Lessons from Jessica

As part of the Pastor’s Choice series, Pastor Scott Wiens shares “Lessons from Jessica,” a deeply personal message about his daughter Jessica, her autism diagnosis, and the ways God has used her life to shape his family’s faith, character, and understanding of His sovereignty.

Scott begins with the frightening circumstances surrounding Jessica’s birth in 1994, when a medical emergency led to an ambulance ride, desperate prayers, and an unexpected hospital delivery. From the beginning, Jessica faced challenges: tongue tie, jaundice, colic, and then, around eighteen months old, a noticeable change in communication. She stopped responding to her name, seemed to withdraw into her own world, and eventually received an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis.

With honesty and tenderness, Scott describes the grief that can come with disability—not grief because someone has died, but grief because certain dreams have to die. He speaks candidly about the weight of realizing Jessica might never marry, go to college, have children, or live independently, and about the lifelong caregiving journey he and his wife, Hedie, were beginning. He also shares the daily realities of autism in their home: communication struggles, sensory sensitivities, difficulty with social cues, fear of conflict, and the constant need for patience, protection, and understanding.

But this message is not only about hardship. Scott celebrates Jessica’s creativity, her love for animals, her artistic gifts, her work serving others, and her sincere love for prayer. Through her life, he highlights five lessons God has taught him: unselfishness, a servant heart, kindness and tenderness, the importance of hating conflict and practicing self-control, and childlike faith that simply believes God hears.

Scott also asks a larger question: how do we view people with disabilities? Are they mistakes to be fixed, or are they image-bearers of God with purpose, dignity, and something holy to teach us? Through Scripture and personal testimony, he points to the sovereignty of God and the truth that God does not make junk.

If you are parenting a child with autism, walking through disability, carrying caregiver fatigue, or learning to trust God with a life that looks different than you expected, this message offers compassion, honesty, and hope. In Jessica’s words, there is still the promise of “a beautiful morning forever.”

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Transcript

Why This Message Matters

Scott Wiens 0:03

Well, it is um we're going through a series and it's called Pastor's Choice. And um this one was actually um a request uh from somebody that they had heard I'd given this message in my former church, and uh and I thought it would be appropriate to give it here uh because of uh a lot of you who are involved in our our daughter's life. So I'm gonna give you a message this morning that I've titled Lessons from Jessica. So

A Birth Emergency And Desperate Prayers

Scott Wiens 0:33

the morning of December 27th, 1994 was a morning that my wife and I will never forget. Uh we lived in Gladewater, Texas. We had an 18-month-old daughter named Brandy, and my wife was about two weeks away from giving birth to our second daughter named Jessica. We had the first baby at home. My wife did amazing. She was just wonderful at uh at the home birth. And uh so we decided we were going to do that again. And the night before, my wife had had what she thought was Braxton Hicks. Uh all these names I never knew until I had started Jillian. It was it was fake labor, we thought. So our good friend Gina Caldwell, who uh was over, stayed the night. And so I'm laying in bed sleeping, and um, it was the morning I was just kind of laying, you know. I knew Hetty had gotten up, started making breakfast for her daughter and and Gina, and all of a sudden I heard Gina scream, Scott, she's having the baby! And I'm like, Oh, great! She's in labor. And then she screamed again. Well, what happened is my wife had a what's called a placenta abruption, and that's where the placenta partially pulls away from the uterine wall, and her water broke, and um, we ended up taking her in an ambulance to Tyler, Texas, which is about 30 minutes away. And I followed that ambulance, and uh, let me just say I said a lot of desperate prayers. If you've never said desperate prayers, you will sometime in your life. And uh the good news was Jessica was born quite normally in the hospital. Again, it was a little quick, but she was born and stayed the night, and the next morning we brought her home.

