Ever felt like an island, isolated and alone, whilst raising a special needs child? We, Todd and Amanda Johnson, embark on a heartfelt journey to bridge that gap, sharing our personal narrative of raising our autistic son, Ezra. With faith as our compass, we've navigated through the challenges and joys of this unique parenting experience, and we're here to assure you, you're not alone. We've chosen the name 'Not an Island' for our podcast to highlight the importance of building a supportive community around you, turning potential meltdowns into cherished moments.
Dive into a vibrant discussion on the transformative power of autism, as seen through the eyes of loving parents. We shed light on the profound lessons Ezra's autism has taught us - patience, unconditional love, and a deeper understanding of God's love. Every family's journey with autism is unique, and we empathize with the different experiences. Despite the hardships, we firmly believe that autism will eventually reveal its gifts. With us, find comfort, encouragement, and hope in your journey with autism.
Ever felt like an island, isolated and alone, whilst raising a special needs child? We, Todd and Amanda Johnson, embark on a heartfelt journey to bridge that gap, sharing our personal narrative of raising our autistic son, Ezra. With faith as our compass, we've navigated through the challenges and joys of this unique parenting experience, and we're here to assure you, you're not alone. We've chosen the name 'Not an Island' for our podcast to highlight the importance of building a supportive community around you, turning potential meltdowns into cherished moments.
Dive into a vibrant discussion on the transformative power of autism, as seen through the eyes of loving parents. We shed light on the profound lessons Ezra's autism has taught us - patience, unconditional love, and a deeper understanding of God's love. Every family's journey with autism is unique, and we empathize with the different experiences. Despite the hardships, we firmly believe that autism will eventually reveal its gifts. With us, find comfort, encouragement, and hope in your journey with autism.
Hello and welcome to Not an Island podcast. This is our very first episode in a series where faith and family and autism meet. We are your hosts, Todd and Amanda Johnson. You can call her DJ Mandy with her headphones on.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I feel like a DJ.
Speaker 1:
In today's episode, we're going to be spending some time laying the foundation for this podcast, as well as giving an introduction as to who we are as a couple and as a family, and also why we felt so strongly to start this podcast. So we'll be sharing our thoughts and experiences as a family to a child with autism, specifically from a perspective of faith. So, without further ado, let's dive right in. Here it is so who are we? Amanda?
Speaker 2:
Who are we who?
Speaker 1:
are we? What are we about?
Speaker 2:
We are two parents who do not have all the answers. Not at all God, who walked through a great deal of child and error, and we are both worshipers of Jesus and our faith has really gotten us through what we've walked through in our life, and so, yeah, For sure.
Speaker 1:
Definitely that has been the central thing of our life is just walking with Jesus through everything. And so, long story short, we have two children, and our oldest his name is Ezra. Just go ahead and get that out of the way. Ezra has autism and you know he's been through a lot in the short time he's been alive six years. But you know, having a child with autism has been one of the biggest blessings, if not the biggest blessing to me, I know. For Amanda as well, it's been just massive.
Speaker 2:
And our youngest son, justice, came along a couple of years ago, and just seeing the bond form between the two brothers and getting to raise them together has been a trip and a journey.
Speaker 1:
It's been hilarious. Those two are like partners in crime.
Speaker 2:
Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:
But so, yeah, that's a little bit of who we are and we're just going to get into the foundation of the podcast. So, Amanda, where did you get the name for? Not an Island, that's such kind of a. It's an interesting name.
Speaker 2:
So I had heard that like people pray and prophesy over and not specifically me, but I just heard it, maybe like corporately over the body of Christ you know they were not an island, that we were made for community and we were made for each other, and as I was just praying and seeking the Lord on, you know what to call this, that was just the thing that came to my mind, and I think also, like we lived on the island of Guam for three years Just so many, so much of it made sense, and we also have a missional call and a part of that is on an island, and so there's just a lot of like that happening.
Speaker 2:
But I think, most of all, when I heard Not an Island, I just knew how isolating it can be to be a parent of a child with special needs and how isolating some of the times that we've walked through have been and how misunderstood we felt at times, and so I just wanted to be able to put something out there that could bring some hope to some other families who are walking through the same thing and let them know you're not alone.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, sure, yeah, that's that is the central point of this whole podcast is for families that are affected by autism to know that they're not alone, that you are not alone, and that you know there's a massive group of people who believe in Jesus and believe in him to move in our lives and move in our children's lives, in whatever way that may look for you, but for us it's to see him glorified in our family's life and our son's life with autism. And I don't, it's hard for me to understand how you could do that alone. Right, you have to have people around you, and so that's what this podcast is about. If you don't get anything else from this episode, just know, like that's what we are about. We don't claim to be professionals, like she said, but we do claim to have been through a lot and we'll just share, you know, our experiences and everything. So what is the vision? We already kind of covered that. The vision for this podcast is really to bring hope and encouragement to families who are affected by autism. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:
You got anything on that.
