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The Book of Heaven: A story of hope for the outcasts, the broken, and those who lost faith · Cultural Wars | America Out Loud News

• 0:26
  Well, hello, everyone, and welcome to the 10 Penny Files.
• 0:29
  I'm your host, Dr.
• 0:30
  Sherry Tenpetty.
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• 2:08
  So let's get started.
• 2:10
  Today's conversation is with Katie Asher, a writer, researcher, and a mother about her book, The Book of Heaven, a story of hope for the outcast, the broken, and those who lost faith, a moving book that was co-authored by her severely neurologically injured autistic son, Houston.
• 2:30
  Katie, it's such a pleasure to meet with you here today.
• 2:33
  Your work is so important.
• 2:35
  All the work that we were talking about before we went live on this recording, we could be here for four days talking about all this information.
• 2:42
  So thank you so much for joining us here today.
• 2:45
  Thank you so much for having me.
• 2:46
  And I agree, I feel like I just scratched the surface when I'm in my research.
• 2:51
  There's so much for us all to unpack and understand.
• 2:54
  And that we're really far more than our physical bodies.
• 2:58
  That's really the biggest message that we all need to embrace.
• 3:01
  And it's not scary, it's wonderful.
• 3:04
  It is.
• 3:04
  And your book masterfully weaves together family dysfunction, abandonment, physical and emotional abuse, and struggles of being a uh a single parent of a nonverbal, a severely autistic chunk son with faith centered in your life.
• 3:21
  And he learns when he learns to communicate.
• 3:23
  It's a weighty story, and it's a weighty book.
• 3:26
  You know, it's over 500 pages, but it calls into question spirituality, which influences how we perceive our experiences.
• 3:36
  Share a little bit about how you wove all those things together and came to your spiritual beliefs and background.
• 3:43
  Sure thing.
• 3:45
  So, gosh, it's there's so much in our story.
• 3:50
  And I felt that the best way to navigate the reader through our journey was just to take them on it just as I lived it, so that they learned what I learned as I learned it.
• 4:02
  And that's why it was so necessary for me to paint that picture of my upbringing and where I came from, so they understood where I was coming from.
• 4:11
  And then when I learned this new information, they would know how I was perceiving that information and how it challenged me and how it forced me to perceive differently than I had in the past.
• 4:24
  And um, unfortunately, it is it is traumatic, and that is the truth of our story.
• 4:32
  Um I don't want anyone to be afraid of the trauma because there is good in it, and that is the hope that I am bringing is that no matter how horrible your story is, that God can still bring good out of it and does, and he is faithful to do so.
• 4:51
  You know, I've long been a proponent of saying good things come out of bad things that if you let those, if you learn the lessons and participate in the journey and don't get resistant to it, you will come up with good things.
• 5:06
  Um, how is your son vaccine injured?
• 5:09
  Tell us about that.
• 5:10
  Yes, he was injured from his the very first injury when it started was the DTP hip shot at um he was eight months when he received it.
• 5:20
  I was actually a little behind schedule, just with you know, babies and life and everything else.
• 5:27
  And he within five days had broken out with these little red spots that I thought were very strange, and I thought it was like a viral rash or something like that.
• 5:37
  And so I called the doctor and I described it, and it was a Saturday morning.
• 5:42
  And the nurse that I was talking to said I needed to rush to the doctor's office, which I thought was very odd.
• 5:49
  And the doctor met me there.
• 5:52
  He looked at my son, walked out of the room, came back and said, he's been admitted to Arnold Palmer Hospital.
• 5:57
  Would you like an ambulance?
• 6:00
  And I said, Why?
• 6:02
  What's going on?
• 6:03
  And he only thing he would tell me is we need to run test.
• 6:07
  When I got there, a hematologist met us, and she said, your son either has leukemia or immune thrombocytopenic purpora.
• 6:16
  I didn't know what I immune thrombocytopenic purpose was, and I really didn't want leukemia.
• 6:23
  And I didn't understand what she was even talking about.
• 6:28
  But she came back after the test and she said, he has immune thrombocytopenic purpora.
• 6:33
  This is a vaccine injury.
• 6:34
  And this is in 1997.
• 6:36
  So there wasn't there wasn't quite the same campaign to hide it at that point yet.
• 6:41
  There hadn't been so the 1986, you know, vaccine injury law was actually, you know, a little bit before that.
• 6:49
  And I think Houston, that's my son's name.
• 6:53
  He was really at the beginning of this gigantic avalanche of these um diagnosis of severe autism that were a result of vaccine injury.
• 7:03
  So it was before the real campaign against covering it up had started.
• 7:08
  So I didn't know really anything about what vaccine injury meant.
• 7:12
  I assumed that when the hematologist um ordered IVIG uh gamma globulin um injections that that was going to fix whatever it was that the injury was.
• 7:24
  I just thought it was pretty simple.
• 7:26
  I had no idea about um and a chronic autoimmune condition that would erupt into massive uh neurological injury.
• 7:38
  I just didn't know.
• 7:39
  And the really horrible thing is no one told me, and also no one told me that there was a vaccine injury court or compensation or anything.