Early Signs And The Autism Diagnosis

Scott Wiens 2:18

Now, Jessica had some challenges right from the beginning. She was tongue-tied. Um, another thing I didn't know anything about uh if a baby's tongue-tied, that means they they can't really nurse correctly, they can't they can't latch on. And so a little we finally figured out what was going on, a little clip, and she was able to nurse. Uh, she was jaundice. So uh we had a bay window at uh at the home that we were in, and we she spent some time in the sun getting her vitamin D, and so she got through that. Um, she was also colicky. And if anyone here has ever had a colicky baby, you know that's uh a very frustrating thing. For about two months, she would cry a lot, and there was nothing wrong that we could tell, but she would cry, and so that was a challenge. And again, we were comparing her to our first child, which was this beautiful, simple brandy was perfect, and so this was quite a quite a chore, and a couple times my wife said, We don't gonna have another one if it's like Jessica, because it was a she was a real challenge. But things changed about 18 months, and she was about 18 months old, and and things started to change. My my wife was, of course, the first to to notice it. Uh Jessica kind of stopped stopped communicating with Pete with us. Um she wouldn't turn her head when we call her. She just began to kind of go into her own little world and and we knew something wasn't right. And so we began to try to figure out what was wrong. First thing we did, of course, was let's get some hearing tests, because maybe it was her hearing. But um, I remember going to that audiologist and watching them do the hearing test. They can do a hearing test with an 18-month-old. It's pretty interesting. Her ears were fine. We talked to her doctors, didn't really have, they didn't have any solutions for us. And and finally, my my wife, who by the way, what a she fought tirelessly for our daughter, and she was doing all this research, and uh and she uh landed on a group called the Andrews Center, and it was a certified community behavioral health clinic. And we made an appointment, and two of those, uh, two of their specialists came out, two beautiful women who were probably in their late 40s, early 50s. And I remember I took the day off, or took time off from work, and we sat there and they just observed Jessica. They watched and they asked a bunch of questions. And uh it was, I think the thing I remember the most, excuse me, I got a bit of a cough here today. I remember the most was their kindness. Yeah, they were so kind. And after about an hour, um, one of them looked at us with a kind of a real kind face and said, I think you need to have your daughter tested for autism. And we looked at her blankly. Autism, and thus began a journey. We did have her tested officially for autism, and she was diagnosed uh as having a certain having autism on a spectrum.

What Autism Is And Why It’s Rising

Scott Wiens 5:27

So uh, what is autism? What is autism? I'm not here to teach you all about autism, but I think it's important you understand at least the definition of it. Autism spectrum disorder is a complex, it's a neurodevelopmental condition that affects how a person perceives the world, how they communicate and interact with others. Um, there are two graphics I want to show you. The first is what's called the autistic spectrum. Uh, it shows that autism is truly a spectrum. It's not like you either like you're pregnant or you're not, right? No, autism is a spectrum. And that spectrum basically is doing it with degrees of how impacted that person is. So you can go all the way from like high-functioning people, people with Asperger's, which might have some social issues, but they're typically very functional, all the way over to severely autistic people. And and because of autism's prevalence, I'm sure a lot of you. Uh well, let me just ask you how many people know somebody who is autistic? Yeah. Pretty much everybody, right? And some of the is very, very severe. This next graphic kind of shows some of the typical characteristics of somebody that has autism. Uh, so one of them is motor difficulties. You know, one of the things about Jessica is she never crawled. She never crawled. The left and autism impacts the left and right hemispheres, not connecting, and it usually starts that it's those connections stop right about that 18-month-old period. And so she never crawled. She actually walked first. That was the first thing she did, was she walked. Um, the other thing is communication difficulties. Um, Jessica did not talk for a long time. Uh, we took her to um, we again, God just led us through a lot of this. She she went to uh we had he found a place called Winderidge, therapeutic horseback riding, or called hippotherapy. And no, it doesn't involve hippos, by the way. But Jessica loved animals. And Margot Duquet, I still remember her name. She had her on a horse, and Jessica wanted to go. So Marg was just saying, say go. Jessica, uh she was just struggling. And finally she blurted out, Go. We started crying, of course. By the way, I knew I was gonna get emotional up here. You guys have to forgive me, okay? This is a tough one in some ways. But she said go, and we were like, she spoke. And then from there, progressively the language started to come, and it was uh, but it took a long time. Uh, repetitive behaviors, and Jessica didn't have a lot of this. Uh, she would pace a lot sometimes, and she would get into her imaginary world, she would pace, but uh typically not a lot of repetitive behaviors like that. Uh, social and impediments, um, Jessica had trouble understanding the social norms, uh, and she couldn't understand that. So interacting with people was a bit of a challenge. Um, and I'll talk a little bit more about how that manifests even today. And then the uh really high sensitivity change and stimulation. Hetty always told the story that we would go to her friend's place, she'd take the kids to go over, and she would say, We're gonna go to Uncle Marty and Aunt Janie's house and get in the car, and if Hetty didn't follow the exact same route, Jessica would freak out. I mean, get really upset. In fact, one time Hetty forgot her purse and had to turn around. Oh boy. That was a bad thing because she's trying to explain this to Jessica, but Jessica had trouble understanding, right? So we've we dealt with that for a long time. Now, autism rates have gone up significantly over the past 30 years, and there a lot of that's probably because of greater uh diagnosis and the ability to understand and diagnose autism. Um, in the 1990s, it was basically one in every 1,000 children were diagnosed. And today, and this is a hard stat to read, uh, 3.2% of all children born will be on the autistic spectrum. That's one in every 31 children. So it's become very prevalent. And um, and by the way, males to females, it's four to one. Males typically are more commonly have and suffer with autism than than do uh children, uh women uh females. So now I want to get a little personal here just for a second.

