Different

I have not done well in my endeavor to write every morning.Some mornings I am.so blasted tired my head falls asleep before it hits the pillow. I have been thinking a lot about my father .  I visited a hobby shop this week full of model trains, model cars,.rocket ships and jam packed full of just plain stuff. There were guys behind the counter giving tips on important things like syringes. At first I thought it was a diabetic testing supply center or a drug cover operation. When the scruffy guy ahead of me in line looked desperate and said he really needed his needles and syringes, I got a little suspicious. Then the cashier said that was a special order and he was going to have to go in the "backroom" to get it. Things changed when he said it was, "The best way to paint the small pieces." I started thinking about my dad.  One Christmas he said he had a "Big" surprise for us.  He led us out to the "building" at the side of the house that was the game room.  Inside was something huge covered with a sheet. He let all of us grab a corner and uncover it like we were unwrapping a present.  Underneath was a huge model train set! He must have spent hours on the thing. One of the coolest things about it was the top could come off and underneath that was a huge car race track! We did not know what was cooler...the train set or the car track. Later he allowed us to help finish the town on the train village by painting houses, townspeople and little trees. Yes, I guess syringes and needles would have helped with the paint. It was an exacting process!
My dad was often in a hurry, impatient and curt in his answers to us. I believe it was because he had a million ideas coursing through his brain and he had a hard time focusing. On the upswing, he had a million ideas coursing through his brain and we were the lucky recepients of his ideas! Like the zip-line, tree-house, trainset, race course and juke box. We were never bored or at a loss for things to do growing up!
   A young nurse approached me a few weeks ago looking for some advice.  "Nicole, my son's pre-school teachers are worried about him. He is not as social as he needs to be, he keeps lining up objects, and he has a certain fascination with topics of his choosing. They want him tested for autism. Should I be concerned?" I asked her, "Is he happy?" She said, "Yes". I asked her, "Does he have friends?" "Yes," she said. "Is he functional?" "Yep", she said. "Then they need to relax," I told her. Let me tell you about my dad.  With our girls we did have to intervene because the above criteria were not met.  With our research, my mom and I had discovered that my dad probably had Asperger's too.  Then we had read a book about an adult who had discovered he had Asperger's later in life and found it liberating when he found out. My mom asked me to approach my dad and talk to him about his Asperger's. When I found him he was out working in the garden, another hobby.  I started with, "Dad, did you know I have OCD? " He said he was surprised and did not know that I had that. "Yes, and sometimes I have anxiety too." "Well, I always, knew you had that," he chuckled. "Dad, now that I know what I have, I know why I feel the way I do sometimes and I know how to deal with myself. Ithelps me, you know?" "Well, I'm glad, Coley, I am glad you feel better." "Dad, mom and I think you may have Asperger's, a form of autism.  how do you feel about that?"
He stopped raking for a minute, leaned on the handle and stared off. Then he said something I will never forget and something I have thought about almost everyday since.
"Coley, do you think I do not know that I am different? I have known I am different from the time I was a very small boy. What you may not realize is that God can still use "different" and actually sometimes prefers "different". With that, he was back to the rake and the garden.
After that moment  read my scriptures with a new purpose. I found Moses with a speech impediment. Maybe so his mouth would be filled with what God needed him to say. I found Enoch with social anxiety. He would freeze up in front of people. Maybe so he would have to rely on the Lord to help him. Jonah may have had a learning disability as it took the Lord many modalities to teach him. And lastly, there was a fourteen-year old illiterate boy who saw God and Jesus in a grove of trees and had to rely on God to bring the restored Gospel back to Earth.
When I had a garage sale to try to get rid of some of my dad's numerous hoards over the years, person after person showed up with story after story of how "Gene Goodwin" helped them during a difficult time.  More than that, my dad LOVED to talk and I think these fellows liked to talk to my dad. My dad has always given pretty good advice and was a  cheap source of anything from legal to marital advice for his friends and associates over the years. When he closed his auto parts business a few years back, he also closed his informal counseling practice.  There was one time he even let a close friend live in a camper at the back of his store for a year or so when he was estranged from his family.
I AM proud of my dad. With his burning testimony of Jesus Christ, he was right...God does use different and sometimes

DOES  even prefer it ;)