• 7:49
  And whenever he was 12 months old and we went for the MMR, I told the doctor that I didn't want the vaccine because he had already had a bad reaction, and I had no way to know if he would have this happen again.
• 8:02
  And the pediatrician said, I quote, that was a fluke.
• 8:10
  Clearly, these uh these doctors are not being educated on um function or neurological injury or the dangry, uh the danger of um continuing to bombard an immune system that's already in stress.
• 8:28
  After that MMR, he deteriorated even more rapidly.
• 8:34
  And uh there was a progression of skills that he lost right in front of my face, and it was like I was watching him slip away right in front of me.
• 8:42
  He lost the ability to play patty cake.
• 8:45
  I remember him like he literally couldn't put his hands together, and then he suddenly just couldn't look at me anymore, and he was pressing his hands against his ears.
• 8:55
  It wasn't until decades later that I found out what that actually was, what I was actually witnessing.
• 9:00
  But those were the tiny little beginnings of his descent into this trapped imprisoned world where he was imprisoned in his own body.
• 9:11
  Do you have other children?
• 9:13
  Houston is the second of five.
• 9:16
  How were they affected by his autism?
• 9:19
  Severely they are uh my oldest was extremely loving and understanding.
• 9:26
  And she, when I brought him home from the hospital, it was like I had handed her her best friend.
• 9:33
  And that was always how she felt about her brother.
• 9:36
  And the other three that I had after um Houston were very resentful of how difficult our lives were and how much destruction and chaos came with severe autism.
• 9:51
  And I had to put a lot of pressure on them to assist me in watching their brother.
• 9:56
  I mean, most people don't have to put deodorant on their brother.
• 10:00
  Most people don't have to help wipe their own brother.
• 10:03
  Most people don't have to be aware of every single sound in the house in case something tragic and horrible is about to happen.
• 10:12
  They don't have to be aware of every single door and window at every single second of the day.
• 10:19
  When you grow up in a home where there's someone severely autistic who has elopement issues, you have to be aware of everything.
• 10:27
  Everyone is responsible.
• 10:28
  That's a lot of pressure on other siblings.
• 10:32
  You know, I've often said when the Vax movie first came out, and then the vaxxed bus was going around the country and got over 3,000 families.
• 10:42
  And we were showing the film across the country.
• 10:44
  And I showed, I was at a lot of those filmings.
• 10:47
  Um, as the uh at the end of the film, I was the person who answered the questions.
• 10:51
  You know, I was on the stage answering the questions.
• 10:54
  And I've often felt that the unxamined people in all of the the autism community, you know, a lot of focuses, of course, on the on the injured child.
• 11:05
  A lot of focus has been on the parents and this divorce raid and all the things that happened there.
• 11:11
  But it's the siblings that are like the silent sufferers sufferers that there's not been a lot of study, research, anything, you know, what happened to them and what happened to their childhood and how is how are there be adult behaviors now reflective of that?
• 11:28
  Have you read anything about that?
• 11:30
  Or do you know anything that any studies that people have done about that?
• 11:33
  I had I don't know of any studies.
• 11:35
  I just have four case studies that I'm living with.
• 11:39
  So I mean, I guess I have studied, but uh but basically um they they tend to act uniquely and react uniquely, very similar to how um children who grow up in other dysfunction, uh like alcoholism or drug addiction or things like that, where you have some that are hypervigilant and they control try to control everything, others that want to escape and they blame and they want nothing to do with it, others who try to manage but are distant, they tend to cut off relationships with each other with the family with they still resent um the their sibling with the disability, even if they love them.
• 12:22
  Um, how did that their relationship with Houston change once he began to communicate?
• 12:28
  You know what's interesting is those same patterns that had already been established continued.
• 12:35
  Really, yes, and the one difference I would say is that my oldest and my youngest are the two who and there's probably something in those two roles, you know, as well.
• 12:49
  Um, are the most loving and protective and involved and interested in their brother, and the other two are um disassociated still.
• 13:03
  You know, your book describes a lot of battles that you went through early on with doctors and therapists, and um, that they all wanted to give up on him and said the best thing to do is just put him into a home, and you were insistent that that wasn't going to happen.
• 13:17
  What changed and what what came along that really started to give you hope?
• 13:23
  The I would say the very first moment that I had hope was not until he was 17.
• 13:29
  And I know it's a long time.
• 13:32
  Now, my upbringing was such that I had a very difficult upbringing.
• 13:37
  And what I had clung to as a child was Romans 8, 28, that all things work together for the good of those who love God who are called according to his purpose.
• 13:48
  And so my thought was yes, all these awful things are happening, but God promised that good is going to come from it.
• 13:56
  And so that's what I was holding out hope for.
• 14:00
  Fast forward to when Houston is severely um trapped in his body, and he's a young child, and he has chronic diarrhea, and he is fecal smearing five to eight times a day, and I'm cleaning it up.
• 14:17
  My first reaction is still from that position of Romans 828.
• 14:22
  And I'm believing that no matter what, God can bring this for good.
• 14:26
  But whenever you keep doing it over and over and over, the sheer mass of it made me doubt.
• 14:33
  And I the first thought I had was there's no way that God can bring good from this much literal fecal matter.
