I ready her for bed, and I have a flashback to when she was one year old.
She was so enchanting, so clever, so funny, so wonderfully mine. Toddling around the living room, she’d come to rest on my knees and look up at me with those incredible eyes. I laughed joy and took a picture and then a hundred more.
Then, we didn’t know the road ahead. We didn’t know of nonverbal autism and seizures, lead poisoning, and countless hours of therapy, the painful spurts of aggression and self-injury.
That perfect day in the living room faded away with our hopes and expectations.
She’s nearly twelve now and finding her voice; we’re finding hopes again, never really lost.
I ready her for bed and she gives me that look, the same one from eleven years before. It’s one thing that’s never changed.
So enchanting, so clever, so funny, so wonderfully mine.
rhemashope.wordpress.com 
This is the first picture I have seen of Rhema at this age! Precious, precious girl then and now.
This made me tear up. My son, 16, is also Autistic. It’s funny. Just yesterday, I was looking at a picture from when he was a baby and thought, “When that picture was taken, he was a just typical baby with so much ahead of him; school, college, career, family…etc.” I had no idea, when the picture was taken, just how wrong I was. He’s still my gift. My precious and wonderfully amazing son. Some things never change, but only get better, even with this diagnosis.
“So wonderfully mine”…..beautiful words…..a most precious girl and wonderful mom.