The Polar Prayer Book of the Neurodiverse
Two Things Can Be True
I cried all day today. All. Day. Happy tears. Grateful tears. Sad tears. Angry tears. Exhausted tears. My emotions existed in extremes in every direction. As I reflect on the day behind me, I see that I should have turned to the Psalms to guide me through the polarity of the feelings that I was experiencing. As I reflect on the day ahead of me, I am preparing to do just that– to turn toward the God of the Psalms who sees, understands, and gives voice to the profound sadness of the neurodivergent experience, as well as the surprising joy you find there.
It started when we arrived at the girls’ Meet & Greet for the new school year. They are going back to the same outdoor nature school they attended last year, and the joy and gratitude I felt at returning overflowed into tears. When Evie is at this school she is free to be unapologetically herself. Not only are her differences accepted, they are celebrated and her unique skills are nurtured. On top of all that, she is genuinely loved and compassionately cared for when being herself is a bit (very) difficult for those around her. What more could a mom ask for?
When we arrived, the sun was shining and warm, and both the girls were greeted with laughter and love by both their peers and teachers. How did we get so lucky to find a school that my kids cannot wait to get to? The answer is we didn’t get lucky. God provided. I was overcome with the goodness of God as I considered this provision in leading us to where we needed to be. A place where I drop my daughter off, disabilities and mental health concerns in tow, to a place that I know she will be cared for the way I would care for her. This is no small thing. If you parent a child with developmental or psychiatric disabilities, I don’t have to explain this. I was overcome when her teachers both gave me a hug and I felt like I was home. My body couldn’t hold the happiness, gratitude, and peace that I felt. So I cried.
About half way through Meet & Greet though, things started to fall apart. Evie didn’t handle the changes to her classroom and the unstructured nature of the event very well, so we had to leave early and the day just deteriorated from there. Betsy was mad that she missed out on time with her friends. Evie was anxious. Crying for an hour at a time at the table saying over and over “I don’t know what to do”. Melt downs, toileting accidents, compulsions, and conflict ruled the day. It was a hard day. For Evie, for Betsy, for me. Now my body couldn’t hold the exhaustion, frustration, sadness for each of my girls in kind, a sense of betrayal by God (why provision and then famine?), and ultimately if I’m being honest, hopelessness. So again, I cried. How long will we live like this? How long will I ask for help from God only to be met with silence? Will we be okay?
It’s already been said— the Psalms run the gamut of emotions. In them you will find both ends of the emotional spectrum— raw lament and deep gratitude. Dark valleys of depression and glorious peaks of joy. Life is rarely simple, even less so for the neurodivergent and their loved ones. Life is complex. This is true not only of our circumstances, but also our inner selves and the thoughts and emotions we cycle through. When we begin to consider the emotional polarity we experience on a daily basis, we find that two things can in fact be true at one time. Don’t take my word for it– the Psalms prove it. In the prayer book of Israel, we find organic, beautiful, realistic coexistence of gratitude and lament. Those of us who experience developmental or psychiatric disability, or who love and care for those who do, would do well to make this polar prayer book our own.
In You’re Only Human: How Your Limits Reflect God’s Design and Why That’s Good News, Kelly Kapic reflects that “both our secular culture and the church often push us to choose between things that are equally true. I want you to see that there are times when you should not make that kind of choice… What if instead of choosing an unrealistic oversimplification, we choose what I call biblical realism. This posture allows us to express both lament and gratitude, each a genuine part of our experience, and
neither canceling the other. We develop biblical gratitude and joy not by ignoring the bad, but by making sure our vision is not reduced to a single mood. This helps us resist two pressures.”
Two Pressures in the Emotional Life of a Christian
If two things can’t be true at one time, then you are forced to choose between them. Kapic goes on to describe the pressure to live on only one end of the emotional spectrum or the other, and how this manifests in Christian culture:
Pressure 1: Joy and gratitude are the only appropriate emotions of
a Christian. Some Christians believe that there is only room for joy and gratitude in the heart of a believer. When troubles and heartache come, their approach is to simply deny it. To affirm trouble and heartache, in their minds, is to deny the goodness of God. But this is not so. Two things are true at the same time– God is good, and sin has broken our world. Kapic rightly assesses this denial of reality as dishonest and unhelpful. I also believe that the denial of pain and suffering in the world is an insult to Christ and His ministry. If we are unwilling to recognize the brokenness of our world and the impact of that brokenness on us, in essence we render Jesus’ work unnecessary. If things aren’t all that bad then Jesus didn’t need to come to die, and we certainly don’t need Him to come back again either. Jesus’ mission is to make all things new again (Revelation 21), which implies that things are old and in need of fixing. In other words, when we cry and complain that the world is broken, Jesus agrees with us. In fact He died because He agrees with us. He is in heaven interceding for us because He agrees with us. And He is coming again because He agrees with us. Ignoring pain and suffering that is damaging to suffering people at best, and unbiblical at its worst. “When we hurt, when we have deep questions, when we see atrocities and experience slights, we lament, believing His presence, compassion, and power can truly handle and absorb our raw emotions without being overwhelmed by them” (You’re Only Human, Kelly Kapic).