• 14:45
  There's just no way, it's not possible.
• 14:48
  I was convinced there was just no way that anything good could come from this.
• 14:53
  And what whenever I started to doubt, fear took over my life, and it was really interesting.
• 15:00
  As soon as I had opened that door to doubt, the avalanche of fear just took over.
• 15:06
  And I wasn't even able to hope and believe until I had a major shift in my perspective.
• 15:15
  And that happened when he was 17.
• 15:18
  At that point, I'm a single mom.
• 15:20
  I've got five kids.
• 15:20
  I've got a son with severe autism.
• 15:23
  There is no support, there is no help.
• 15:25
  We are ostracized by society.
• 15:27
  I am barely surviving.
• 15:29
  One of the jobs I had was working um at a gym very early in the morning because I'm trying to manage all these different lives and you know, schedules and everything.
• 15:38
  And so, but they needed me to teach yoga, so I had to go get my yoga certification.
• 15:44
  And I was doing this certification, and they said um, we were supposed to all give an intention.
• 15:50
  And I'm like, oh, this is ridiculous.
• 15:52
  And plus, no one wants to hear my sad story.
• 15:54
  And I was I knew enough about people to know that people don't care.
• 15:59
  They really don't.
• 16:00
  And it's sad, but it's true.
• 16:02
  I hope to change that.
• 16:03
  I hope everybody comes away caring about other people because they they do matter and their lives are important, and we need to love each other.
• 16:13
  But at that moment, I was still very um much in despair.
• 16:17
  And I when I gave my intention, I said, Well, I'm not gonna say anything, I'm just gonna say something vague and un you know, just unimportant because this doesn't matter anyway.
• 16:28
  It's a silly exercise.
• 16:30
  So I said it, I said my vague intention, and without being able to stop myself, the truth, like just like kind of I vomited the truth, and it and what I said, oh, and I would like bad things to stop happening.
• 16:45
  And they actually challenged me on this particular point, and they said, Why would you say that?
• 16:50
  And I said, No, I know all about belief.
• 16:53
  You believe what you've experienced, that's what I've experienced.
• 16:56
  Why would I believe anything else?
• 16:59
  Because I was absolutely brokenhearted by this point.
• 17:02
  I felt abandoned by God.
• 17:05
  And they did this really interesting exercise where they said point to something that's real, like a table or a chair, and then ask yourself, what was that table or chair before it was a table or chair?
• 17:21
  And of course, most people go, well, it was wood or plastic or whatever the material it was made out of, but it's not true, it's actually an idea.
• 17:33
  The table in the chair cannot create themselves, they are first thoughts before they are ever things, and this concept had a profound impact on me.
• 17:45
  And so what they encouraged me to do was that good things had just a chance, good as just a good of a chance of happening is bad things.
• 17:55
  And I recognize that okay, thoughts are things, all right.
• 18:00
  I'm gonna try this.
• 18:02
  I'm gonna try to just be open to good happening within that very same week, which shows you just how powerful hope is.
• 18:12
  This event happened, and this is what brought me hope.
• 18:16
  I came home from one of the three jobs I was working.
• 18:19
  It was the night before Thanksgiving.
• 18:20
  I laid on the couch, I was utterly exhausted.
• 18:23
  I'm literally waiting tables at a pizzeria.
• 18:26
  That's just how glamorous my life is.
• 18:29
  And my body was vibrating, I was so exhausted.
• 18:32
  And Houston came downstairs and he sat at my feet.
• 18:36
  And what's so unusual about this is this is not the behavior of a severe autistic.
• 18:41
  They are in constant motion.
• 18:44
  Um, they're usually making loud noises, jumping, screaming, just flapping their hands, OCDing on whatever it is they're OCDing on.
• 18:54
  And he sat at my feet totally still, and I knew it was strange, but I was so exhausted, I couldn't even comment.
• 19:02
  And then he reached over and he tugged at the blanket exactly like you would with intention to get someone's attention.
• 19:10
  And at the same time, he said, Mama, and I opened my eyes and he was looking directly into my eyes.
• 19:20
  Now, mind you, he had never spoken my name or looked into my eyes since he was an infant.
• 19:26
  And when I opened my eyes and he's looking directly into mine, he said, I love you.
• 19:32
  Oh my goodness.
• 19:34
  And when you wait 17 years to have your child say your name and I love you, it does something to you.
• 19:42
  For sure.
• 19:43
  And I I realized that I had been given it an opportunity.
• 19:48
  I could continue to believe in severe autism, or I could believe in a miracle, and that's what I chose to do.
• 19:58
  And I didn't know how I.
• 20:00
  Going to get a miracle, but I knew I was going to get one.
• 20:04
  And it was another five years before that miracle came.
• 20:10
  And it came in the form of 26 letters.
• 20:14
  And that's what's so amazing.
• 20:16
  I always show this because isn't it amazing that we have the entire language and just 26 little letters?
• 20:25
  Everything that we want to think and say and communicate to others is right there.
• 20:32
  And um when I learned about spelling, we we had gone to uh a friend.
• 20:40
  Well, we had actually we'd met another family who we know had known earlier, and they told us about it.
