The Gospel of IDD

“In the Beginning…”             In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,   the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters…                                                                                                   Genesis 1:1-2 Where does my story start?  Does it start with my son’s diagnosis?  Maybe when I met my wife ...

             God has always been intertwined with my son’s autism.  We received an official note from a doctor in the fall of 2005, but his diagnosis really came four months earlier in a tiny fishing village on the North Slope of Alaska.             My wife and I had travelled to the community of Nuiqsut to help our dear friend, Pastor Heather, lead a Vacation Bible School for the children of the village.  We had our three year old son and our 6 month old daughter for ten days of laughter, songs, skits and prayer.              Our son had always been challenging, but being delirious, sleep-deprived, first-time parents we had thought to ourselves, “Maybe this is just the type of child that we produce.”  We were both independent and introverted.  He was as well.  He might not have matched the developmental marke...