had happened.

 Silence.

That dreadful, awful, loud, irritating silence.

We sat in silence for a few moments, and it made me panic. 1,000 thoughts started racing through my mind.

Mom, I’m still the same person I just made a mistake!

Are you mad at me? Disappointed?

Do you still love me?

Do I still deserve to be loved?

Do you still think I have a good heart?

MOM ARE YOU THERE??

Just when I was going to ask if she was still there, I realized my sniffles weren’t the only ones on the line. My mom was not only there, but she was crying with me too. She wasn’t just listening to me, she was feeling my pain right alongside me. I learned a bit more about the true meaning of love. In that phone conversation, I understood that there is a huge difference between late night love and parental love. One is authentic, pure, and is present even in my lowest moments. I was so touched by the depth of my Mother’s love for me that it became the new standard for love I sought once I left home.

Fifteen years later, I still feel uncomfortable with silence. I had more scary encounters with it when Jagger wasn’t talking for a while. When he overcame that obstacle and found his voice, we were so grateful and are still so thankful!

The new challenge we currently face with Jagger is regression. Regression in skills can be common for some autistic kids, and recently I’ve been seeing that with my sweet boy.

Jagger has been dressing himself for months now, but recently has stopped trying and will just cry and cry and cry while telling me he can’t do it. He started doing this with opening up doors, putting on his shoes, brushing his teeth, washing his hands, flushing the toilet, and even walking sometimes. It is very puzzling to me, and while it is tempting to just tell him to toughen up, I can’t help but notice that the pain and panic he feels is real and the tears he cries are authentic, as if the sudden loss of the skill scares him too. It is unbelievably hard to witness. But one of the things I learned in ABA therapy is that autistic kids are SO smart, and if I enable my son by doing everything for him, he will give in to learned helplessness and eventually lose those skills altogether. So, for the sake of my son’s independence and because of my fierce love for him, I have to watch from a distance, encourage him from a far, and then go about my routine pretending I don’t hear him as he tantrums and screams until he finally grudgingly gives in and figures out what to do next on his own.

Though it is heart wrenching to watch him break down like this and just melt down, the hardest part for me is to hear him call my name over and over again.

“Mom! Mom please help me! Mom where are you?

 I can’t do this!

Mom are you there?”

I walk around the house sometimes not answering and pretending not to hear, but there are tears in my eyes. It must be so hard for him to call out to me and feel like I’m not there, when really, he is always within my sight, I can hear his every cry, and my heart just aches with his. However, there is no growth or stretching on his end if my love becomes a crutch, so I stay quiet.

 I try to stay patient and even-keeled, but there are times when it is too hard to bear, and I cry next to him begging him to do what he knows how to do. Other times I have grabbed his hands, discouraged, and gone through a whole routine with him again but making sure it is his hands doing the work, not mine.

It is incredibly frustrating because this whole routine takes time, and on a daily basis we don’t have all the time in the world to let him tantrum it out. We have appointments, school, therapies, and play dates. People are depending on us to show up! Balancing the pressure of making it to all of these functions but at the same time understanding the importance of teaching Jagger independence wears on me daily and often leads to breakdowns.

But I never give in and do for him what he can already do himself. I have a fear that if I ever give in, he will never know his inner strength and how to overcome obstacles. I don’t want him to just hear his words “I can’t”, but I want him to learn that my silence means

“You can do it, Jagger. You CAN do it.”

Recently one day was particularly hard. From morning until night, Jagger was in his own world. I don’t know why but he had checked out from reality, and it was especially hard to get him to listen to anything I said. By the afternoon I was exhausted, looking at my clock thinking to myself how am I going to make it through the next few hours until bed time? I was having to repeat his name over and over again and clap loudly as I spoke in order for him to look at me, and it was very tiresome and disheartening. I decided we needed to get out and get some fresh air before dinner, so we headed to our neighborhood park on bikes and scooters. Jagger kept zipping ahead of me as I stayed behind with little Jovi on her bike, and I would have to scream and scream to get his attention to stop. After playing at the park for a little bit, Jagger took off on his scooter heading home. Jovi and I were not far behind when Jovi fell off her bike. I picked her up, brushed her off, and helped her back on, but when I looked back up Jagger was gone. And because of the mindset he had been in all day I just knew he was not stopping. He was just gone. Every time I screamed his name I got the same response.

Silence.

When you are searching for a child, silence is the LAST sound you want to hear!

I pushed Jovi on her bike as fast as I could, and made it up a little hill. No Jagger. We went around another corner, and I still had no sight of him. Panicked thoughts started to make their way into my mind. Cars, creepy people, busy streets, unknown homes… and then there he was. Standing on his scooter with a sweet lady from my church. She told me she had found him standing on the corner of the street by himself about to cross so she decided to wait with him to help him find me. So many emotions overcame me as I approached Jagger. I got down on my knees, grabbed him by the shoulders and raised my voice,

“You can never leave Mommy like that Jagger, that is dangerous! DO YOU UNDERSTAND??”