• 20:47
  And I remember their father was talking to Houston as if he as an adult, as if he understood what he was talking about.
• 20:53
  And that was shocking to me because I'd never seen anyone speak to Houston as an adult.
• 20:58
  At that time, he was 21.
• 21:01
  And their son took his had really wild um impulsive body movements.
• 21:08
  He took his arms and he wrapped his arms around himself to hold his arms still.
• 21:13
  And he sat there and stared at me in the eyes with so much force that I knew it in my soul that what he was saying was true.
• 21:23
  The father explained, they are all smart, they understand everything that's going on, they just can't control their motor.
• 21:31
  And I said, wait a second, I think I've heard of this, because that's someone had mentioned it to me before.
• 21:36
  But I kind of like with most things, you dismiss it.
• 21:39
  Your son's not as severe as my son.
• 21:41
  That's what you always think.
• 21:43
  It won't work for mine.
• 21:45
  You don't know my autism, but you know, but this was this was the same.
• 21:49
  This I could identify with.
• 21:51
  And he said, for example, our son kept saying park, park all the time.
• 21:57
  So we would always take him to the park.
• 21:59
  When we taught him to point to letters, he said, I know I say park all the time.
• 22:06
  I can't stop it.
• 22:08
  I don't want to go to the park.
• 22:10
  And the father goes, Do you know how stupid we felt?
• 22:15
  And so that was the beginning of getting me to go towards um learning this whole um spelling journey.
• 22:23
  And that's when we began.
• 22:25
  And the very uh first day we went to the spelling coach, she was uh talking to him, and of course, he's making all of his noises, and I'm like, shh, be quiet.
• 22:37
  You can't hear what she's saying.
• 22:39
  And she turned and looked at me and she goes, Oh, he hears everything I'm saying.
• 22:43
  And I'm like, what are you talking about?
• 22:45
  Like, because I'm still operating on this, like you're two or three years old.
• 22:49
  You need, you know.
• 22:50
  She sits down with him, and she says, What's my name?
• 22:54
  And he sat there and she handed him a pencil, held up the letterboard, and he starts spelling out our name right in front of me.
• 23:00
  And I was astonished.
• 23:02
  Then she proceeded to do a lesson on um the first explorer to the Antarctic, Edward Shackleton, and he starts spelling out every question that she asks him.
• 23:14
  And I'm in shock.
• 23:17
  If just within a few weeks, that was the first day.
• 23:20
  So within a few weeks, um, we had gotten to this place of like, okay, I've got to transition from three boards to one board.
• 23:28
  And the reason they do that, by the way, is because what we discovered is it's a motor impairment.
• 23:33
  And whenever you have a motor impairment, just like with training wheels, like with a bike, you don't start on a big bike, you start with a balance bike or with training wheels, like you have to build the foundation first.
• 23:43
  So with gross motor and pointing, their motor is so unestablished and not in their control that you have to build motor pathways, and that's what you work on with spelling is you build 26 individual motor pathways so they can put them all together and spell anything they want.
• 24:01
  And what Houston spelled was an answer to this question, which was if you could put any slogan on a t-shirt, what would it be?
• 24:11
  And Houston spelled, I'm in here.
• 24:15
  Oh, wow.
• 24:17
  Yeah.
• 24:18
  Oh my that has to choke you up every time you say that.
• 24:22
  Every single time.
• 24:25
  Wow.
• 24:26
  When he was spelling it, I'm watching it letter by letter, y'all.
• 24:29
  And so I'm like, I am, and I almost, as I'm sitting there, I'm like, am I reading that correctly?
• 24:35
  Is that what it says?
• 24:37
  Because it was that surreal that this entire whole beautiful soul could be intact inside this chaotic, out of control body.
• 24:51
  And that was the beginning of beginning to know my son, and it changed my life forever.
• 24:57
  You know, I know just a little bit about the spellers.
• 25:01
  I I haven't, I know there's a movie, and I I have not watched the movie, but I have friends who have severely autistic children that their lives were just like yours, just changed with the spellers.
• 25:14
  Who came up with this idea and how did they start doing that?
• 25:18
  So the original um idea of using spelling to communicate actually came from facilitated communication back in the 90s with Mary Ann Crossley from Australia, and it was a way to use uh people who have vestibular and proprioceptive issues like cerebral palsy to be able to give them physical support so that they could then point to letters, and that got a lot of um hostility back in the 90s, and so ma came in with rapid prompting method, which where there was no physical support where she's just coaching the motor verbally, and so that was like the first way for people to begin to develop the motor pathways simply through verbal or directional prompting.
• 26:07
  And what people, when they whenever spelling gets attacked, what no one will tell you is this is actually exactly what every single speech pathologist does with the prompt method with using an AAC device, they all use prompting and hand over hand to get the motor going because they understand the motor is not existent, you have to coach the motor, and that's what pointing is it's basically coaching the motor so that they can develop a reliable motor pathways.
• 26:37
  And so these children, and this is another question that I've had it is about about that as when they are first given the facilitation to be able to spell, they can spell.
• 26:49
  I mean, it's it's not like you have to, you know, with a little baby, you have to learn children, they learn how to spell like cat, dog, horse, elephant, etc.