Speaker 2:
I just I remember I wanted to share that on the times that there was times where we've been tempted many times in our journey to just hold up and kind of close in and not go places and not do things. And our son, Ezra, who the one who has autism is also ironically one of the most adventurous. You know, he thrives so much in routine but he also is like so comes alive when he's able to like explore and do new things, but then those new things are struggles, and so one of the things I just wanted to say is, I think early on we kind of adopted the idea that, no matter how hard it was, regardless of the meltdown, we were going to do the thing. You know, we were going to go to the places that were hard but we're still enjoyable for him, and it was like so be it if he had the meltdown. And I think that breaks a lot of isolation in itself. If you know, like, trust me, this is like a word to the wise kind of thing. It's a lot easier said than done.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:
Because it's hard to be in public with a child who's frantic and losing it and some of you may have children who that's every single place you go and I know that that's really hard. But don't stop going to those places, don't stop going to the restaurants, don't stop going to the zoo doing the fun things just because of the meltdowns, because eventually your child is hopefully not going to have that severe of a reaction, or maybe you'll have a delayed reaction, you know to it. But I just we would have robbed ourselves of some of the most precious times with Ezra had we let isolation get the best of us.
Speaker 1:
So yeah, for sure. I think at the end of the day, you know our son and a lot of your children, if you're listening, at the end of the day, they're kids.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
You know they're kids, they're not.
Speaker 2:
And our two year old, who doesn't have autism, has no don'ts.
Speaker 1:
I was to go to you. So I mean, it's kind of questionable, it's hilarious, but yeah, I think at the end of the day, they are there. They're just kids and you know, I grew up in a man who grew up in a world where we'll just say people who are different really had to accommodate the world. And I think it's about time the world specifically Christianity American Christianity, I'll say really starts to accommodate these people. Yeah, accommodate these children and their families, because it's just a, it's just a fact of life that is not going anywhere. It's the fastest growing disability on planet earth. Yeah, and so yeah.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean, if you want to touch on that as well. Like I know in specific approaches, a place that was hard to go for a period of time, and can still be challenging, was church.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2:
And I mean, as we're had, separation anxiety severely and when you, when you're dealing with places that maybe don't understand how to accommodate your child, that can be really hard and but I've seen, I've seen a lot of work going on in the body of Christ and in multiple. The more places we go, the more we inclusion we see, the more we see people including and making space for these children, and that's that's something that's so deeply impressed upon. Our heart is is even to equip churches to. You know, better handle that. But yeah, we know, because there's with seasons of times where it's like it's almost easier to stay home because the fight was so great, for sure. So if you're, if you're walking through that you're not alone and just know you know, keep pressing forward and and find a place where your child is accepted in love and and where there's understanding there, where you may have you know, a lot of people have to sit in the lobby and instead of you know, have them in the service or whatever you know, but they're open and they're welcome to leave.
Speaker 1:
Even more than that. I would say this, like a lot of you may be watching and say, well, I just don't have that you know, like I don't have a place where I or my children feel welcome or really I don't say welcome, that's not, that's harsh, but where they feel understood.
Speaker 2:
Right.
Speaker 1:
And if that's you and if you don't feel like that, you know, be that, like, just just be that you don't have to open up your home and start a home church. If that's your heart, you know and you feel the Lord telling you to do it and do it. But you know, all you have to do is be the change that you want to see. You know, yeah, Um, yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 2:
I think the more you open up and actually talk to people about it, the more you'll see that they are so willing oh for sure.
Speaker 2:
We've had. Some of the places that we've been in have just been so kind and so loving and so accepting of Ezra and really made a space for him. Even in the small church we were a part of for quite some time there was no special space for him to go to. He was right in there with the rest of the kids and he was able to draw or do his thing and it just it made our hearts come alive that he loved going and being there and that they would let him build a school bus while they did their lesson or just whatever it was to help accommodate. I don't know, I don't know how we got into all that.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, but no long story short. That's the vision of our podcast. Yeah, it's for you to feel welcome, for you to feel encouraged and for you to feel hope, and I hope this little shindig we went through did that to you. And also we kind of halfway described this. But let's talk about why we decided to start the podcast.
Speaker 2:
Oh, I mean, I think that's what we've been talking about.
