I ran into my brother at the library with his ‘group’. He does NOT like taking selfies with his sister, lol. 
As cool as it would be for all autistic children to grow up to be ‘The Good Doctor’, this is not reality. Reality for Josh is living in an AFC home the rest of his life. Reality is taking anti-seizure medications and eating sensory appropriate food. Reality is never being able to talk in a conversation, go to college, get married, have children, or just go hang out with ‘friends’.
Many times in life I have asked, Why. I have asked God, Why.
Why was he born this way? Why couldn’t he just be ‘normal’? Why couldn’t we have had a ‘normal’ sibling relationship growing up? Why was it that we had to float from daycare to daycare because no one could ‘handle’ him while my single-mom had other burdens to carry?
Through this reality maybe I should stop asking why he can’t live like everyone else and start asking God why I was so fortunate. Fortunate enough at an early age to be ‘forced’ into learning what true selfless love means. Fortunate enough growing up to learn how to live outside of myself. Fortunate enough to have learned the responsibility of caring for another person which prepared me greatly for motherhood.
I will never sit around a kitchen table with my brother reminiscing over vacations out east or shared teachers in school. We will never find joy in him as an uncle because he doesn’t fully comprehend what it means to have a niece and two nephews.
However, I look forward to Heaven. We will get to sit next to each other with a cup of coffee and have eternity. We will take the memories we were never able to talk about on earth and laugh about them because he will be fully whole. We will laugh at how quirks of his autism got me into trouble (stories for another time ????). We will giggle at how we were always able to go first on carnival rides because he was ‘special’.
Maybe my thoughts should switch from wondering why he didn’t get the most out of this life to realizing that maybe his life is not about him. We all have our ‘cross to bear’. Was his not to live as a ‘typical’ person for the sake of getting others to think outside themselves? That maybe God’s purpose for Josh was about changing those around him? To learn selfless love, humility, compassion, and that this life was never meant to fit into a box?
I think I just answered my own why questions. Maybe he is a ‘good doctor’ after all 
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