Grief, Lost Dreams, And Needing Community

Scott Wiens 9:53

Um when you get a diagnosis like this from your doctor or from you know a psychologist, and and you now are faced with the fact that your child has a disorder like this, there's some hard things you go through. And one of them was grief. You might say, What do you mean, grief, Scott? Nobody's dying. No, but dreams are. Dreams are. You know, we went through some dark times. Uh Hetty started, of course, what any woman would do, what did I do wrong? And of course, I told her many, many, many, many, many times, and everybody else said it wasn't your fault. And it took her a while, though, to get over that because a woman is very protective and like, what did I do wrong? What did and there was nothing she did wrong. Nothing I did wrong. Um, but what had to die was the dreams. Jessica would never get married, she'd never go to college, she wouldn't have children. So it was a lot of dreams we had to let go. And by the way, I know there might be some people saying, Well, I know some autistic people that got that got married. Well, yes, maybe really high functional autism, but not on her level. Because to maintain a relationship like that is very, very difficult. I mean, most of us have trouble with having a marriage, so the other thing is our own personal dreams had to die, and that wasn't as important, but it was still a thing. Um, we were never going to be empty nesters. We were now gonna care for one of our children for the rest of our lives. Some of you have probably experienced that or are experiencing that. And the sad part about this whole thing was we were really not with the Lord at the time. We were fallen, we'd kind of walked away from church. A lot of you know my story about coming from a cult-like church, and um we had been disillusioned with that. So even though I still prayed and talked to God, I had no community around me. We had no community around me except some of our close friends. So it was a dark time. Um, so let me address some of the ways that Jessica's behavior uh and some of the challenges we had that came from autism. Uh,

