Who Will Take Him to Get His Crayons

We had a good day.

Delivering Joyency orders. Hitting Staples. Home Depot. And... because apparently no successful business trip through the prairie is complete without it, McDonald’s. The dude got his normal order #9 meal plain with a Diet Coke! 

Nothing remarkable and that’s exactly why it mattered.

Most families probably move through days like this without giving them much thought. Run the errands. Grab what you need. Get lunch. Head home.

For us, these are the moments we don’t take for granted.

Because it took decades to get here.

And we didn’t get here alone.

There have been family members, friends, teachers, therapists, professionals, who helped us through the good, the bad, and the days when we were held together with duct tape. There were a lot of those days.

That’s part of why building this little prairie empire called Joyency matters.

There’s always this push and pull between building what comes next and looking back at everything it took to get here.

And sometimes, that reflection shows up at the weirdest time. Like standing in Staples.

He was grabbing his rebellion supplies when this thought came out of nowhere. Who will take him to get his crayons when I can’t? Well, that’ll kill the Staples buzz pretty quickly.

I wish I could tell you I immediately shoved the thought aside and went back to whatever aisle we were wandering around.

I didn’t.

Because that’s the thing about raising an adult son with autism. You can be having a perfectly ordinary, really good day, and your brain reminds you that his future requires more planning, more trust, and more people than most of us ever imagined.

Noah has people who love him.

He has people who support him.

But... who really knows him outside of his family?

The real answer?

Not many people.

That isn’t because we don’t want people in his life. We absolutely do.

But we also need him to be safe.

And safety requires trust.

Real trust.

The kind where someone understands the things he may never explain to them. The things that make him laugh. The things that frustrate him. His routines. When something is wrong even if he can’t quite tell you what’s wrong. 

That kind of trust takes time.

More time than most people probably realize.

So yes, sometimes a trip to Staples is just a trip to Staples.

And sometimes, it reminds you why you’re building a rebellion worth fighting for in the first place.

Joyency is candles, flags, whiskey staves, sawdust, orders, shipping labels, ideas that work, ideas that absolutely do not work, and probably more trips to Home Depot than any reasonable person should make. Seriously, the Home Depot trips.

But underneath all of it, we’re trying to build something that creates more opportunities for Noah.

More purpose.

More connection.

More people in his world.

A bigger world.

That’s our rebellion.

Not some grand, polished mission statement hanging on a wall.

Just trying to build a life where the dude has meaningful opportunities, people who know him, people he trusts, and somebody willing to take him to get his crayons when we can’t.

If you happen to see a family like ours out there, whether it’s on the prairie or somewhere between skyscrapers, give them a little grace.

They’re probably doing the best they know how with the moment they’re in.

And if you’ve ever thought about building something that gives cool peeps like the dude more opportunities to work, belong, learn, or just be part of the world.

Build it.

We could use more builders.