• 26:58
  But when this person is 20 something and they're first introduced to the concept of these speller boards, and I understand, you know, why they start with the bigger boards because they have to get their gross motor down to a more of a fine motor, but they they can spell already.
• 27:16
  Well, so this is what's so interesting is that people don't appreciate the fact they associate um the spoken word with intelligence, and it's it's an under, it's a it's a bias that's false, but many people believe it.
• 27:32
  And we all have experienced people um or a lot of things that we believe that actually aren't true, but we still believe them.
• 27:39
  And uh, so that is really where it comes down is that people think that motor equals intelligence.
• 27:48
  So if you have motor control, you are intelligent, and if you don't have motor control, you're not intelligent.
• 27:54
  They'll never say they think that, but that is the actual ableist bias.
• 27:58
  And what we're talking about here is ableism, and what's really interesting is Skinner, BF Skinner actually wrote you know, verbal behavior, and he did this whole analysis, basically saying that everyone has to be taught, like you can't learn something.
• 28:13
  This is the premise of it.
• 28:14
  You can't know something unless you've been taught something, and that's actually not true.
• 28:21
  We actually all learn things all on our own.
• 28:25
  We also learn things being taught, but we also learn things by experiencing them, just being around them, absorbing the environment.
• 28:34
  We learn things, like a little kid will know that his mom always goes to get coffee first thing in the morning.
• 28:42
  No one teaches him that, he just observes that that's the pattern.
• 28:46
  Well, language is the same way.
• 28:48
  Language is all around us, and it's everywhere, and they, even though they are not able to speak, which is a hundred percent motor, y'all.
• 28:59
  This is what people don't realize.
• 29:00
  Motor requires seven different body systems to coordinate together in over a hundred different muscles working in perfect precision and timing and force to create the sounds that we recognize as speech.
• 29:11
  But the thought is actually you understand in the wornix area of your brain, you have a responsive thought in the brocus area of brain, and the arcuate fasciculus is a set of sensory motor cortexes that coordinates all of those body parts that we use to create sounds that we hear and then identify as language, but their understanding whether or not the RQ at fasciculus and the cerebellum is working.
• 29:38
  Wow, that's amazing.
• 29:39
  You know, it's sort of like it reminded me when you were saying that about how when you when you're in a foreign country or you're or you're even in this country, and someone say speaks a foreign language, like say Spanish or French or something, that you think if you talk to them louder, they will understand what you're saying, you know.
• 29:56
  It's the same sort of thing, you know.
• 29:58
  That's it's so is it.
• 30:00
  Houston talked about like the things he would say to himself when people um you know would be trying to get him to respond his body to respond.
• 30:10
  And he said, you know, he was like, and some of the things are very sarcastic, but why don't you talk louder?
• 30:15
  Maybe then my body will listen, you know.
• 30:21
  Well, this is a good place for a quick break, Katie.
• 30:24
  This has been such a delightful conversation, and we've got more to come.
• 30:27
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• 30:32
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• 35:16
  Well, welcome back, everyone.
• 35:18
  Today is our special conversation with Katie Asher, a writer, researcher, and a mother about her book, The Book of Heaven and a Story of Hope for the Outcasts, The Broken, and Those Who've Lost Face, a moving book that was co-authored by her severely neurologically injured son, autistic son Houston.
• 35:37
  Let me tell you a little bit more about our guest.
• 35:39
  Let me tell you a little bit more about Katie Asher.
• 35:41
  Katie Asher worked as to ignite the international conversations about consciousness, spiritual perception, and the reality of the soul.
• 35:50
  Her work integrates rigorous scientific research with Christian theology, challenging materialistic assumptions and offering hope to families navigating disabilities, traumas, and faith.
• 36:03
  Katie Asher has been featured on podcasts and global discussions, inspired by the tip the telepathy tapes.
• 36:10
  And her writing continues to transform lives across the world.
• 36:13
  And I will say, not just her writing, but her articulate way of communicating all the things that she's learned about this.
• 36:21
  She's she's a powerhouse.
• 36:23
  And I'm really glad that she's with us today and sharing um all that she's learned in part of her book.
• 36:28
  So case Katie, welcome so back.
• 36:31
  So much, thank you so much for being on the show.
• 36:33
  Tell us about when Houston began to communicate.
• 36:37
  Um and how did he know how to type?
• 36:39
  Like did he just start doing it?
• 36:41
  Like he just started talking.
• 36:44
  So what the way that you begin the spelling journey is you're beginning with a process called teach ask.
• 36:56
  And so you would basically, I would teach him something that is relevant, and that is respectful, treating him like he is a grown adult.
• 37:08
  For example, you wouldn't teach a 21-year-old who that's where he that's the age he was when we started.
• 37:15
  You wouldn't start with Jack and Jill when up the hill.
• 37:19
  That would be disrespectful.
• 37:21
  Any 21-year-old would be would feel disrespected if that's what you taught them.
• 37:26
  And you actually see this a lot in the um the self-contained classrooms with special needs students, is they have no interest in the preschool curriculum they offered because honestly, it's so disrespectful.
