The Pivotal Prayer Book of the Neurodiverse

Have you ever been in a conversation during which you make the perilous decision to share about the hard things that are really taking place in your home and your heart, only to feel the face saving urge to lighten the moment and declare that you do in fact have so much to be grateful for? You released some of the heartache that you have been holding in, feeling a little release in your chest, only for a pressure to build in your head as the person in front of you suggests that it could be worse. Whether the pressure to sugar coat your situation and emotions comes from within yourself, or from the person you have chosen to share with, I imagine that you, like me, have started to recognize the discomfort that some Christians (maybe you!) have when suffering and heartache aren’t wrapped up in a neat little package, with a “but God’s still good!” bow on top to tie it off. Perhaps the person in front of you, who may even be a dear loved one, is concerned for your faith. Or maybe it’s you that is uncomfortable sitting down in the ash heap (Job 1:8). Perhaps after reading the last three blog posts in this series, you are skeptical of my claims that the Psalms are provocative, hesitant to truly get raw and personal with your Creator, or are still struggling to accept that lament and gratitude can in fact coexist. As you walk through life loving and caring for your neurodiverse child, spouse, sibling, or friend, it is very possible (likely even) that you have worked hard to keep your negative emotions at bay because if you don’t, you will drown in their powerful, relentless waves.

Here’s the thing, the Psalms teach us to express emotion and to evoke emotion. They don’t leave you where they found you. They invite you to be completely and honestly you, and then they take you to the sincere version of yourself that you want to be but can never achieve on your own (i.e. a faithful believer who trusts the Lord). The structure of each individual Psalm, as well as the macrostructure of the Psalter as a whole, teaches us to express our emotions, and then to evoke them. When you consider the lament Psalms in particular, you start to notice that they have a bit of a velcro like structure. They begin with the hook: the cries, the distress, the expression of need. They conclude with the loop: truth about God and His ways that specifically meets those cries. Without both sides, there’s no stick.

The Hook: Express Emotion

So, step 1: The Psalms teach us to express our emotions. In their wildly helpful book How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth, Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart explain that the Psalms were “intended by God to help us express ourselves to God and consider God’s ways.  The Psalms therefore, are of great benefit to the believer who looks to the Bible for help in expressing joys and sorrows, successes and failures, hopes and regret, or simply to worship.”  This has been covered extensively in the first four posts of this series (#1, #2, #3, and #4) , so I won’t belabor this point here. It is important to start here though because the Psalms start here. They teach us to get honest about what’s inside of us so that when the pivot happens it’s authentic and abiding. In being specific and honest about your doubts, fears, and disappointments, you can be specific in what truths about God you need to recall and meditate on. Velcro needs a hook side and a loop side to stick. Honest specificity on your part is the hook and God’s honest specificity in His Word is the loop. Both are needed for a genuine pivot. Many Christians are tempted to skip this step and move straight to trying to create affectionate and faith filled emotions. But without the hook, you end up slapping bumper sticker scriptures on your genuine heartache, and they don’t stick. Instead, you feel let down by God when His Word isn’t giving you the pivot it promises. I find when this happens to me, it’s because I didn’t do things God’s way. So, start with expressing your thoughts and feelings to God. Don’t even know where to start? Pray with David: “search me and know me, see if there is any wayward thought within me” (Psalm 139). Spend time getting real with God.

The Loop: Evoke Emotion

After we freely express our emotions to God, as modeled in the Psalms, God bring us to step 2: evoke emotions based on Truth. Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart continue: “[The Psalms are] intended to appeal to the emotions, to evoke feelings that straight propositional expression seldom does, and thus to stimulate a response on the part of the individual that goes beyond a mere cognitive understanding of certain facts.”

The Psalms welcome us to express, without censorship, what we are feeling to God. It’s not just about letting it all out. It’s about letting it all out specifically withand to God. When that turning towards Him happens, we are invited into Truth and the emotions that are evoked by it. Jonah was drowning, being pressed down deep into the ocean, despairing of his bitter end, and he cried out to God. Being an Israelite, he was familiar with the Psalms, and modeled his prayer in Jonah 2 after them:

“I called out to the Lord, out of my distress,
    and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
    and you heard my voice.
3 For you cast me into the deep,
    into the heart of the seas,
    and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows
    passed over me.
4 Then I said, ‘I am driven away
    from your sight;
yet I shall again look
    upon your holy temple.’
5 The waters closed in over me to take my life;
    the deep surrounded me;
weeds were wrapped about my head
6     at the roots of the mountains.
I went down to the land
    whose bars closed upon me forever;
yet you brought up my life from the pit,
    O Lord my God.
7 When my life was fainting away,
    I remembered the Lord,
and my prayer came to you,
    into your holy temple.
8 Those who pay regard to vain idols
    forsake their hope of steadfast love.
9 But I with the voice of thanksgiving
    will sacrifice to you;
what I have vowed I will pay.
    Salvation belongs to the Lord!”

10 And the Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited Jonah out upon the dry land.

He was drowning, going down, because of his sin no less. Down, down, down, deeper into death and despair. He made a simple move: he looked to and remembered the Lord, sending a prayer to Him. He prayed, he cried out in his distress, and then in this simple act a pivot occurred. And up, up, up he went until he was safely delivered onto dry land.

Through the Psalms, when we allow ourselves to feel and express those things to God, we have already begun the pivotal journey towards the Truth that shines light into our darkness.  We don’t have to turn on a measly light bulb and hold it to our darkness.  No, we take our darkness in all its ugliness straight to the Light, capital L, to the Son.  We express our emotions to God, and then as we talk to God– remember Him, consider His goodness, grace, sovereignty, mercy, and justice- we begin to evoke emotions based on truth. The negative ones may not be replaced, but now you have a life jacket. You now have tears in your eyes, and hope in your heart.

Chin Up

Psalm 34:5, the text on which the title of this blog is based, says that “those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.” The Psalms show us how to pivot, by simply lifting our chin to Jesus. When you do so, you may have tears streaming down your face, but you will radiate his beautiful light, and your hope in Him for a pivot, for a light to shine in your darkness, will not be put to shame.

We truncate the story when we leave out brokenness, and the impact of the fall. We also truncate the story when we stop with what’s inside of us and fail to look to the One who has promised from the beginning that He has provided an answer: Himself. The Pslams take us on a journey. They allow us to express our emotions, and then they end with a declaration of God’s character, His past faithfulness, or promises of His future grace. They recall the Truth and thereby calm the storm. The tears may remain. The heartache may throb. The anxiety might cripple. But the Truth drives you into the arms of the one who loves you, and in those arms there is unexplainable comfort, and hope that defies all odds. There is assurance that you belong to Him and that “all that is sad will come untrue” for those who love Him. His arms are like a girdle, holding you together when your circumstances and your emotions threaten to tear you a part. Express your emotions, remember the truth, and let your emotions get caught up in the radiance of His steadfast love.