Light It Up Blue Jack

A friend of mine sent me a note a while back about Autism Awareness Day and Lighting it up Blue.  I hadn't heard of it before and figured we had better check it out.  Well, it is pretty simple actually.  In an effort to raise awareness about autism people or businesses were encouraged to light it up with blue light bulbs.  Sounded easy enough to do.  I pulled up some information on the matter and found a slide show of several buildings and locations from around the world where they lit it up in blue.  There were some neat places and we decided that we would light up our house in blue.

Tonight for Family Home Evening we had a little lesson and then we made our way over to the local Home Depot where we found some blue lights specifically packaged for lighting it up blue for autism.  Perfect.  We got them, made our way back home and installed the three lights. 

While installing them I was thinking about Jack and I was thinking about this day that is now set aside as autism awareness day.  I think it is great that the day exists and I would encourage people to learn more about it.  As a parent of a little boy that has autism I can attest that those who have autistic children are aware of it everyday.  It is truly an amazing gift.  I don't know how else to say it.  When I say amazing gift I don't want to imply that it is easy.  Far from it.  There can be extremely challenging days and moments.  There can be times of heartache and exhaustion and then times of pure joy and exhilaration. 

Those who know Jack probably have no idea that he has autism.  From a young age we knew that there were some challenges and I have to say that Rachel did an amazing job with this little boy.  She was on top of it and that allowed Jack to get a lot of the help that he needed.  He still needs help, he still has a lot of challenges but we have learned a lot and we work hard to try and have an environment where he can succeed, not just in the home but at school as well.  For us it is working. 

The Autism spectrum covers quite a bit of ground.  Jack is considered highly functioning autistic.  Much of his challenges are mild - most days.  We also try to identify certain things that he struggles with and plan to manage them.  I think we grow a little more everyday. 

One of my favorite things with Jack was the summer we put in our pool while living in Florida and all the time we spent out there swimming and learning how to swim.  I used to launch Jack into the pool.  It was the greatest thing ever.  Jack has some sensory issues and one of the things that we discovered he loved was the feeling of the bubbles in the water.  He would come down in the water and slowly float back to the top in the middle of hundreds of tiny air bubbles.  I used to go under water with my goggles just to watch his face.  His smile was huge, his eyes wide open, I could do this all day.  It was such a joyous thing for him.  Jack's joy is contagious.  I am grateful for that and grateful to have this little boy in my family. 

Big Jack!  Sure do love you pal.  Go light it up blue Jack, for autism.