Thank You, "Autism"

It may seem pretty messed up of me, but I get bothered by the word “Autism”. I get a pang in my gut every time I read or hear it. It bothers me because it reminds me that my son is required to function in a world which he can't understand and that doesn't understand him. The endless debates on vaccines and and applied behavior therapy and chemicals in food and the environment have no clear cut answer or compromise. They are divisive, play havoc with your emotions and are simply exhausting. The existence of autism seems so unjust for any child to deal with that we need something to blame. Blaming helps us feel like we didn't do anything wrong to cause our child to have to suffer with this disorder. There's part of us that wants to know why. And if there is a why, there must be a solution.
I do not subscribe to popular causes of autism theories. If it were to be vaccines, better autism than death caused by measles induced encephalitis. My odd theory is that God has called us to become more like Him. He calls us who are chosen to be parents to be refined through our children. As life saving vaccines have spared us the horrors of many life threatening and physically debilitating diseases, we needed something else to force us to look outside of ourselves and look to Him to provide strength and comfort. If that is the "why", then the solution is to press on. To depend on God for what only He can do. For His example of perfect selfless Love, and His provision of peace, understanding and relationships.
But as much as I am uncomfortable with the word, I am also grateful to it. At two years old, my child could speak but but only in repeated phrases. He had the receptive language of a seven month old infant. He wouldn't eat anything unless we took a bite of it first because he was unable to categorize what was food and what wasn't. He had all his upper and lowercase letters memorized and one to one correspondence of numbers to 14, but was unable to comprehend that navy and robins egg were both called “blue” because they were clearly two different colors. He would scream if we attempted to put jeans on him but demanded that his bathwater be scalding hot or ice cold.
The label “autism” was a gift that gave us a direction. As much as it frightened me, as much as I didn't want it to be true, it helped him on a path of coping with the foreign world he was born into.
When I look at my son, I don't see “Autism”, I just see my kid- my wonderful, funny, loving, genius, super kid. And this is a list of some of the people the label autism gave to us who didn't just see “autism”, but an amazing, terrific, albeit quirky, little boy-and whom we could never possibly thank adequately for all they have invested in him and us:
Kristina Bratlund, Don Hakenberg, Sharon Balduf, Denise Haffner, Brenda Aflito, Michele Wheeler, Craig Vroom, Laurie Olsen, Ed Hightower, Tanya Patton, Missy Potvin, Karen Bertles, Kelly Hess, Capri Strieter, Laura McNicholas, Roxanne Howald, Chris Treres, Paul Santoro, Jo Marie Yancik, Linda Plant, Jocelyn Garner, Carol Kohlfeld, Amanda Rustio-Murphey, Lea Shabangi, Kelly Baird, Tara Fox, Jennifer Mulvihill, Heather Chapman, Barb Kinsella, a probably a bunch of others.
You can never know how much you mean to us.