Daily Challenges Plus A Bathroom Story

Scott Wiens 12:12

obviously, I've already talked about language. That first that was really difficult. And you might say, well, she wasn't talking, but you can still communicate. Well, that's a problem. You couldn't. Uh something was wrong and she was upset about something. You now had to try to figure that out. And she couldn't tell you, and she couldn't even explain with her hands, and you had to figure it out. Add on top of the fact that she was had a high pain tolerance. I mean, sometimes you'd find out she was sick, and for two or three days you were trying to figure out what's going on. And it just was tough, really tough. She couldn't tell you. And then, of course, as you're trying to guess what's going on and you're you're trying different things, she would get upset because she couldn't tell you. And it was a really difficult time. So it wasn't just languages or any kind of communication. Um, Jessica was always also super sensitive to any type of conflict, any type of conflict. If her sister started to fight, she would literally insert herself in that and she would just make it worse. She would just spiral and have meltdowns, and it was really difficult. It really was. Um, any sign of anger from us, even if I just my voice changed to something like this. Why is this here? Oh, trigger. And it was tough, and it's still tough, by the way. She can watch the same Disney movie every time, and there's drama in Disney movies, by the way. And when it comes to that, she still gets upset. She might have seen the movie dozens of times. She will still get upset because uh that's just a trigger for her. Um, and by the way, this impacted our daughters as well. My daughter Brandy and my daughter Jessica or Kate, both of them were impacted by that because they had to live with that as well. But by the way, they were also very much a part of Jessica's therapy and healing. My daughters were great with her, uh, but it was a challenge. One of the challenges, I didn't write this down, but was correcting her. Um, you know, with your children, if they do something wrong, you can correct them and the appropriate punishment. With Jessica, she didn't know what she did wrong. If you ever swatted your child for something they did wrong and have them look at you with those eyes, like, why did you do that? That will tear your heart out. So we had a real challenge there. Little things like sensory things, like she didn't like wearing, she always wore sandals. You put socks and tennis shoes on her when she would go to school. Of course, she was in special programs. She would take her shoes and socks off. And of course, the you have to keep your socks on and your shoes on at school. Well, finally found out the reason was her feet would sweat inside of her shoes, and her socks would get wet, and she hated that feeling. Additional, a like hyper sensitivity to something like that. Um now there are some legendary stories about Jessica. These are ones we can kind of laugh at now. My favorite one to tell was at my old church. It's probably one of the reasons I had to come up here. So Jessica used to go up and sit in um the children's ministry's office, which had a balcony that overlooked the whole sanctuary. I could see her up there if I was preaching. She would go up there and she would color and draw and stuff, and Curian was wonderful with her. And so she would typically be up there. But the bathrooms were downstairs. And one time Jessica went down to the bathroom to go to the bathroom. There was like three or four stalls in the women's room, and um, apparently there was another woman in there, and apparently the other woman wasn't just uh tinkling. And Jessica, being the socially conscious person that she is, got out of her stall and she went and found an air freshener and hung it over top of the stall that this lady's in and let fly. Right about that time, another woman had walked in the door and said, Jessica, what are you doing? She said, It's smelly. Oh, fortunately, we don't know who that woman was. I guarantee you, she never went to the bathroom in our church again, that's for sure. Oh, it was funny. It was great. She was just doing what we all thought she should do, right? Yeah, but it was it was wonderful. We got lots of stories about that.

Gifts, Work, And A Life Of Prayer

Scott Wiens 16:50

Now, Jessica has a lot of beautiful gifts. One of them is she's incredibly creative. All our daughters are artistic, and uh she loved to, she would, she would take, uh, she'll take characters from like Disney movies and she would combine them together. Here's a Disney, here's a Mickey Dragon, or and she would combine them. She would, you can buy, I don't know if you know this, you can buy comic books that are all blank, and she would take them and take her characters, and she would, I'm talking about thick. She would fill them up with long stories and draw them. She just really, really artistic. When she was uh in high school, uh she joined a pottery class. And we came to pick her up one time, and the there's the woman who was doing, apparently she was doing the pickup duty at the time. When Jessica got into our car, she said, You're Jessica's parents. And we said, Yes. She said, Your daughter, within two or three weeks, is doing things on the pottery wheel that our we got people, kids that have been taking pottery for two years can't do. She's just gifted with her hands. Of course, in my mind, I'm like, I know what we're gonna do. We're gonna get her to make a bunch of pottery and we're gonna sell it. But she didn't like doing pottery, so there went that dream. Getting rich off my kid. Uh, she actually did sculpting and and she actually had a um uh an art show, art exhibit in downtown Eustace uh that her um her art her sculptor teacher had uh had arranged. It was really beautiful. Jessica was so proud to have her sculptures there and people looking at it. It was great. We're very proud of her. She's incredibly good with animals. She's incredibly good with animals. They just they they just like her. I think they get her, and she gets them. It's really beautiful to watch. Uh, Jessica did graduate from high school, in fact, the same year as Kate did. And because Jessica was going to a school in a different town, and they were graduating the same night, we actually got it worked out through our hometown, Umatilla, that they allowed her to walk across stage with Kate. And so, yeah, this picture of her graduation was a special day for us. It was really wonderful. Of course, it was a special, um, you know, her her degree was, of course, uh related to her, you know, disability. Um, Jessica's baptized. Uh, she knows the Lord. And I had the blessing to be able to baptize her, and it was a beautiful thing. Uh, she knows the Lord, she really does. Every night at 7 o'clock on the dot, she's up in her room praying. And God help you if you get in the way of that. And she does, she's up there every night, 7 o'clock. In fact, we go to somebody's house, she's like, We got to get home. Because I got to pray. She's prayed in the car before. Sometimes she's prayed in somebody else's house somewhere. She wants to pray. She wants to talk to God. And if you've ever talked to her and said that you've got something wrong or whatever, she'll pray for you. She's prayed in our house church many times for people, and it's beautiful. Um, when Sean McCracken, the lead pastor of our other church, had a brain, uh, he had a brain tumor taken out, and so we went to see him. I went in first and and uh he was hurting bad. He was had a headache, you know, his head was hurting, obviously. And I said, Is it okay with if Jessica or Hetty and Jessica come in? Uh, and he said, Yes. And so they came in, and her immediate response was empathy. And I was gonna pray for Sean, that's why I was going there, but the through the spirit just told me, let Jessica pray for him. It was the most beautiful prayer. She loves to pray for people, she has a heart for people. So I wanted to give that background, um, but then I I guess I want to ask all of us a question.

