“Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear. Bust so do several other things – ignorance, alcohol, passion, presumption, and stupidity. It is very desirable that we should all advance to that perfection of love in which we shall fear no longer; but it is very undesirable, until we have reached that stage, that we should allow any inferior agent to cast out our fear” (C.S. Lewis from The World’s Last Night and Other Essays (1952) para 30, p. 109)

As some of you know, it is my goal to attend Oxford University next summer. Please pray that the Lord will show me the way to achieve this goal financially. Recently the Lord led a retired librarian into my life who went to Oxford one summer also. It was and is so thrilling to have someone to talk with who shares my passion about this trip!

As some of you know, my past was challenging and to be where I am today is such a gift of the Lord’s love and mercy. Life as a child of God is truly amazing! How grateful I am to even dream such dreams as Oxford and how thrilled I am to be earning my degree at Regent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In Christ, Tammy

New Webcam :)

Cognitive psychology and statistics - oh my! What a combination of classes. Whew. Well, we are at six weeks. Two more to go. Gosh, this session has gone fast.

Doing the Right Thing

"You can't get second things by putting them first; you can get second things only by putting first things first." (Lewis, 1942, p. 280)

I’ve recently learned a valuable lesson. After finishing the summer research project at UGA, I applied for two jobs. Then, my classes resumed at Regent.

One was a second shift, full-time position where I could study during the slow times. It didn’t pay much but had benefits. The other one would be a part-time guaranteed one day a week substitute job with occasionally more days, no benefits, but much better pay. In fact, one day a week there would almost equal the entire week's pay at the other job.

The part-time company offered me the position. It sounded great and I accepted. I looked forward to not being away from my family full-time at night. I accepted the position via phone to the corporate office. Then, I called the full-time company to let them know I had taken something else. The manager of the full-time company called me back later in the day and said that they had planned to offer me that job too and wouldn’t I reconsider.

I agreed to reconsider but with no promises. So, I prayed and prayed, talked to people, and decided that it might be best to take the full-time job after all because it would guarantee that my school work would not get behind and we would have health benefits. I didn’t like the idea of the hours though. My decision was to drive to the part-time company and tell them I had changed my mind. Then, I would drop in at the full-time company and let them know that I WOULD accept their offer.

As I drove, I rehearsed how to tell them that I had changed my mind. When I arrived there, the first words out of my new part-time boss-to-be mouth were “You’re not here to tell me you don’t want the position are you?” Then, she rushed me in. There was no time to respond. She was excitedly talking away. I was greeted sooooo warm and friendly that I found myself doubting my decision. It all seemed so good. I found myself thinking: “Does God really want me to be away from my family every night?” Needless to say, I never brought myself to say that I WAS there to tell her I didn’t want it. Even after learning that they really wanted me to work FULL-TIME for SIX WEEKS until the regular employee came back from leave. THEN it would be one day a week. I left their office with my decision totally reversed thinking that was what the Lord wanted me to do and making plans to juggle all those extra hours with my school work.

Long story short, the position wasn’t anything like it had been explained in the interview or training. And my new boss – knowing the discrepancies between the training and actual job – continued to be fearful that I was going to leave. She, in fact, usually asked me each day if I was going to quit to the point of irritation. The warm environment portrayed on that first day turned out to be just a cover for an extremely bad work environment. However, I was bent on thinking this was where the Lord wanted me to be.

After three weeks, however, I resigned after encountering a conflict there that I KNEW the Lord would not want me to participate in.

In retrospect, I could blame the company for not being honest in the interview or during the training, but the bottom line is that I didn’t follow through on doing what I had prayed about. I was initially headed down there to decline their offer, but started doubting my own discernment and didn’t follow through with my initial plan. Was there a purpose for me being there? Was it actually supposed to be like it turned out. Yes. Everything has a purpose. But why - I will probably never know.

Trusting God I did. Trusting myself I didn't do. There is such a fine balance sometimes. I would love to hear how others struggle with this balance!! I can say, however, alot was learned about myself and others in this experience. A lady from my church said that maybe the Lord didn’t want me at either job. That could be true, I suppose. And I certainly needed to recognize how easily I can doubt myself after prayer and discernment. And it reminded me of how much I have to be grateful for.

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been all this time. Today it is wonderful to just, once again, to be back at Regent.

Tammy

Sitting Still in the Desk Chair

It is 6:17 p.m. on Friday, July 27th. I handed in my research paper to the Grad School office at 3:30 p.m. this afternoon. What a feeling. It took well over 120 hours to write.The poster arrived today. Next Monday is the poster presentation and next Tuesday at 3:15 p.m. is my oral presentation. Prayers are appreciated. After Tuesday, I will linger here at the University of Georgia until Friday while completing my mentor's website. After that, I will go back to my home.

I've been tidying up my office since coming back from the grad school. It looked like a tornado had been in here. There were articles and books everywhere. Then, I made the mistake of sitting down. Now I don't have the energy to even keep typing.......think I'll just want to sit for a few minutes and mindlessly stare into space. Do'h.

