Perfect love and the fear that opposes it.

The date was April 8, 2000.  The event was the 1st ever Rally for National Autism Awareness and the first ever Congressional Hearings on Autism.  There are a few things that stand out from that day that I'll never forget....

But first, the present.  April.  Autism Awareness Month.  With all it's hatred and division.  All the hideous posts from those who fear our message, causing those who want to help, to be fearful of helping.  And I have to ask myself why....  But I know their motive...  Fear.  In 1 John 4:18 it says, "There is no fear in love.  But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment.  The one who fears is not made perfect in love."  The Message Bible states it this way:  "There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love."  

It is fear that drives those who don't want to be cured, to prevent us from wanting to treat our severely affected children.  It is fear of those parents who have been indoctrinated with the lies that without their child being fully vaccinated they will die.  It is the fear of crippling loss of profits that drive Pharma and the Vaccine Industry to perpetuate lies of safety.  It is fear of losing jobs, elections, prestige, credibility that drives agency directors and Congressmen to side with them each and every time.

But the parents...  Me as a mother of a son who is severely affected by autism...  All we have to drive us is that perfect love for our child.  Not fear of losing money, our job, or our reputation.  Just love.  Nothing else would drive a parent to endure all that we have been made to endure, when we could all just hunker down and shelter in place and not give a rats-ass about anyone else's kid.  Our motive is that perfect love we have for our children and our future grandchildren, that love that drives out any and all fear. 

Back to the events of fourteen years ago and that perfect love.  I sat in the Congressional Hearing room in the audience.  Raymond Gallup was giving testimony about his son Eric who regressed into autism from the MMR.  I remember a part of his story that haunts me to this day.  How when Eric would get agitated, they would all run and lock themselves in a  bedroom.  Living that kind of life, I wouldn't have the energy to be in Washington testifying at a hearing, but he was.  Out of that perfect love for his son, he was there to beg and plead for help.  He was there to give facts on behalf of the organization he founded and the research they were doing.  He was there to give warning to prevent others having to live the kind of life he had to.  And in reply, one of the other panelists or a Congressman, not sure who, but someone asked him what his profit margin was, something about a stock market something.  Something totally ridiculous and absurd.  He had no money.  He was a parent first.  He did what he did out of love, not for profit.

Another parent on that panel was Scott Bono.  I remember his opening words of how he was there before them wearing the only suit he had.  And I have no doubt that was true.  None of us had any money, all the money we had, and more, went to our children.  Traveling cross-country to get help for them, and paying for therapies for them that insurance wouldn't.  We all sacrificed greatly to even be there that day.  We begged and borrowed and pinched every last penny to get there.  Not for what we would gain, but for what we were tired of losing.  Our children.

It was perfect love that motivated the women to stitch hundreds upon hundreds of quilt squares together for that day.  Finding time where none was to be found because of the full-time job of caring for their own children with autism.  It was perfect love that motivated Unlocking Autism to collect and organize and scan in thousands of pictures for the "Open Your Eyes to Autism" picture boards.
Those projects cost them all time they didn't have, and money they sure as hell didn't have. Money that could have been spent on helping their own children, not anyone else's.  Yet again, because of that love, they put aside fear of backlash.  Fear that no one would show up.  Fear of failure.  They instead pressed forward and did what it took to make that event happen.  That event that would bring about help, HOPEISM, and change.  Not just for their child, but for all children.  The only motivation being to halt the epidemic before it got further out of hand.  To tell the truth before the lies could be further entrenched.

That is why it is incredulously insulting to read such hatred and opposition toward us.  But I better understand it.  It is fear.  They aren't driven by the perfect love a parent has for their child and how that drives out any fear.  They just know the fear of the punishment if it ever is actually acknowledged that they caused our children's autism.  Those with high functioning autism who can speak for themselves, are driven by a fear that perhaps if we want to cure our children, their life might be one we want to cure or wipe out too.  I don't know.  I don't know what would possess them to not want to help us help our children possibly be able to speak for themselves one day like they can speak for themselves.  Parents who have children without autism who oppose us, again do so out of fear.  They have been told for so long that vaccines save lives, that they fear their child will die without one.  Little do they know that quite possibly, their child could die very slowly for the rest of their life if they do indeed, get one.  That in preventing a death that might never come, they have instead prevented them from fully living.

And I think what signifies that perfect love that motivates us, is "the incident" of that day.  Those who were there know what I'm talking about.  In the middle of someone speaking, someone went up on stage to the microphone to announce that a child was missing and to please help look.  Without question everyone did just that. Nothing else mattered at that moment.  Everyone who heard the announcement, looked.

Just like it is today with autism.  Our lives have been interrupted.  Nothing else matters but looking, searching, reclaiming.  For truth.  For help.  For change.  Because of the love of our child, and for all the children like that boy who was briefly lost that day.  We would have looked until we found him that day.  No one would have quit looking.  Just like we will never quit sharing the truth so that we might prevent another child's health from being lost to autism. To seizures.  To GI Disease.  To wandering.  To drowning.  To death.

And those of you on the sidelines and even to those in opposition to us, please take note as to just whom it is who is searching for the truth.  It isn't Pharma.  They have no motivation to.  It isn't the Government, it would ruin their credibility to.  And as we have found out, and you will too when autism hits your child, it won't be the doctor you can turn to for help in searching for your child to get them safely back.   

It will be us. 

Those you opposed.

The vilified.  The criticized.  The quacks.  The written-off.  The fearless.

Those of us who have given everything.  And I mean everything.  In a core group of women I was part of on that day long ago, out of five of us who were married at that time, four of them are divorced.  I am not, but make no mistake, we don't have a typical marriage.  We get no regular conversation time, let alone regular date nights.  We have a tag team marriage.  I would say despite that we have a great marriage, but it is definitely a different kind of marriage.  Much has been sacrificed from all of us.  Yet we press on.  That perfect love for our children the driving force that keeps us battling on, even when we lose so very many of those battles. 

And that's the perfect love those who fear us and oppose us will never understand.  They will continue to not help us, yet we are fighting so that nothing ever hinders their children's or Grandchildren's health.  We were supporting programs to fund wandering prevention.  So that if their children became one of ours, there would be resources for them.  Those who trashed Chili's wall against us, did so out of fear of what we represent.  The greater the truth we share, the greater the opposition to counter that truth.  Chili's caved into that pressure out of fear of lost profit.  We have nothing to lose.

I guess the only thing good about this month is that we aren't the only ones whose truth has been mocked and heckled with such ferocity. 

Where we only feel battered, beaten, and bruised, he was all those things.

Where our cause is being crucified, he was crucified. 

The HOPEISM I find in all of this, this month of autism and Easter, is that no matter whether truth is a person such as He is, or a cause such as what we warrior moms and dads advocate for, while it can be temporarily killed and buried...

It can never be permanently defeated.

It will rise again.

We will never quit.


That is the beauty and the HOPEISM that I will cling to the remainder of April.