Dancing with Max: A Mother and Son Who Broke Free

by Emily Colson, Charles W. Colson Narrated by Emily Colson

Overview

The true story of a single mother's love and perseverance, her son's autism diagnosis with its challenges and gifts, and their triumph together over life's toughest obstacles.

Journey with Emily Colson--daughter of former White House Special Counsel Chuck Colson--as she takes you from her darkest days of pain to her adventure through life. With candor and wit, she shares about her personal battles and heartbreak when, as a suddenly single mother, she discovered that her only child has autism. Emily illuminates the page with vivid imagery--making you laugh, making you cry, and inspiring you to face your own challenges.

This is the story that will inspire you to break free of the barriers that threaten to constrict your life, and Max is the young man who will capture--and even change--your heart. As you learn more about Max and his journey, you'll learn about:

• The incredible power of community
• Facing each day with grace and faith
• Turning your challenges into blessings

In a special prologue and epilogue from Chuck Colson--his most personal writing since*Born Again--he details how Max's resilient spirit unraveled his thinking and brought out his tender side as a grandfather.

Along the way, you'll discover that Max's disability does not so much define who he is, but reveals who we are.*Dancing with Max*is not a fairy tale with a magical ending. It's a real-life story of grace, second chances, and fresh starts in spite of life's hardest problems. And Max? Max will make you fall in love with life all over again, leaving you dancing with joy.

Praise for Dancing with Max:

"Emily shares her moving story, of life's struggles but of its even greater victories, in her own words. This is a story of triumph, in spite of the suffering and pain. It is most of all a love story, and a story about changed lives--Emily's, Max's, and also mine."

--Chuck Colson, former White House Special Counsel

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

An average of 1 in 110 children has autism spectrum disorder, a developmental disability that affects communication and social skills. Author Colson tells a common tale of life with her autistic son, Max, with uncommon grace and candor; she's a single mom and artist who developed her own visual communication system for working with her son. She is also the daughter of high-profile evangelical Christian leader Chuck Colson, who contributes candid material about his family in front and back matter that surround the main narrative like a paternal embrace. None of this story is easy, or heroic, or happily ever after if readers expect that the autistic son will miraculously arise and be normal. But if the story is rightly understood as the tale of healing a family and portraying the grit and grace in getting up every morning, readers will find a heartening and modest miracle. (Sept.)

Christian Retailing

Being a parent of a child with special needs can be isolating and difficult – and a challenge when it comes to faith – or so Colson found her experience with her now 19-year-old son, Max. In Dancing with Max: A Mother and Son Who Broke Free, Colson shares her experience. Colson – whose husband left when Max was an infant – was overwhelmed with the lack of progress Max was making early on as she saw others his age get along in life just fine, while she suffered through his repeated setbacks and, at times, embarrassing incidents. Finally finding answers, she discovered that Max had autism, enabling her to move forward and grow with Max. In sharing her discovery of God’s gift to Max seeing the world with a different but uncluttered view, Colson will bring hope and encouragement to those who have a child with autism. The book includes a prologue and epilogue by author – and Max’s grandfather – Charles Colson.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172490606
Publisher:	Zondervan
Publication date:	09/07/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Dancing with Max

A Mother and Son Who Broke Free

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By Emily Colson

Zondervan

Copyright © 2010 Emily Colson and Charles W. Colson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-29368-2

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Chapter One

CAR WASH

Okay, maybe I was a little rebellious - but whenever my dad reminds me of that, I usually look him straight in the eye and say, "I think I turned out remarkably normal ... all things considered."

I didn't exactly have your normal life experiences, although who has? At seventeen, I was shy, guarded actually, with the self-confidence of a gnat. Which is why on this particular day, with the lamination barely cool on my driver's license, my mom volunteered to lead me through my very first car wash. All my young rebellious nature would be required to do was to follow.

I watched as my mom's 1970s hatchback disappeared into the black hole of foaming spray. I gulped nervously as a burly attendant waved his arm, expecting me to drive my eight-inch-wide wheels into four-inch metal tracks. Did he understand that I couldn't see my wheels? As I pulled forward it sounded as if my tires were screaming at me, the rubber screeching against metal. The attendant signaled me to stop.

I cranked down the window of my boxy old Plymouth Valiant. "Regular wash, please," I said, trying to act cool.

"Hands off the wheel. Foot off the brake. Keep it in neutral," he ordered, pocketing my money.

That's it? I thought. Just sit here?

My car jerked forward, and a frothy wave of water slapped against the windshield. As I was swallowed into the dark hole, I could see huge blue towels lapping tongue-like across my hood. It was such a Jonah-in-the-whale experience that even my feet felt wet. And then I looked down.

Apparently, the tattooed attendant had neglected to inform me that I should close the vents on my car, that ingenious 1970s pre-airconditioning cooling system of little doors beside your ankles. The fact that these vents also blew leaves and road debris into your car tells you how closely this technology mimicked that of the Flintstones'.

There at my feet, gushing through these open vents with hydrant force, was enough water to fill an ocean.

I jammed my foot up against one of the vents but couldn't close it. The water pressure was too great. I pictured myself reaching the exit of the car wash with the interior of my car completely filled with water, like a rolling aquarium. And there I'd be, treading water with my lips stuck to the inside of the roof, sucking out the last bit of oxygen.

With survival at stake, there was only one thing to do: I put my hand on the wheel, threw it in reverse, and hit the gas. With an enormous crack the steel bar that held my car in place snapped. I flew backward, out of the entrance of the car wash, as though I'd been shot out of a whale's blowhole. Oddly enough, the attendant was not as relieved as I was to see me back where I'd started, safely on dry ground.

"Whaddaya doin'?" he screamed in his Boston accent, as he held the sides of his head. "Ya broke my cahwash."

I thought it best not to ask for my money back and did the only logical thing a seventeen-year-old could think of - I drove away as fast as possible.

When I pulled around the corner, my mom was waiting. She rolled down her window and watched as I opened my car door, releasing a splat of sudsy water against the pavement. I waved my hand, motioning for her to drive away, and yelled, "I'd rather wash it myself."

That was many years ago, and I haven't backed out of a car wash since. But I have felt exactly the same way: the challenges ahead looking just as threatening, just as ominous. Pressure is rising and I can see the end. I'm sure I'll run out of oxygen, that I can't possibly survive.

But I have survived.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Dancing with Max by Emily Colson Copyright © 2010 by Emily Colson and Charles W. Colson . Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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