Speaker 1:
I think, yeah, that's kind of what we've been talking about, but at the same time, there have been personal examples in our lives, people around us who literally have no one anywhere, and it's so heartbreaking. It's so heartbreaking to see and, you know, there's communities out there for for exactly what we're doing, but there could now I don't feel like there could ever be enough of them. It's just so big of a just life I don't want to say lifestyle. It's even bigger than that. It's just life for a lot of people, a lot of families, a lot of kids. Um, and that's that's really to me.
Speaker 2:
That's why we decided to start. I think what what Todd's touching on is there's families in different circumstances than us. You know, we have a family with two fully engaged and active parents who take this thing head on together and we're in partnership in it and we are, you know, equally as involved. And there's some people out there who you're a single parent, you know, trying to work and do this on your own and you might be a grandparent, a grandparent.
Speaker 1:
Parents are nowhere, maybe. Maybe the parents have passed away, or whatever happens, you know it's. There are some pretty hard circumstances.
Speaker 2:
There are very hard circumstances and I know, um, just having the right resources and people around you can be vital to, I mean, your mental stability, for one Um, um, but, but just every aspect of your social life. You know every aspect of your life and uh, yeah, we've definitely come in contact with some people locally that are hard to go out to and it's like you realize, wow, you really don't have it as bad as you think.
Speaker 2:
Like when you're having rough moments, you realize like they're really, they're really, uh, have a disadvantage I don't know if that's the right word, but they, they have a really hard situation on their hands and a hardship and they don't have what we have to do it and uh, so we just want to recognize you, uh, if you're a single parent or a grandparent or someone going through this, that's not in our circumstance, because we know the weight of it as to able-bodied, fully well-equipped parents. So you know, we just want to recognize that it's not even easy for us Like it's not. Yeah, it's not.
Speaker 1:
You know doing it alone no. And that's why we decided to start this.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Uh and there's more to come on that, we'll talk about it probably in some future episodes but, uh, it is our heart to see a community grow and so, uh, just keep that in the back of your mind as you go through these episodes. So, uh, yeah. So, going into our third point, which is why we feel so strongly about this, and I think we kind of touched it on the second, one.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we can't not be passionate, yeah.
Speaker 1:
You can't have a kid with autism. Feel strongly and uh, care for them and love them and see them every day of their life and watch them grow and watch them change and not be passionate about autism.
Speaker 1:
You can't you know. Before I had a child with autism, I really thought I knew what love is. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I really thought I knew who I was in Christ. But I'm not gonna lie to you.
Speaker 1:
Like when I had Ezra, my whole world got just radically changed and I remember just being in prayer and hearing in my mind, hearing the Lord just telling me like, now that you're a father, you know what it's like to be a son, and that was years into having into my child's life, into Ezra's life. Because here's the thing like he's teaching me as a parent, and you as a parent, if you're out there watching or listening he's teaching us how to be patient through his patients, or I'll say that backwards he's teaching us his patients by teaching us how to be patient. He's teaching us his love, by teaching us how to love. There's so many aspects to that, but he loves us unconditionally and there's nothing that my child could ever do that would make me change the way I see him, and so how could God view me any different? Right? So there's been a lot of aspects of having a child, specifically a child with special needs, with autism that has changed everything about who I am.
Speaker 1:
So that's why I feel strongly. I don't know, maybe you have a personal reason as well.
Speaker 2:
I mean just along suffering and what we've walked through, also the joy and the breakthrough and the moments of the miraculous that we've witnessed in Ezra's life.
Speaker 2:
It's changed everything about us from the inside out. We literally couldn't be who we are without walking through what we've been through, and we couldn't worship from the place that we worship from without just this full, abandoned trust on the Lord, because we know that Ezra was fearfully and wonderfully made, we know that God didn't give us half of a promise, that he's given us the full thing. And so we've also learned, when things don't change in a moment in time, to not give up and to believe for the fullness of everything that God has for our son. And that doesn't mean we don't fully accept him right now, right where he is 110%, because we do, and we do it day in, day out, life with him. But we also.
Speaker 2:
One of the things that we've prayed since early on over Ezra and this may be controversial to some people, like some people might not like to hear this, but one of the things that we've prayed since early on is that all that would be left of autism would be the gift, that the hardship and the hard things that he's faced would eventually cease and they will have made him who he is and they'll have made us who we are, but the pleasure and the incredible gift that autism can be, that that would be the thing that's left in Ezra's life. And yeah, some people are like, oh, don't you know, they don't want to hear that or they don't want to hear that.