Disability, Sovereignty, And God’s Purpose

Scott Wiens 20:56

How do you view people with disabilities? You think it was a mistake? You think that maybe that autism was a mistake? You think God was in control of that? Or maybe he didn't see that coming? It kind of slipped by him. The bigger question really comes down to what do you believe about God's sovereignty? I've really come to understand a lot through Jessica, and I'll be talking about some of the lessons we've learned, but one of the things I've learned is that God is sovereign in all ways and in all things. He could have easily not allowed the autism to kick in with Jessica. He could have easily done that. And I'm sure in some cases he probably does, but he didn't with Jessica. And I believe God's in control of all these things, and through it he fulfills purposes that we don't see. You guys probably remember in John 3 where Jesus heals the Blind man and and the people that were there say to him, Who sinned? This man or his parents? And you remember what Jesus' response was? Jesus said that neither of them, but this man was born, so the works of God might be displayed in him. Now, in that case, it was the healing that Jesus did. But I believe just like that, God has that situation, God has a plan for every person that goes way beyond what we can imagine. Way beyond. Our daughter will be 32 this December, and the impact she has had on me, my wife, our children, our other children, the people, her family, extended family, and all of the people that she's come in contact with, a lot of a church family, has kingdom purposes. I don't think it was a mistake. So I've got five lessons that I wanted to share that my wife and I have learned from Jessica. And my motive for giving this sermon is really first and foremost to honor God. I thank God for her all the time. I stopped praying for her healing a long time ago. And if you want to say that's lack of faith, go ahead. I don't care. Fortunately, you're not my judge. The reason is I prayed from, we've had her anointed and we've prayed, we've fasted, we've done everything, believe me. And by the way, if you've got some solution for autism, I'm just gonna ask respectfully, don't come to us. We've heard it all. We've heard it all. We've tried every kind of treatment you can think of. But what we've come to understand is that Jessica's here and she's here for a reason and a purpose, and we can see it now. We can see it now. So I'm here to give God the glory. Secondly, I want to honor my daughter. She's not here today, and she's not here today for a reason. Um, Jessica has an intellectual capability to grasp certain things, but we do not like to talk about autism in front of her because she can't stop that and not think that she's somehow broken. And so we didn't bring her for that reason. But she'll be here next week. She'll be here next week. But I didn't want her to uh, you know, we have to talk frankly, so I just to honor her, I didn't want to do that. But finally, what I'm really hoping is that sermon might challenge all of us to examine how we view people like Jessica who struggle with disabilities, and maybe realize that God has a greater purpose in their lives that we can see. And maybe looking at these lessons from Jessica, maybe you'll come to understand that I did that God places people like this in our lives, maybe not so we can fix them. But maybe they can fix us. So I also wanted to first thank all of you who have just embraced our daughter. Uh, you guys are very special. Um Patty Clemens, I just gotta tell you, she loves you. Yeah. She might have favorites. It's probably Patty, so get over it. But Patty loves her unconditionally, seeks her out, listens to her stories about Gilligan's Island and just hugs her. It's wonderful. All right. So

