“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Obsession.

Just yesterday I encountered another mom who used this word to describe her Asperger son’s unique fondness of something. Of sharks, to be precise, another similarity with my own boy’s obsession as of last year.

In relation to obsession, a while ago I noticed that there was such a narrow “window of safety” when it comes to my boy’s mood. He could be smiling ear to ear in one second, and angrily screamed on top of his lungs the next second. Mostly over petty things that were beyond my limited capacity of making his surroundings friendly enough to accommodate him.

One of my latest meltdowns (yes, mine) was when he accused me of not telling him the surprise I had for him. Well, first of all of course, it was a surprise. And secondly, I did tell him since early on that I had something nice that he should see for himself. Although he loved the surprise, he still unrelentingly bickered and demanded an explanation as in why I didn’t tell him the surprise. Go figure.

This was the bazillionth time of his testing my patience. As if my patience still needed testing.

Several distracting ideas, bribe offers, and twenty minutes of no improvement later, I had it. 

Mommy. Had. It. 

My pandora box cracked open. 

All hell broke loose. 

One of my worst meltdowns ever. Right there by the street where I pulled the car over on our way home from school. Thankfully my bodily coordination functioned well enough to manage that on autopilot mode.

Yells. Anguish. Anger. Threats. Desperate apologies. Tears. More tears. Ungodly words. Begs.

He frantically picked his bag that I had thrown out of the car with instruction to go on his own if he couldn’t make himself respect his parents.

I told you I had a meltdown. A baaaaddd one. Am so not proud of it.

Instead of just firmly discipline his disrespect and ignore his wayward thinking like I should have, I lost it and acted out too.

Mommy has her own issues. Such is life.

Looking back, I pondered. He had always been like that some of the days. Unintelligible. Unpredictable. Unmanageable.

There’s a reason it’s termed disorder. His brain doesn’t function in the same way as other people’s. His impulses are uncontrollable.

Am I never gonna learn to react better during my own inconvenient times? Does this mean I’m not accepting his conditions yet?

On some days I understand and keep it together.  On other days I can’t keep from misbehaving myself. On these days I just ask for my Father’s forgiveness for my being such a depressed, hysterical Mom. Ask for the redemption I desperately need. And grace to keep going.

As I sat there alone in the following quiet afternoon, Jesus’ prayer on the cross for people who crucified Him echoed in my mind: 

“Forgive them, Father, for they don’t know what they are doing.”

Yes, my son needs forgiveness too. For all the agonizing things he does that he can’t help.

This kind of days remind me what weak, sinful human beings we are. Always struggling to please our Creator but keep failing miserably. But thankfully, God’s grace is always sufficient to get us through these days and raise us up every time we fall.

“For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

2 Corinthians 4:17-18