• 37:39
  And we have treated these children, we've trapped them, basically imprisoned them in their bodies, imprisoned them in these self-contained classrooms, cut them off from society from every opportunity for an education, a career extracurricular activities, friendships, involvement, everything, sports, music, art, anything at all.
• 37:59
  And then we've given them preschool material.
• 38:02
  And then they show no interest.
• 38:04
  And what is the observer's perception?
• 38:06
  Oh, they don't know, they're not, they don't care, they're not smart.
• 38:10
  That's what the instead of I've treated you with disrespect and you're rejecting my ridiculous offers of an education that are disrespectful.
• 38:22
  But anyway, sorry, my little soapbox, one of them.
• 38:27
  So you start with a teach-as question using highly intelligent, relevant material that they would be interested in.
• 38:37
  That actually engages the mind.
• 38:39
  It enforces the mind to activate and to be interested.
• 38:43
  We've all experienced this.
• 38:44
  When it's something, when it's content that we're interested in, we're immediately engaged.
• 38:49
  We're paying attention.
• 38:51
  If it's something uninteresting, we we don't even listen.
• 38:55
  We're off in our imagination.
• 38:57
  So you begin with this teach ask and you help them to begin to start to point to letters and develop reliable pointing.
• 39:06
  And then you progress the motor as well as the content.
• 39:09
  And then you increase.
• 39:11
  So you start saying, um, here I've just taught you about something.
• 39:15
  Now I'm going to ask your opinion about it.
• 39:18
  And or I'm going to give you a choice between, you know, is it this?
• 39:23
  Do you are you interested in this or this?
• 39:25
  Or do you have an opinion?
• 39:26
  And so you're not asking for huge elaborate answers, but you're starting to get them to pull out of themselves, which when you've been trapped in your body for that long, there's an emotional trauma that they're also having to navigate.
• 39:41
  It's enormous.
• 39:43
  If you've been in prison for two decades and no one has spoken to you with respect, and you've never been able to communicate what you're experiencing, that is enormous trauma.
• 39:55
  Trauma that we don't even recognize or treat.
• 40:01
  So once that begins to happen and they start kind of like, are they gonna listen to me?
• 40:07
  Is my opinion going to matter?
• 40:09
  And you see this kind of coming out of their shell.
• 40:13
  And some are more eager to come out, and some are angry when they come out, and some are really hesitant to share.
• 40:21
  And that's their personality.
• 40:23
  And that's okay.
• 40:25
  And we need to let people navigate, you know, coming out and sharing their voice in whatever way in whatever time that it takes them.
• 40:37
  You know, I've in your book, The Book of Heaven, you spoke about Houston's spiritual gifts.
• 40:43
  And I've heard that a lot of the spellers in the speller community have what's referred to as super sensible perception.
• 40:51
  Um, how did you discover Houston's amazing spiritual gifts that you talk about in depth in your book?
• 40:58
  And what people need to realize is that these amazing spiritual gifts come from this amazing awareness and perception.
• 41:08
  And so the way I first started perceiving his amazing perception is he started spelling out the declaration of independence.
• 41:15
  And I'm like, where'd that come from?
• 41:18
  Like, I don't know that.
• 41:19
  And then he did the Gettysburg Address, and I'm like, okay, I mean, I've got four score in seven years, but I mean, I'm not gonna get much further past, and so I'm like, where is all of this information coming from?
• 41:34
  Because he seemed to have such a much more vast access to knowledge than I did, and so that was the beginning was this wider perception of knowledge, and when I asked him, How do you know so much?
• 41:51
  It was almost like he was like, Can I tell her?
• 41:54
  You know, like and he said, I'm special, and I spoke like a mom, like, of course you're special, you know, and he's like, You have no idea.
• 42:05
  Do I tell her?
• 42:06
  I don't know, you know, and he said, Um, I can hear thoughts, and my response, which was not supportive was, are you lying?
• 42:19
  That's what I said.
• 42:21
  Wow, because it seemed like an insane crazy idea.
• 42:27
  And he said, You don't get the kind of gifts I have if you lie, and so I started testing him also.
• 42:35
  Wow, I mean, look at that.
• 42:36
  He's he reveals, he finally reveals what he's experiencing, and I immediately test.
• 42:42
  I have to you have to prove to me.
• 42:44
  And I mean, just such a hostile, but this is how our society works.
• 42:48
  Everything has to be tested, you have to be proven.
• 42:50
  You have to, you know, it's all coming from this place of of doubt and skepticism instead of faith and trust and love.
• 42:58
  And so he starts sharing this with me.
• 43:01
  So I start testing him, and he he does every he answers every single question I have, like, what's in my mind, what's in their mind, and then I start communicating to him without using words, without speaking, and he answers, spells out the answer to my question on the letterboard without me ever speaking, and from that moment, I was just jaw-dropped, and I went back to my room that night, and I suddenly realized what I'd learned in yoga all those years ago was true that thoughts were things, and if they were things, that meant they were energy, and then I started realizing everything's energy, and that kind of was the catapult to a lot of my research was to understanding the actual the quantum physics and the physics that were going on.
• 43:55
  But E equals MC squared actually means energy and matter are the same thing, just measured in different ways.
