Doors of Opportunity

For those of you who may not be aware April is autism awareness month.  I have a dear friend Victoria and she blogs at He Holds My right Hand whose daughter has autism.  Her daughter is truly amazing.  Autism touches so many lives.  Another friend of mine, Sara, works with children that have special needs such as autism and she has worked very hard in our community to raise awareness of autism in our community.  One of those efforts was on Friday night there was a movie shown at our church about Temple Grandin.  Ms.Grandin has autism.  Her story is incredible.  Despite her disabilities she has gone on to earn Ph. D. and she has written several books.  She has also made an impact on the Livestock industry.

I did not know about Ms. Grandin before watching this movie.  It touched my heart and I was so glad that Caleb went to watch it with me.  While we were walking home, we talked about the movie.  Then Caleb made reference to a part of the movie that spoke to him.  Temple had a teacher that told her about doors of opportunity in front of her and to walk through them.  Caleb at age seven talked about how God was going to put doors of opportunity in front of him to walk through.  I did not realize that he was going to have that deep of an insight.  Then he made a deeper application when he said that reading is a door of opportunity in front of him.  Now for those of you who don't know reading has been a difficult thing for Caleb.  He had seizures and some other neurological issues until recently and I already know from his dad how that can impact learning.  So Caleb has to work harder when it comes to reading to build new neuropathways in order to learn.  Caleb has been gifted with determination and so has worked very hard.  He is now reading, but it is not his favorite thing to do.  So to hear him make that realization brought a tear to my eye.  He even picked up his George Washington biography on his own once this weekend (usually I have to remind him it is reading time).  I am so glad he came with me to watch the movie.  Caleb does not always have these type of insights, but once in awhile his 7 year old mind blows me away.

I would highly recommend looking at the life of Temple Grandin.  We all have some area we struggle with and it would be tempting to just accept our limitations, but how many doors of opportunity would we miss if we did that.  Let's do what my high school track coach used to tell me, "Accept your limitations and then over come them."  Let's walk through the doors of opportunity in our lives.