And for a moment he looked me in the eye and said, “Yes. Sorry Mommy”. And then he checked out again. He was gone as his eyes looked everywhere but at me.

I could sense his sincerity, and I was reminded again that the little spirit trapped inside his imperfect body is so pure. But protecting, guiding, and teaching this pure, oblivious spirit in the world we live in feels like an impossible task when I can’t always get through to him. We rode home, and I got them fed, bathed, and put to bed (it was another late work day for Zach so I was alone), but I found I was still shaking from the day. The roller coaster of emotions on this day was too much, and when both the kids were fast asleep, I couldn’t hold back the tsunami of anger, panic, sadness, sorrow, despair, fear, and pain that came over me. The tears flowed freely, and I found myself on the bathroom floor crying a soulful cry.

Every day I hold in all of these emotions. On the hard days, I am angry and I hold this anger out in front of me like a weighted ball unsure of where to place it. I look at Jagger and know that none of this is his fault, so I just get stuck holding onto this weighted anger. I’m mad that my experience as a mom has been largely stressful and hard. I’m mad because I always wanted a big family but I’m not sure if that is possible. I’m mad because day in and day out I have to watch my little guy struggle in every way with no obvious solution. I’m mad because on bad days I have to ignore the weird looks we get and endure all of the conversations with teachers, coaches, therapists, and friends trying to explain what triggered Jagger. I’m mad because many times I DON’T KNOW what triggered my own son! I DON’T HAVE ANSWERS FOR MY OWN CHILD, and that lack of control and intuition infuriates me, because as a mom, my main job is to teach Jagger, and how can I do that when I don’t understand him?

I began uttering a prayer and expressing all of these emotions. I poured my heart out to God, and told him everything, but the phrase that kept pouring out of my mouth was this.

“Heavenly Father, I cannot do this. I cannot possibly do this one more day.”

And what I heard next infuriated me even more.

Silence.

Silence?! SILENCE?! Here I was sitting on the bathroom floor at the lowest point in my life, pouring my heart out to my Heavenly Father and I didn’t hear or feel or see a dang thing. If I ever needed some kind of comfort/answer/peace/hug/encouragement from my Heavenly Father, it was now, and yet the heavens seemed shut as the only noises heard were the sobs coming from me. Moses saw a burning bush, the brother of Jared saw the finger of the Lord, the Lord appeared to Saul, and countless times did angels come to the aid of disheartened, weary disciples. So why didn’t I see or feel anything?

I sat in a stupor for quite some time, thoughts wildly racing around in my head. Eventually I exhausted myself from crying so much, and retired to bed. I woke up feeling more rested, but what had happened stayed on my mind for the next few days. I didn’t feel anything. Why?

After much thought and wrestling with my feelings, I found myself asking the sincere question,

“Heavenly Father are you there?”

As soon as I thought those words in my mind, I had a flashback of the other times I had heard that similar phrase. When I was 16 years old asking my mom on the phone, unsure of where she went, and not too long ago with my own son when he wasn’t sure where I went.

In both circumstances, the parent was not far from the child, and had never actually left the child in the first place. The silence was never a sign of being alone but rather a parent allowing the child to learn how to stand on his/her own two feet. My own words came into my mind.

If I ever give in and do it for him, he will never know his inner strength and learn how to overcome obstacles.

I had a vision in my mind of my daily battle with Jagger and how from his perspective he thinks I can’t hear him or won’t help him, and it hurts him. But he doesn’t know that though my back is to him, I hear every word, every request, and every plea. Though he can’t see my face, when tears are streaming down his cheeks, there are streaks on mine as well. There is no move, no cry, and no decision that is out of my sight. He can’t tell yet, but everything I do, is out of love and for his own good.

A light went on in my mind, and I felt the peace I had been waiting for. I wasn’t alone. As I am with my son trying to teach him to be an independent learner, so is God with me. Even when all I get is silence in response to some of my most urgent prayers, it doesn’t mean He isn’t close. It doesn’t mean He isn’t feeling my pain. He hears me. He knows me. And He doesn’t take away my problem right away because He loves me. Heavenly Father wants me to use the skills I’ve learned to push through so that I don’t become weak and dependent, and lose those skills altogether. One day my eyes will be opened and I will be able to see all of the angels that watched out for me all along, silent as they were.

The silence doesn’t mean I’m suffering by myself, but rather that it is a time of growth and a time for me to stand on my own two feet instead of crying that I can’t do it.

It’s a time where my Heavenly Father absolutely, without a doubt knows that I CAN do it.

I found the sound of true love in the most unexpected of all places. I heard it in the silence from God.

“Alas my master! How shall we do [it]?” And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them. And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.

2 Kings 6:15-17