• 44:03
  All matter is energy, it's just the slowest, most densest form of energy, but everything is energy.
• 44:13
  Um, my son began communicating to me just little pieces of information, almost as if he was trying to see how much I would accept how much I would if I was ready to hear it.
• 44:28
  He was ready to share it, but I wasn't really, he was testing me at that point.
• 44:32
  Like, does she is her heart open?
• 44:36
  And I wish I could say I was like completely ready for everything, but I was very broken, and so I was responding to what he was sharing with me, this incredible truth and awareness with doubt and skepticism and fear and anger at everything that we had lost, and he was began communicating this incredible awareness of the Bible, and he hadn't been taught the Bible because I didn't think he understood anything, and here he is telling me these incredible biblical truths that I didn't even know he knew like what the story in the Bible was, and that was humbling for sure, and I remember there was this one time where he said um I said, Aren't you angry?
• 45:40
  Aren't you angry at God?
• 45:43
  And he said, When you say that, you're making me doubt God's love for me, and I was just struck and humbled that I would do that to my own son, that here I was challenging God's love for my son, and that um really made me look at my own heart and where I was, and the anger and the doubt that I had, and I had to come face to face with it.
• 46:16
  Am I gonna believe that God is good in the face of this much loss and this much trauma?
• 46:24
  In addition to that, uh, is my son experiencing like the ability to see all of this extra energy that you and I can't see.
• 46:34
  And the reality is that neurotypicals, the way that our brain develops, we are only perceiving four percent of the information around us, so there's another 96% of energy, and what materialism and humanism basically created this framework, because in in um many like centuries past, they understood that the spiritual existed simultaneously with the material that was very prevalent in Jewish understanding and Jewish teaching, as well as in you know, those early the early church, they understood that the spirit was actually the source of matter, right?
• 47:13
  And so there was always this understanding of spirit, but we got so far away from that with materialism and humanism and the age of reason and the enlightenment.
• 47:23
  I I refer to the enlightenment as the in limitment when we limited truth to what we could test and measure and observe, and that's really sad because basically you're trying to limit truth to four percent, and it's gonna be really inadequate.
• 47:42
  Um, so whenever he began sharing all of this, I started studying and trying to understand what he was experiencing, as well as comparing that to what he was sharing with me, and that's when I became astonished because I found what he was sharing with me in scripture in incredible ways, and there was also he could see, and a lot of them can, but they time is all happening at the same time.
• 48:11
  And this is something that's very difficult for us because we have a very linear concept of time.
• 48:16
  It's not actually it says in in scripture that a day is it uh do not think uh that God is slow as some people perceive slowness for a day is like a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day.
• 48:29
  Well, if all time is happening at the same time, then you see how that is true, and so his ability to see time, and when he had actually known many things, but one thing in particular that was known it was happening and it was going to happen, and it basically given me this like what had happened was I was um I was running late for work, and I said, Do you have anything to say to me before I go to work?
• 48:58
  And he said, spelled out all the angels do is talk about you.
• 49:01
  And I literally said, I don't have time for this, and I really so rude, and I like ran out the door, and within uh really it was had to have been less than 90 seconds, maybe it was definitely under two minutes.
• 49:18
  I was hit head on, and then hit a second time.
• 49:20
  My car flipped one and a half times, and I'm literally in that like few seconds, I am on the gravel.
• 49:31
  And we they take me to the emergency room, somebody's calling my daughter, you know, this whole chaotic scene, and my daughter's in the waiting room, doesn't know what's going on, she's terrified, and she gets the letterboard out for Houston.
• 49:47
  She goes, Aren't you worried?
• 49:49
  Like any right, like you you're supposed to be terrified, right?
• 49:53
  And he's sitting there just cool as can be, and he spells out calm down, she's fine.
• 50:06
  And my daughter goes, you know.
• 50:09
  She's like all mad at him for knowing.
• 50:13
  And um, and he said, it had to happen for God's wonderful plan to work.
• 50:20
  And so when she tells me all of this, and I I finally am, you know, back home.
• 50:26
  And after you know, they release me.
• 50:29
  And what was interesting is during the accident, I actually felt my I felt my head being pressed against the seat of the car and moving the opposite direction the car was moving, and there was this magnificent force, like holding my body in place.
• 50:46
  And so when I sat down with him, I said, Okay, how much do you know?
• 50:51
  Right.
• 50:52
  Like I have to tell you anything.
• 50:56
  You already know.
• 50:58
  So he starts trying to explain things to me.
• 51:01
  And I and I was like, tell me about heaven.
• 51:03
  And he says, Well, of course, Jesus is always healing someone.
• 51:08
  And I was like, What?
• 51:10
  What do you mean?
• 51:11
  We're not already healed when we get there.
• 51:12
  I thought that was the whole point.
• 51:14
  Like, I mean, my little my my theology box is like just being exploded, right?
• 51:20
  And I and he looks at me and he goes, Explaining heaven to you takes great elasticity, and so I said, Well, explain.
• 51:31
  And he said, Well, really, it's like he replenishes them to deal with their repentance, and that made sense.
• 51:40
  That here is the holy God, and he even after we die, he is literally like helping people who haven't received him to replenish them to deal with their repentance.
