Our pastor preached a message a few weeks ago, and she used the scriptures from Proverbs 3:5-6 that says “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.” And I thought of how many mistakes I have made in my life by not trusting in God. If I had leaned on my own understanding earlier this year, I would have been homeschooling Carter right now for 1st grade. But through much prayer and people being placed in my life at the right time to talk to me, I felt like God was telling me Carter still belonged in school at least for right now. God knows what He is doing! Carter has a wonderful teacher who loves him and all the kids in her class. She amazes me the way she loves the kids. Carter loves her and says he wants to keep her as his teacher forever. 😍 Carter is thriving in her class this year!

Yesterday as I watched Carter say goodbye to his friends on the last day of school before Christmas break and they all came up and gave him a big group hug and said they would miss him over the break, I thought of everything we would have missed if I had been homeschooling him this year: this wonderful teacher, the aides, these wonderful kids in his class, and this moment of them all hugging my sweet boy. I wanted to get my phone out and take a picture, but I just decided to cherish the moment in my heart.

I’m thankful for Jesus being patient with me. I have had to learn to lean on Him more than I ever have before since we started this journey over 4 years ago. I must admit I never fully gave Him all my problems in the past, like my problems were too big for God to handle so I would just worry and try to fix things myself. Sounds really dumb right? Cause God can handle anything, we just have to give it to Him. Since our journey began with Carter, I had to lean on Jesus more and more, but I noticed I have had more joy and peace than I have ever had in my entire life. And my prayer is to continue to grow in God and trust in Him more and more.

Haircuts used to be extremely hard for Carter and hard for us too. He would just cry and scream having to get his hair cut and wiggle and make it extremely difficult for anyone to cut his hair. He was born with a head full of white blonde hair so he needed “little trims” before he was even a year old to get it out of his eyes which I did myself while he was distracted with a bottle or something. He didn’t have a problem with this but after he turned one, I decided it was time for the barber shop trips. He hated these trips to get his hair cut. I tried everything I could think of to make these trips easier: favorite snack, juice, favorite toy, my phone to play with, iPad; nothing distracted him enough to get him through a haircut. I thought he would eventually grow out of this phase. I met people who cut his hair that were patient with him, and then some who highly upset me with how they dealt with my child. When Carter was diagnosed with autism, I found a place in Cool Springs that said on their website they specialized in cutting kids hair with special needs and sensory issues. So my sister and niece went with us one day to Cool Springs. This place did cut his hair real quick, but they did not engage my child, and he still cried and wiggled the whole time. They did nothing different than any other place I had taken him before. So I decided this was not worth driving to Cool Springs for haircuts, but we got to enjoy the rest of the day shopping with my sister and niece.

A few months later a girl named Erica that cuts hair in town saw how hard of a time we were having one night getting his hair cut, and she ended up volunteering to come to our house to cut Carter’s hair. I was touched by someone like her who didn’t even know us but was willing to help me. So many people in our world today don’t think about others but only of themselves. In the meantime, I started having pretend sessions at home where I went through all the steps of a hair cut, and I would pretend to cut Carter’s hair until he had the steps down and knew what to expect. Carter started improving a lot with haircuts. Erica was expecting her 3rd child so I didn’t want to keep asking her to come to our house so we found a place in Murfreesboro that specializes in kids’ haircuts. We found a girl there who was really great with kids, and Carter clicked with her.

By age 4, he was finally able to have his first clipper cut with minimal crying. I loved his clipper cuts so much better than just the scissor cuts! Each trip got better and better until no more crying. We made these trips to Murfreesboro for haircuts fun. We would go to Belk for escalator fun, and then we would take him to the cookie store to get him a cookie, and then to Toys R Us. I wanted him to associate these haircut trips as fun and exciting.

Now I take him to Jenifer who does my hair, and he absolutely loves her! I started taking him to her this year, and the first time he met her he said “you’ve got purple hair!” Which he loved by the way. And then when we got home, he said “Mama I want Ms. Jenifer to cut my hair from now on.”

We just got his hair cut today and he left there happy and smiling with his cute spiked hair. And today he calls the spiked hair his reindeer antlers. (Ms. Jenifer’s idea 😂) I’m so thankful for his progress with haircuts in this part of our journey.