Speaker 1:
I want to expand on that. I want to expand on that a little bit too. Like, if that does offend you, please take this from a humble heart. Like take this from a place of love. Like not everyone has the same child. Yeah, some people their child with autism. It might be a. The situation they're in might literally be a living hell for the child. And then the family yeah, and then other families autism might just be something the doctor told them they have.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and it kind of explains some social differences yeah explains why they flap their hands, or explains why they might do things awkwardly. So it's a spectrum.
Speaker 2:
So it's it's.
Speaker 1:
It's If someone's saying that God, at praying for the Lord, just to leave the gift. You know some of the greatest minds on earth are, have ASD, have autism.
Speaker 1:
That's what we mean when we say that. And so before you get on your mountain and get upset about that, just take to heart that there are so many families out there who wish that their child could just say Daddy, I love you. You know, it took me three and a half years to hear that out of my son and I'm telling you. When he said it, you know he was just repeating me, because he didn't understand communication, yeah, what they call a gestalt processor.
Speaker 1:
But even though he was repeating me, I took it and ran and I'm telling you, something shifts in your heart when you see the gift part of autism. But it also breaks your heart when you see that child struggling to communicate, struggling to do things that normal people like, honestly, like I grew up as, like took things for granted.
Speaker 2:
Because there truly is a gift in there. I mean there's purity and innocence that other children just don't have. Ezra has not a care in the world what anybody else thinks. I don't think he would even understand if someone made fun of him and that's so beautiful that he gets to be a child, like fully be a child, and we love that. And you know and it's not that we don't love him through all the different hardships, but you can tell how much they affect him. And any parent, any parent whose child is going through you know, even self-injurious behaviors are just really hard things which we have not faced with Ezra, but really hard things with a more severe child. They want nothing more than to take that from them and we believe in a God who does miracles. We believe in a God who can heal and do anything, and so we trust Ezra with him. I think that's the moral of the story?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, for sure, and the Lord will do with Ezra what he believes and what he wills.
Speaker 2:
And he'll fulfill the purposes and destiny that Ezra has over his life.
Speaker 1:
So, with all that being said, that's why we feel strongly, yeah, yeah. So key takeaways Well, we'll just actually, we'll just talk about what we, what we discussed. So we talked about who we are. We are a family who loves to worship. That's who we are, and we are affected by autism, which we welcome open-handedly. Like that is. That's become something that we have. Where is a badge of honor? I'll say, you know, we talked about the foundation of the podcast, where we got the name from the vision. We talked about what made us decide to start it, why we feel so strongly, and, yeah, so that's what we've talked about. Now, looking to the future, we are so excited. We have a few topics to share and hopefully we'll be bringing some people on, whether in person or in, you know.
Speaker 2:
Zoom. I wish we could like shout out somebody. We really don't have anybody lined up yet, but I have some people in mind. They just don't know.
Speaker 1:
yet there's a lot of people in mind, for sure. So yeah, looking to the future, we've got a lot in store for you guys and we hope to continue doing them. Just bear with us. This is our very first time doing a podcast in our very first episode.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, we don't know what we're gonna do we don't know anything about what we're doing.
Speaker 1:
However, just just hang in there with us. I believe something as good as going to come of this 100% yeah, so that's looking to the future. Listen. If today's podcast has impacted you, please share it on social media. It means a ton to us and we know that there are so many others that need to hear the message of hope, the message of acceptance and the message of faith when it comes to autism. Also, please rate and review and subscribe or follow or whatever you do.
Speaker 2:
Feel free to email us right.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:
If you have any questions or if you just need to talk.
Speaker 1:
For sure. Yeah, I'll share that in just a second. Wherever you listen to your podcast or see this video, whatever, share it, like it, review it, subscribe, do all that because we're really hoping to get this message out. For sure. And, like you said, email we have an email address. It is notanislandpodcastatgmailcom. So official.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so official. So we would love to hear from you If something we said in this episode is really hit home with you, or maybe you just want to reach out and talk to us. Hit us up at that email, that's notanislandpodcastatgmailcom. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
Do you have time for a really quick prayer?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2:
So, lord, we just thank you for this very first episode and, god, I just pray it reaches who it needs to reach. Lord, I pray that every parent who's parenting special needs or different ability babies out there, lord, that need encouragement, god, that this would reach them and it would touch their hearts and their minds. And, lord, I pray that every person listening would feel the love of Jesus and that they would know that you're real and that you're close and that you're accessible, because you made yourself that way to us. And, god, I just thank you for just letting them know that they're not alone, that there's other people going through similar things, who are holding on to the hem of your garment and are believing for the miraculous in their day to day lives with their children with special needs. In Jesus name, amen.
Speaker 1:
Amen, we are Todd Anna-Maria Johnson, and thank you for listening and until next time, peace, peace.