• 51:55
  And then I ran across the scripture in First Peter 4 6 that says for this reason the gospel is preached even to those who are dead, that although they will not live in the body, they will live in the spirit as God does.
• 52:10
  And I went, oh my word, that his mercy is so extravagant that it's still pursuing people even after they've died.
• 52:19
  It's so beautiful and huge and massive that we can't even grasp how large and wide and deep and vast is the love of God.
• 52:34
  Wow.
• 52:36
  Wow, what a beautiful story, Katie.
• 52:38
  I wish we could go on and on and on about this.
• 52:40
  But we're coming down to the last few minutes of the show because this is so extraordinary.
• 52:46
  You know, um, I just have one quick question, and then I want I want to ask you a file quick follow-up.
• 52:51
  Remember when you said at the very beginning when Houston sat down and tugged on the blanket and looked you in the eye and said, I love you, mommy.
• 52:58
  Yes, he ever said any other words besides that.
• 53:01
  So it's really for the those four and a half, almost five years, he didn't say anything that would have led me.
• 53:09
  I had that one miracle to hang on to.
• 53:11
  Now, here's what's interesting is that spelling actually helps them motor plan speech.
• 53:17
  So he has developed a little bit of original and intentional speech that isn't like echolelic or stemming off Disney words or this something like that, but this actually very intentional.
• 53:30
  And it'll be really like strange.
• 53:33
  He'll like say something, and we'll be like, What are you talking about?
• 53:36
  And then like that thing will happen, and I'll be like, and I I'll give you a great example.
• 53:42
  This actually wasn't with Houston, this was with another um non-speaking friend of ours.
• 53:46
  But um she was sitting there at dinner with her son and her non-speaking son, who's mostly he's has a a little bit of language, but he suddenly called out his brother's name and said, Dinner, and then she goes, 'Yeah, I don't know.
• 54:03
  I don't know what he's doing for dinner.' And that like talking about her other son, right?
• 54:08
  And right after that, the phone rang, and it was her other son saying, Hey, can I come over for dinner?
• 54:14
  Oh, wow.
• 54:19
  Well, Katie, we've got about two minutes left.
• 54:22
  And I want you to just sum up this great conversation that we're having about your book, The Book of Heaven.
• 54:29
  Tell us where we can best find your book and where we can follow your work.
• 54:34
  Sure thing.
• 54:35
  Um, the book is available on Amazon, and it will be on audiobook on ACX at on the Amazon platform March 2nd.
• 54:45
  And if you would like to purchase from me, you don't like Amazon.
• 54:49
  I totally understand.
• 54:50
  You can order it from me.
• 54:52
  Um, I don't you have to pay shipping if it's from me because you know, I'm not Amazon.
• 54:57
  So, but it's Asher.house dot hope, and we will sign it.
• 55:02
  Um, Asher.house.hope at gmail.com.
• 55:05
  And as far as the the sum of the story, it is a story of trauma and brokenness that would crush anyone.
• 55:15
  But what I found out is that the goodness of God is not limited by how great our trauma is.
• 55:23
  In fact, it expands the goodness of God, and the spiritual is the source of all the physical, the material and what is eternal is the spiritual.
• 55:35
  And so that's where our focus, all of us needs to turn is to our spirit and the spiritual state of the world and our spiritual state and our relationship with God.
• 55:49
  Well, it is the only thing that's important, you know.
• 55:51
  At the end of the day, it's the only thing that's important, and what a beautiful story of transformation and of growth and of spiritual acknowledgement.
• 55:59
  Thank you so much, Katie Asher, for being on our show here today.
• 56:03
  And thank you for taking the time to write the book because in the beginning of your book, you weren't gonna do it, but Asher, uh, but but Houston made you do it.
• 56:13
  I was like, I was absolutely completely refusing to, and one of the funny um, after I like lost my job, lost everything, I had absolutely nothing.
• 56:23
  And by the way, what's so amazing is this is literally two weeks before COVID starts.
• 56:28
  Wow.
• 56:28
  And um, all I'm thinking about is I've lost everything, I need a job.
• 56:32
  And Houston sits down and spells now, the good can happen.
• 56:36
  Oh gosh.
• 56:37
  And I was like, what do you mean, good?
• 56:41
  And because he could see all of this, all of this he already knows what's gonna happen.
• 56:45
  That's amazing.
• 56:46
  Well, thank you so much, and God bless Houston and you and your journey and continuing to share this with people because it's just amazing.
• 56:54
  And I want to thank all of our great listeners and viewers that have been here with us today.
• 56:58
  What an amazing story.
• 57:00
  And with that, I want to close out with one of my favorite verses from the Bible.
• 57:03
  I close all of my podcasts with, whether they are live or pre-recorded, which is Romans 12, 12.
• 57:08
  Rejoice and hope, be patient in trouble and be persistent in prayer, leaning to God, trust him for everything, he will never let you down.
• 57:16
  You can find out more about me and the things, things that we do and all of our events if you go to dr10pady.com.
• 57:23
  What he send you guys a blessing for the rest of your day, and I will see you right here tomorrow or the next time on the 10 penny files.
• 57:31
  Goodbye, and God bless.