Vachon Imagined

Before my son was diagnosed with Autism, we would watch him throw tantrums for thirty minutes, sometimes longer. It was one of the most powerless feelings I have ever known, standing there unable to fix my son.

When people want something to stop, it is awe-inspiring what they will do.

They hit.

They scream.

They run.

They charge in.

They console.

But underneath it all is the same impulse: fix it.

Anger? Fix it.

Crying? Fix it.

Fear? Fix it.

Screaming? Fix it.

Even too much happiness can make people uncomfortable enough to want to fix it.

It’s the engineer in all of us rushing in to save the day. No slight to engineers; every human carries this impulse. We want to make things better, even when our attempts to do so make them ten times worse.

It is simply the nature of being human.

We are forever trying to acquire love rather than be it.

So how do we find this love?

Ironically, by stopping the search.

By being ourselves.

All of ourselves.

The frightened parts.

The angry parts.

The joyful parts.

The ashamed parts.

The parts we spend years trying to improve, hide, correct, or fix.

See them.

Welcome them.

Love them.

And then something remarkable happens.

The thing you were trying to fix no longer stands apart from you.

You are at peace with what you are.

Not because you became someone else.

Not because you perfected yourself.

But because you finally stopped arguing with your own existence.

And in that intimate surrender, you discover something unexpected:

You were never broken, sinful, or separate.

You were only refusing to love what was already here.