Disarming All Hostility

When I'm out with my son in public settings, including at Mass, I'm usually on the defensive, waiting for someone to comment on his behavior.  I wish this weren't true, but the feeling has intensified quite a bit since I read, with a cringing sense of mortification, the Christian-mom-of-many-blogger Smockity Frocks's really rather vicious account of her vast patience in dealing with an obviously autistic little girl and the girl's grandmother in the library.  Nevertheless, in spite of what I think of as my emotional preparedness -- though sometimes I wonder if I'm actually spoiling for a fight -- no one has ever said anything.

Today, however, I was sitting on a bench at the playground with a friend when a woman approached me to tell me about some egregious things my son had just said to her.  I apologized, made him apologize, and explained simply, "My son is on the autism spectrum, and we're working on a few things."

This response completely disarmed her.  We started to really talk.  We ended up embracing.  And she told me about her thirty-year-old daughter, who's deaf and developmentally disabled and living with a man who has tried to kill her.  She's expecting his child in December.  Because she's an adult and refuses to acknowledge the abuse, much less press charges, neither the police nor adult protective services can do anything about it.  The daughter qualifies for a job at a sheltered workshop, but she refuses this and all other services, because she was mercilessly ostracized by her peers growing up and doesn't want anyone to think she's more disabled than she believes herself to be.

Dear readers, would you please pray for this young woman's safety and peace, and that of her unborn child?  May God reward you for your prayers.

As Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, "If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."