Lesson One: Unselfish To The Core

Scott Wiens 25:25

the first lesson I learned from Jessica was to be unselfish. Unselfish. Philippians 2, verses 3 through 4 says, Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not on his own, not only on his own interests, but also the interests of others. Jessica epitomizes this. She is so unselfish. Um, she will give you anything you want without a thought. When she was uh when she was a baby, when she was younger, she had her toys that she loved. And one time my wife observed, I don't know if it was one of our other girls, whatever, they just went over. They were all small. They probably Kate crawled over and took that toy from Jessica, like kids do. And what was it normally? What would the other the kid that got the toy taken away? What would they have done? Well, they would have cried and fussed and hollered. Jessica just kind of looked. She's just unselfish. And if she hears you having a conversation, and she, by the way, she's always listening. You think she's not, but she's listening. And we'll be talking about something. A lot of times, my wife and I'll be talking about finances and can we afford this or whatever? And Jessica will chime in out of the blue and say, You can have my money. Now, just so you know, she has money. It's in a little treasure chest thing up in her room. It's all change that she's collected, mostly from me, by the way. It's rolled up in little all the rolls and everything. And I bet you there's probably 30, 40 bucks in there. She will gladly give it to you. And by the way, so her concept of money is a little bit difficult. So sometimes we're talking about, you know, going, we want to go somewhere and we'll tell Jessica, well, we can't afford that. Because it would be like a few thousand dollars. And she's like, you can have my money. Like that would solve it, you know. Um, I don't dare touch her money, by the way. That's it's God's money. But she truly is unselfish. And if you haven't experienced that with her, you spend more time, you'll see that. The

Lesson Two: A Natural Servant

Scott Wiens 27:41

second lesson I've learned from Jessica is to be a servant. Jessica is truly a servant. She loves serve days here at the church. And whatever you point, whatever direction you point here, and if you lay the task out, believe me, she will do it and she will do it well. She does everything well. You know, uh, when we were at our other church, my wife ran the coffee bar there. And Jessica loved to be behind the coffee bar. And we had coffee urns that you would hold the little thing and fill up. So someone would come up and say, uh, I'd like a cup of coffee. Jessica said, Okay, great. She would fill it up, place it down, and then she'd pick up a spoon and she'd watch you. And they would put like some creamer and stuff, and she'd just dip it in and she'd stir it. Some people just kind of freak out at first, then they got to use it. By the way, you never ask for half a cup. She could not comprehend half a cup. But frankly, Mark, is half a cup of coffee really even? I think it's a sin, personally. So she would, she would ask, get a half a cup, and she'd fill it right up and just give it to them, and people would look. And, you know, we people finally got used to what's going on, but it was just kind of funny. She loved to serve and her chores at home. She's had specific chores to let the open, let the chickens out, and feed the chickens in the morning and put them up in the evening. Uh, she has chores, uh, she has to empty the dishwasher. That's one of them. And when you tell her to dust, because Hetty, of course, has worked with her. By the way, you have to understand where you see her now is a result of a 32-year love affair that my wife had with her. My wife has been amazing with her. And yeah, absolutely. Um, she made Jessica eat good, healthy foods because typically autistic people don't want to, they'll they'll live on chicken nuggets for the rest of their life if you let them. But my wife works so hard with her. So these chores, she'll knock this stuff out. So she Jessica has to dust, and believe me, she'll just grab it and go. She never complains about having to do her chores, she just does them. It's it's beautiful. She works, by the way, at Love Kitchen. I think I've mentioned this before. Um, there's a program called Employment and Community First through Tennessee. We didn't even know about that when we got here. ECF. And basically what they do is they fund uh an aide that works with Jessica. Um, well, I guess it's three days a week, right? And and two of those days she works at Love Kitchen. And then one day that's kind of the Friday's their fun day. Well, uh Faith will take Jessica and they go to Love Kitchen, Faith cooks there, and Jessica will clean pots, she will stock shelves because, of course, the the grocery stores give food to them and they and they make food for uh disadvantaged people like people that are uh say uh homeless or people that are shut-ins, and they make like 1,500 meals a week. It's crazy what they do. But Jessica's been there probably for five years now, and she loves it. She does a great job there. She she loves what she does. I mean, she gets tired of washing pans sometimes, but I guess everybody would, right? And by the way, my Jessica is a popcorn holick. I know that's her and Neil have that in common, by the way. She she will make popcorn every night religiously. She'll make, I mean, we'll eat the meal. We'll just have finished put the dishes and she'll make popcorn. She loves popcorn. Uh, and she will always ask us, you want some popcorn? I mean, she's always caring and wanting to serve others. And you know, we preach, we just went through a series on Ephesians, and I had the privilege of speaking on the part about working for Christ. And, you know, they have a Paul also mentioned this in Colossians, and I'll just remind you, this is what he said in Colossians 3, 23 and 24. Whatever you do, work hardly as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ. Now, let me say this. When Jessica does these things, I'm pretty positive she's not thinking, I'm doing this for the Lord. I'm doing this for the Lord. I'm sure she's not thinking that. But she's exhibiting it. Her heart is just to serve and not get anything out of it. And by the way, Jessica also, sometimes because the language challenges, she'll she'll say things, aren't you proud of me and stuff? I mean, you know, we try to tell her social norms, you don't ask people and tell people how great you are. But the reality is she doesn't, she never she, when it comes to her service, she never says, Look, I did all my chores. She doesn't do that. She just views it as something that she's been called to do. The