We all try so hard not to cry in front of people, but over the past 4 years plenty of people have seen me cry. When it’s something that involves your baby, it’s hard not to hold back the tears. I have shed many tears along this journey, but I have celebrated many victories as well. I’m thankful for everyone who has let me cry along this journey and made me feel like it was ok to do so, whether it was a family member, friend, therapist, or a teacher. Probably the one time I’ll always remember the most is Carter’s first teacher, Fara, that came to our house to work with Carter. She let me cry his whole session one day. She hardly got to work with Carter any that day, and she cried with me and said part of her job was helping parents too. I didn’t even know her that well at the time because she had only been coming a few weeks, but her compassion moved me, and we ended up becoming really good friends. (See the people God places in your life. I would have never met her if it wasn’t for Carter’s diagnosis). Another time would be Carter’s first speech therapist Lori. We had just started speech therapy before his diagnosis and, we went in a couple of days after his diagnosis, and I told her the news. I broke down crying. She told me I could come in there and cry anytime, and she would cry with me, but she also told me something that day that I have never forgotten either. She said “Do not ever underestimate your child because he will surprise you.” And she has been exactly right! We have seen him make progress every since. He may have hit developmental milestones later than most kids his age but he made it! We have celebrated things most parents probably take for granted. My goal with starting this blog is to be an encouragement while sharing our journey. I call this blog “Carter’s Autism Journey” because we are still walking this path but life itself is a journey anyway. This is just the path God chose for us. Our life is perfectly imperfect, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. I want to be able to share my heart as a mother but encourage others in the process. My aunt told me last week that if just one person is blessed reading my blog, then it is worth it. I don’t have Facebook or twitter or instagram or anything like that so any of you reading my blog, feel free to share it with others. If you don’t know me, feel free to email me. If you want someone to talk to or cry with or pray with you, feel free to contact me. I want to give back to others what has been given to me.

My biggest fear when Carter was first diagnosed was this fear that I would fail him as his mother. What if I couldn’t do all this? What if I couldn’t help him? I felt this huge weight on me. The day I called my Daddy to tell him about Carter’s diagnosis, of course I was crying, and I voiced my fears and I’ll never forget what my sweet Daddy told me that day. He said “God entrusted something very special with you and Jeremy that most parents couldn’t handle, but He knows you and Jeremy can. You won’t fail Carter. God knows you can handle this.” I have clung to those words of wisdom every since that day. I tell Carter every day that I’m so thankful God gave him to me, and usually he will just smile at me and give me the biggest hug and ask “Mama are you glad God gave me to you?” 😍 I tell Carter every day that I’m so proud of him. I started telling him this when we first started therapy, and I had no clue if he even understood what I was telling him, but it was important to me that I let him know I was extremely proud of him. Now I know he understands me because he is starting to compare himself to other kids in his class, and I tell him it doesn’t matter what they are doing because I’m proud of what he is accomplishing. I know I’m not perfect and will make mistakes along the way as Carter’s mother, but I know I have Jesus to guide me, and with Him I will not fail.

Carter got a real washing machine last night. I guess we can call it an early Christmas present from his Ma and Pa. They found him a simple but real one of his own he could play with at home. He was so happy to play with it last night. It touched my heart that they would buy him something that might seem silly to other people, but they did it just to see him smile. But this post is to really express my gratitude to everyone in our lives who love Carter just the way he is. I still pray for Carter to be completely healed of autism. One day as I was praying for his healing, I felt like God was showing me that the joy that my child has is just a little glimpse of what heaven is like. I’m so blessed to experience this joy everyday, and when others tell me they love my little boy or they love seeing his sweet smile everyday, I’m so thankful that others get to experience this same joy as well.