In Christ, Tammy

The Autism Homepage by Gary Heffner

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."Antoine de Saint-Exupery

MY LIFE: Whew! What a week it has been. The research is going full blast, the paper is starting to come together, the poster for the poster presentation is in the works, the website for the professor is coming along nicely, I’ve been trying to recruit speakers for the psychology club, attended a poster/oral presentation workshop, going to the mandatory GRE prep classes from 6 – 9 p.m., and am preparing for an interview next week. (Plus a few other things) It is like running a race that never stops. Yet, at the same time - isn't life grand! I believe so.

Our Heavenly Father gives us much if we are willing to step up to the plate and do the next right thing. How grateful I am to have enough energy and the ability to do all of these things. And with these gifts, I believe, come the responsibility of attempting to use them to the benefit of mankind and/or my fellow man whenever possible.

BOUNDARIES: However, believing that does not mean that I have no boundaries. When I was younger and before having a solid relationship with the Lord, I foolishly assumed that it was my "duty" to help everyone that requested help. I, in fact, resented other people that had boundaries and wouldn't drop everything if I thought someone else was in need. My incorrection assumption about "my duty" was benefitial to people once in a while, but detrimental to myself and more often did not bring Godly help for the other person. In retrospect, I think my ego wanted to be able to say how great I was.

Now, with more clarity and the understanding that we are children of God, I have come to accept that help is not successfully if it is MY WILL instead of HIS WILL leading the way. My life has changed substantially for the better since coming to understand this concept several years ago. Today's attempts in helping others are usually much more successful, but even the one's that aren't provide a deeper understanding of myself and the nature of others.

AUTISM: I’m excited to have a meeting with one of the professors for the autism clinic next week and will write more about that after the meeting. This may be an opportunity for me to get a professional opinion on the course I created for blackboard.

My link for you today is written by the man that trained in me in Judevine, Gary Heffner. Judevine is an awesome program available for parents, teachers, and caregivers in southern Georgia. Link: The Autism Homepage

Happy day to you. It is time to get busy! T

AUTISM IN HISTORY

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad."
C. S. Lewis

Did you have a nice 4^th of July? We did with the traditional evening cook-out and watching fireworks. We even lucked out with a good parking spot and didn't have to sit in traffic for hours afterward. I was surprised at the number of stores open. We went to Walmart and Home Depot to get a couple of supplies for the racing event at Barber Motor Sports Park.. (For those of you that don’t know, my family is involved in racing. In fact they are at the track right now as I am working today. It is hard to stay behind!)

In preparation for the research paper, I’ve been looking at the potential historical references to autism in depth along with the history of the classification and diagnosis process. Below is a little bit of the history if you are interested. It seems that the autism spectrum disorders may have been around for centuries without a classification.……

SOME HISTORICAL REFERENCES TO AUTISM

The first description for autistic characteristics along with the suggestion that autism was a unique syndrome first appeared in Leo Kanner’s 1943 paper entitled, Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact, describing eleven children who showed features different from childhood schizophrenia, mental retardation, feeble mindedness, and other frequently used terms of the era such as idiots and imbeciles. However, there is some evidence that what we know now as the autistic spectrum disorders may have existed in prior centuries.

In retrospect, especially after decades of research and the discover of additional subtypes, we can now look back at certain cases as Uta Frith did with analysis of the court records of Hugh Blair, a man that showed many symptoms of autism documented in his court case of 1747, and argue that autism could have possibly been with us for at least two hundred and fifty years or more.

Some believe that Henry Maudsley’s 1879 edition of The Pathology of the Mind, may have recorded a thirteen year old boy that had Asperger’s syndrome, but Asperger’s syndrome was not called such until it first appeared in Austrian’s physician’s Hans Asperger’s 1944 paper, autistischen psychopathen, describing four higher functioning children than those described by Kanner. Although the children that Asperger described had somewhat superior cognitive and language abilities, they also share overlapping characteristics with the children that Kanner had described.

There is also the well documented case of, Victor, “the wild boy of Aveyron” found in 1798 and described by Dr. Jean Itard. Dr. Itard created teaching methods from working with Victor and others that are “still relevant today in the education of children with autism and with other language and intellectual disabilities” (from p 202 in The History of Autism) Lorna Wing, who made Asperger’s known in the western world, has been quoted as saying, “there can be no doubt that Victor was autistic”.

In addition to recent history, at least one research report suggests that autism may even be mentioned in the folkloric heritage of several countries. There are stories of children are described as changelings; characterized by unresponsiveness, resistance to physical affection, obstreperousness, inability to express emotion, unexplained crying, rigidity, and some are unable to speak.

And the word autistic was originally used by Eugen Bleuler, who created the term “Schizophrenia” in 1911. Autism described certain aspects of schizophrenia until Kanner suggested that is was its own syndrome in 1944.

Frances Tustin (A Hot and Sunny Saturday Here)

"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair." C. S. Lewis

It’s Saturday! Hope everyone is having an enjoyable day. I found myself drawn back to the office again today to do some additional week-end research and also plan to finish up this book by Frances Tustin entitled, The Protective Shell in Children and Adults. I have found the book fascinating. That’s a mouthful considering my prejudice toward anyone interested in Freud’s work after learning that he called religion a “compulsive neurosis” in his 1927 book, regarded girls as “missing” their penises, and several other ideas that just seem completely bizarre to me.

However, I haven’t studied Freud in any depth yet either. It is time to lay down my preconceived ideas.

This has been a fascinating week of research.

Happy Saturday - T