Lesson Three: Kindness And Tenderness

Scott Wiens 32:37

third lesson I've learned is her uh from her is to strive to show kindness and tenderness. Uh, in Colossians 3, verse 12 says, put on as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. I've met a lot of kind and compassionate people in my life, but Jessica's right up there. She's right up there. If we're driving in the car and she sees a homeless person, she doesn't just say, Oh, there's a homeless person. She will go, Oh, they need food. And she wants to help them. And many times we'll we'll pull off, we'll try to find a fast food restaurant, get them a meal or something. Um, she wants to help people. She hurts for them. And you know, as long as she's been driving with us, when we're driving down the road and and we'll drive by, and there's a like a dead cat that got hit on the road, she will just be so sad. Oh, that's poor cat, you know. It's she will just her heart goes out to that. And it's it's just so wonderful to see. She just has that sensitivity. And again, she's been doing this for years, but she still says it when she sees it. Of course, sometimes you don't know what it was, and so she'll usually let that one pass. Like, whatever that was, I feel bad for it. But she has such a sensitive heart. Um, when she sees you crying or sad, she wants to help. In fact, she doesn't just want to help, she will get sad with you. It's an empathic response that's so beautiful and it's so genuine. And and she will want to help. And we've learned because sometimes there's things that happen in your family, you get upset or something, you're sad. She wants to insert herself. So we have almost have to remove ourselves because we don't want to bring her into that sadness, right? Uh, she's so sensitive, and it's just a beautiful thing. And I've learned that I need to be more sensitive. We need to have that kindness. All of us as believers should have that type of empathy. And and, you know, as scripture says we are to grieve when others are grieving, rejoice when others are rejoicing. It's a it's a beautiful thing. The

Lesson Four: Conflict And Self Control

Scott Wiens 35:05

fourth lesson is how to hate conflict and be self-controlled. Um, I mentioned earlier the challenges of Jessica with when it comes to conflict. You know, she can truly melt down if there's conflict. That's been a challenge in our home. And we're not a screaming home. We've never been that way. My wife and I don't we don't fight like that. We work things out. But if you get at all upset about anything and your voice changes, that can really trigger her. But it's been a good thing in many ways for us because it's made us aware of how we respond to conflict. It's made us aware of how we resolve conflict. And we realize because of her sensitivity, it's taught us to really be peacemakers. You still have to process it, you can't deny it. And that's, I'll be honest, it's been a struggle for us. But it's been a good lesson for us. Uh, it's been tough, though. It caused my daughters, my other daughters, it's been tough for them because they know if something happens and they go down that path, Jessica's joining him. And now it exacerbates it, and then they get mad at her. And it's been tough. And by the way, they've all grown a lot in that, but it's just been a difficult thing. But she, and here's the thing that's interesting she doesn't have the intellectual capacity to be a peacemaker. She can't. She doesn't know how to work through that, but she just knows she hates the conflict and she desires peace. And that's been a great lesson for us. Final lesson about Jessica is how she exhibits childlike faith and belief. Childlike