Carter loves washing machines. So much so that he asked for a washer and dryer for Christmas last year (he did not get by the way because we knew the toy set would not give him the satisfaction as the real deal). This year before Thanksgiving he made something in art and in his classroom and he wrote he was thankful for washer and dryer. 😂 He did at least write he was thankful for mom too on the one he did in class. 😉

He loves washing machines so much that we take him to Lowe’s or Home Depot just to let him look and I guess “play” with the washers. He knows every brand. I have learned to just go with the flow on this. I find myself studying each make and model too and trying to answer his questions. This may seem strange or odd to some people, but this makes my child happy. He likes to go to Home Depot as a reward for something good whether it be getting on pink at school that day or on Fridays just for working hard all week at school. Sometimes when I’m watching him I think “Who knows, he may invent the next best Maytag, Whirlpool, Electrolux… you never know” 🤷‍♀️😊

I have felt like God has been leading me for a while to do something like this to encourage others who may be walking through storms of their own. We all have different storms in life we walk through. I didn’t know how to go about doing something like this, and I know nothing about blogging so here I am doing this. Now that I have a blog going (as of yesterday), I must admit this blog started on a day that I was sitting around crying and feeling sorry for myself and asking God “Will things ever get better?”  We have had a few setbacks with Carter this week, and I was sitting there trying to make sense of everything. I was feeling defeated, but that’s how Satan wants us to feel. My sweet boy came up to me as I’m crying and said “Mama you can’t cry anymore because I love you.” I made the decision to rise above the defeat I have felt this week, and I made this blog to celebrate our victories. We will overcome this setback. I’m thankful for a church that covers us in prayer and goes to battle with us in prayer. Our battle is not against flesh and blood but against the powers of this dark world. Thank you Lord for your reminder this morning that you make no mistakes!

4 years ago we went to the beach not long after Carter had been diagnosed. We really needed this vacation to get away from therapy and everything else for a week. We got there and Carter hated everything about the beach. He hated the sand, the water, the sound of the waves. He would just cry going near the ocean. We decided to cut our vacation short that year and go home 3 days early. As I was packing our stuff back up, I must admit, I was angry at God. I couldn’t understand why God would allow this to happen to us. But I had so many emotions back then: Grief, anger, depression. I was slinging stuff back in our suitcases and screaming and crying at my husband that “I hate what autism is doing to our family!” He just said “yeah, I do too.” (I’m the emotional one. He keeps everything in). It wasn’t long after this trip that I got my fight back, and I knew I wasn’t alone in this journey. Jesus is with me every step of the way. We have gone to the beach every year since, and every year Carter has done better on the beach. We just got back from the beach last week, and this is the first year that he has gotten in the water. I took this picture and was fighting back tears because Carter is running in the sand to get down to the water. Never give up! Even when you feel like you can’t go anymore, Jesus will help you keep fighting!

There’s a song called “I’ve Been Broken (But I’ve Been Blessed)” that has the lyrics: “The blessing of a broken heart is what God chose to use.” I feel like that song sums up my life these past few years. I can remember the exact date Carter was diagnosed with autism. It was July 15, 2014,  just a few days shy of him turning 2 1/2 years old. As I sat in the office at Vanderbilt that day and heard the diagnosis, my heart was broken. I was so overwhelmed by everything my child would need: speech therapy, occupational therapy, special education preschool at age 3, possibly ABA ( I thought what is that? but I would eventually learn all this along with IEP meetings and all that good stuff). I cried the whole way home, and I asked God why He hadn’t heard my prayers and spared me from this. And I told Him He had made a mistake because I was not equipped to be a special needs mother. A few days later as I was driving Carter home from speech therapy, I was being silly and making him laugh.  God reminded me that day that this diagnosis did not change Carter. He was still my sweet and happy baby boy. A few months went by of settling into a routine of speech, OT, and teacher visits to the house once a week. I started seeing Carter make progress. Where he was only saying maybe 10 words (and not great) at the time of diagnosis, he was getting closer to 50 words and able to make his needs more known around the house. I noticed a change in myself too. I had a fight rise up in me that I was going to fight for my child to give him the best chance to succeed in life. I guess the wind had got knocked out of my sails for a while, but I got it back. God didn’t heal Carter immediately when I asked Him to, but I believe every therapist, every teacher, and every aide along our journey is healing Carter of autism. My heart was broken that day 4 years ago, but God healed my broken heart. Carter has been the biggest blessing in my life. I’m thankful to be his mother. There have been so many people we have met along the way that we probably wouldn’t have met if it wasn’t for this diagnosis.