At the end of each day, just after laying the boys down for bed, I sit and reflect on the day. I quietly tuck myself in on the couch and think back on the victories and failures of each day. How easy it is to think of the failures, I used to call this my personal guilt trip time because that’s all I did…relive all of the things I did wrong that day, the dishes that didn’t get washed, the moments I raised my voice, the times I got irritated or felt overwhelmed; I’m sure you can relate. Recently my husband and I were reading the end of Psalm: David’s Psalm of praise (145-150); when we both realized we were doing a lot of asking and questioning but not a whole lot of praising. In my usual fashion I immediately set a resolution: “from now on I am going to find one good thing in each day and praise God for it, before I focus on the bad!” I’ve been doing pretty well, but my night time reflection is still hard for me, I always want to go for the guilt.

Tonight I sat down, determined to praise God and reflect on the victories of the day, but my mind was instantly flooded with the papers I forgot to send to the school today and the kitchen that desperately needs mopping…Then I stopped. Undoubtedly divinely, an image of my middle son Rhys giggling while watching his favorite movie popped into my head, and all I could think was “he is so normal in that moment.”

Rhys is my tough kid: severely autistic, showing little signs of progress, testing so desperately low on all of his assessments; we just don’t know what to do with him.

But there, replaying in my head was a moment from this evening where he was just a normal two year old. Sitting on the couch in his frog pajamas, legs crossed, kicked back on the couch, laughing in anticipation of his favorite part of his favorite movie…a glimmer of normal in our very abnormal life.

God blessed me with my next thought, I did something else very normal this morning. I had coffee with a couple of other autism moms from the boy’s school. It was so wonderful to sit and have a relaxed conversation with these two moms. We encouraged one another, gave advice and shared frustrations about a topic we all care so deeply about, autism and our kids. Another glimmer of normal.

I can’t even say the last time I enjoyed so much having the opportunity to sit with friends, or I guess more appropriately women who I hope to become friends. Since the reality of our life became clear…autism 24/7, I find myself so socially awkward. I sit and talk to women, old friends, new acquaintances and even family members and I see their eyes gloss over as I say the word autism. I’m screaming in my head “shut up about autism already!! Don’t you have anything else to talk about?!?” But autism consumes me, it is my life, at least for now. We have two children diagnosed with autism and our third is showing early signs, autism is our normal and I’m not going to apologize for that. But, neuro-typical moms don’t always want to hear about it and I can’t blame them…I’m sure if the roles were reversed I would feel exactly the same way.

But, this morning that didn’t matter. I sat with true peers, Christian women, autism moms, passionate to do all they can for their kiddos, wives, advocates… how blessed I was by their company…how normal an activity.

I would be crazy to expect much normal in our daily lives, but I’ll gladly take the glimmers I get here and there. In the meantime I’m working on accepting OUR normal and realizing that we are normal in the right crowd.