Lesson Five: Simple Childlike Faith

Scott Wiens 36:48

faith and belief. To Jessica, there's no doubt that God exists. And there's no situation that she's ever faced that has caused her to question whether God exists. When she prays, she's talking to God and there's no pretense in her voice. There's no doubt in her voice. She just prays. And she knows he hears. She's like, and I said talked before, she's prayed with people in her house group. She'll pray for you out here. If you ask her, you tell her you're going through something difficult, almost always she'll put her hand on your shoulder and she'll start to pray. And because of her verbal challenges, I mean, if you listen to Jessica, she can't put sentences together really smooth, and she'll get the she'll get the point across, and we're thankful for that. But watch, listening to her pray is beautiful. She will repeat things, but she's her heart is just it's saturated in that prayer. Faith is saturated in that prayer. And it's a beautiful, beautiful thing. She simply believes. And you know, in Luke 18, and we've heard this scripture many times, um, you know, the people were bringing babies to Jesus. And if you recall what the disciples did, uh, when the disciples saw this, this is in verse 15 of Luke 18. When the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. But Jesus called the children to him and said, Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them. For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it. Jessica's faith is simple and sincere. She can't explain deep truths, theological truths to you. She would probably have a tough time explaining the gospel to you, but she knows the gospel. She believes in God, she loves God, she loves to talk to God, and she knows he hears him, and she loves God's people. In fact, I'll be honest, she loves everybody. Well, unless you're a bad person. And there's a separate category for those. She loves them. So listen, I hope these lessons from Jessica blessed you as much as they blessed me to share them. And again, I just want to thank all of you for accepting her. You don't understand when you have a child with a disability like this, you know, when she's in the lobby and walking around and when she's talking to you, trust me, my wife or I are watching always. We are very protective of Jessica, like you would imagine, right? We're watching, and sometimes I've watched her talk to somebody and they're looking at her with that inquisitive face. They don't know she has autism, right? And maybe they don't have any exposure to it. So I watch it, and sometimes I'll rescue people from Jessica. But the reality is, I've also watched people just begin to engage her and just talk, talk about Gilligan's Island, or talk about the new movie that came out, or something like that. And it's beautiful, it just shows the love that we have for each other. And I was my wife and I are so appreciative of that. I

A Beautiful Morning Forever

Scott Wiens 40:09

want to conclude by simply telling you a story that happened many years ago. Uh, we were in Florida, we lived in a big house that we'd inherited from Hetty's mother. We actually bought it from her, but it was a big house on a little lake. I call it a pond, they call it lakes there. And it was right on the edge of the Ocala National Forest. And one morning I got up, it was a beautiful morning. Jessica was in her early teens at the time, and I came downstairs and we had a balcony, so I'd already opened the balcony doors. It's beautiful, nice, clear, cool day in Florida, which was rare. And I walked down, and Jessica was laying on the couch in her pajamas, and she just had her head back, and her eyes were closed. Now you gotta understand, Jessica gets up at five o'clock every morning. She had already taken the dog out and everything, but she's always busy doing something. This is really rare. So I looked at her and I said, Jessica, isn't it a beautiful morning? She didn't even open her eyes. She said, Remember, I told you that her vocabulary is kind of messed up. She doesn't have words to say the right words all the time. She said something beautiful. She said, It's a beautiful morning forever. Forever. I went straight to my office and I wrote that down. Because for her, she couldn't find the word to say how she was feeling, so she simply found the word that was the most meaningful, that showed the magnitude of what she thought about that morning. Forever. You know, my daughter may struggle with autism for the rest of her life, but I know where she's gonna be forever. And all that, all that hindrance and all that will be gone. That's what she has to look forward to. And that's if you give your life to Christ, that's what you have to look forward to. You can have a beautiful morning forever. You just have to submit and give God your life. Because I'll tell you, in the end, you'll have the chance to see a different Jessica, just like you'll have a chance to see a different all of us when we're finally made perfect. And you'll realize that God had a plan far bigger than we knew from that day when we were told she had autism. A greater plan in God's sovereign will. You please stand to your feet, please, and we'll pray. Father, I just want to conclude by first thanking you for Jessica. I thank you for all of your people. I thank you for all the people that, even though they might struggle with different things, whether it's a mental illness, a physical ailment, God, that you don't make mistakes and that your purposes go far beyond anything we can ever see, unless we open our eyes to just receive what you're teaching us from these situations. Father, I pray for all the families that are dealing with situations like this or will. I pray, God, that you would give them the faith and the trust in you to know that you don't make junk, that you have a purpose in all things. So, Father, we thank you for that and pray for all of us that we would keep our eyes on you and continue to hold on tight to your sovereign will, knowing that you are perfect in all things and you create things perfectly in your will. And we pray this, Father, by the name and the authority of the one who has given us all faith and confidence, Jesus Christ. Amen.