The Personal Prayer Book of the Neurodiverse
The Psalms are so provocative because they are so incredibly personal. They are an invitation to talk to God in such a way that I can’t even imagine talking to my closest friends, and maybe not even my own husband. The Psalms are an invitation to remove the fig leaves, to bare our naked souls before our Creator.
The Psalms use personal pronouns more than any other book in the Bible. Every Psalm is a personal address. The book does not offer information, it facilitates connection. And the conversation it encourages doesn’t consist merely of requests. It involves talking to God about yourself. Telling Him how you feel and why you feel it. It encourages telling Him why you’re confused and hurt, and why you’re happy and hopeful.
My prayer life has often been stale because it consists merely of petition. It begins and ends with me praying for a change in my situation. More often than not, I get no change. So, prayer starts to feel useless. It feels pointless to talk to God because He knows what I need and isn’t giving it to me, sooo what else is there to say? When Evie has asked the same question over and over again, our go to phrase is “asked and answered”. In other words, it’s our neutral and gentle way of saying “you asked, you’ve been answered, nothing’s changing”. I imagine God sitting up in heaven saying “asked and answered.”
I’ve been living in the Psalms for the last two years (for real, ask the women at my church). The result? My prayers have changed. Instead of bitterly ruminating on the fact that God has not answered my prayer, I’m actually talking to God about the fact that He hasn’t answered my prayer: “Lord, I feel like I’ve been asking and asking, and you know what I need, and I feel confused and discouraged that nothing is changing. It’s really hard and I wonder if you will make it right this side of heaven.” Basically, I’ve entered a conversation. I’ve responded to the invitation to get personal. I’ve begun to imitate what I find in the Psalms.
Have you ever been talking to someone about what’s going on in your life and you feel slightly embarrassed because you have been monologuing pathetically about how sad you are and how hard things have been? Or maybe you err in the opposite direction and don’t share at all because you are terrified to become that person? As a mom of a neurodivergent child with significant psychiatric disabilities, I often find myself falling into one extreme or the other. For a while, when asked how things were going, I shared everything I was thinking and feeling on the genuinely interested person standing in front of me. But over time I have tired of being such a kill joy, and I feel tediously exhausted and haggard. So I find myself oscillating between emotional oversharing and disingenuous positivity. Blech. The Psalms teach us we have an outlet for sharing every ounce of ourselves. Psalms teach us that God wants us to monologue to Him about everything we are thinking and feeling. He “knows we are dust” (Psalm 103)— our frailty is not a surprise to Him. In fact He created us that way— to be dependent on Him.
Psalm 42:8 talks about sending “a prayer to the God of MY life.” Tremper Longman III and Raymond Dillard’s commentary on the Psalms says “as the psalmist pours out his heart before the Lord in prayers of joy and sorrow, he understands himself to be in an intimate relationship with God. He knows that he is in covenant with the God of the universe.” The Lord is attentive to the cries of his people. He never turns a deaf ear to His people. The Lord of heaven and earth invites you into His presence to bring your cries before Him.
Instead of adding “pray” to your to do list, take a moment and consider that you have ACCESS to God. You have access to the ultimate Source of wisdom. You have access to the ultimate Source of power. You have access to the ultimate Source of grace. You have access to the God who rules everything that you celebrate and everything you fear. You have access to the One who has intricately formed and intimately knows you and your neurodivergent loved one. You have access to the One who has seen and numbered every single day, every single phone call, every single evaluation and appointment, every single meltdown, every single compulsive behavior, every single delusion, every single mood shift, every single crisis. He is your Father. He welcomes you into His presence, to lay your head on His chest, and He invites you to say it all to Him. He hears and He responds. No matter how weak the cry is, no matter how riddled with doubt it is, no matter how faint it is in the storm of the darkness, He hears. He hears. He hears. He hears. And He will answer. Perhaps not with a change of circumstance, but with companionship and unexplainable strength to get through just one more day.
Sometimes the prayer we offer is weeping before Him. Not disoriented weeping, but weeping with Him, in His presence, as you would a close and trusted friend. In his commentary on the Psalms, Charles Spurgeon makes note of a specific phrase in Psalm 5 that could be easy to overlook. He brings attention to the phrase “The voice of my cry.” This is what he says about it:
“In [the] Psalm[s] we find the expression, ‘The voice of my weeping’. Weeping has a voice—a melting, plaintive tone, an ear-piercing shrillness, which reaches the very heart of God; and crying has a voice—a soul-moving eloquence; coming from ourheart it reaches God’s heart. Ah! my brothers and sisters, sometimes we cannot put our prayers into words: they are nothing but a cry: but the Lord can comprehend the meaning, for he hears a voice in our cry. To a loving father his children’s cries are music, and they have a magic influence which his heart cannot resist.”
The Psalms are personal. Sometimes there are no words. When your child is sleeping for less than four hours a night, when he or she won’t sleep in her bed or sit at the table for fear of contamination, when the meltdowns get violent and the intrusive thoughts start screaming, when darkness settles into your child’s heart like a heavy wet blanket and they lose the will to eat, play, talk, live— when all you can do is cry— do it with Jesus. He is with you, be mindful of His nearness. He sees you, be validated in His sight. He cares for you, be cognizant and receptive to His compassion. He understands you, be blown away by His solidarity with your frail human experience.
Turn again to the Prayer Book of the Neurodiverse. Let it be your guide into the irony of both the fullness of despair in your circumstances and fullness of joy in His presence.