But there is an equal and opposite pressure:
Pressure 2: Joy is naive and insensitive. Again, Kelly Kapic is instructive here— “Others, however, are so aware of the hurts and problems in this life that Christian expressions of joy or gratitude appear to be naive at best, or coldhearted at worst.” This too is unbiblical— there are countless examples in Scripture of people facing unimaginable trial and still experiencing deep peace, joy, and who chose to bless the Lord in the face of it all. Consider Job, Daniel, and Paul. If the first pressure tempts us to deny the brokenness of the world, the second pressure tempts us to doubt God’s goodness. He has come. He is near. He has provided His Spirit and His Word to comfort and guide us. And He is coming again to make all that is sad come untrue. Far from being naive and insensitive, making space for joy in a broken and hurting world is insightful and big-minded. This world is not all there is, and so we hope.
What a comfort to see my inner life reflected in God’s own Word, in His instructionsto me regarding how to talk to Him. What a gift that God speaks to the polarity of human emotion. What a shock that He invites me to experience that spectrum withHim. Slowly but surely I am learning to thank Him for His provisions and His presence, and also ask him “why?”and “how long?” I am opening myself to the joy of having a front row seat to Evie’s creativity and ingenuity, and I am allowing myself to feel the loss and grieve the life we thought we would live. I am encouraged every night when we gather in my bed to do a Bible story together and she confesses that she believes that Jesus died for her sins, and I am incredibly frustrated that she makes little to no progress on being able to use the bathroom or get dressed appropriately on her own. I am so thankful for the wonderful medical professionals that we have had the benefit of working with, but I am angry that I need them at all. I take comfort in the new friendships I have formed on the common foundation of Jesus Christ and the common experience of parenting a child with developmental and psychiatric disabilities, and I also mourn the old friendships that have not been able to withstand my life’s difficulties. I love my daughters more than any earthly thing, and sometimes I wonder what God was thinking when he gave them to me. I trust that God is good and loving and near, but I confess that after the third hour of my baby girl hiding from me in the bathroom because she thinks I’m trying to kill her I can’t always see the evidence of these truths. As my dear friend has come to say as we walk this life’s trial together, we press on “with tears in our eyes, and hope in our hearts.”
Embracing Complexity
Life is never as simple as our culture, both in the church and outside of it,
want it to be. And I have found so much freedom in the truth that God does not require me to pick between lament and joy.
“Despite pressures from both outside and within the church, lament and thanksgiving are not in a contest. The Bible calls us to both. Don’t pick between Psalm 22 and Psalm 23: believers are allowed to cry out ‘My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?’ in their distress, and at the same time confidently declare ‘The Lord is my Shepherd.’ These expressions are not tied to good and bad times, but to the one God, who is present in both: we gain confidence in God’s kindness and provision when we ‘walk through the valley of the shadow of death’. If we try to choose one and not both, we risk turning our laments into hopeless despair or reducing divine promises to shallow cliches. When we engage both lament and gratitude, then each becomes stronger and truer” (You’re Only Human, Kelly Kapic).
As we live as watchmen, waiting for Jesus to come back and make all things new, let us freely mourn what is broken and rejoice in who He is to us in the midst of the brokenness. May you find the space to grieve and lament and cry, lest you lose the desire for heaven and its glory, lest you become bored of His kindness and reticent to turn your eyes to Him. May you not be so lost in your grief that you miss out on a few minutes of joy–puzzle time or a brief conversation with your child about Jesus. May you turn to the Psalms and there find expression of every single shade and hue of emotion that passes through your body. May you find a path through pain as you become closer to the One who also experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Who enjoyed meals with friends, and felt the sting of betrayal. Who felt both tender compassion and fiery rage. Who both wept and laughed. You’re in good company, friend. Find freedom in His Word. Find embrace in His arms.