The Prayer Book of the Neurodiverse
Lately, I’ve identified as a watchman.
Psalm 130:5-6 reads
5I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
6 my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.
When faced with disability of any kind, whether your own or that of a loved one, life can feel like a really long, dark night. Trouble has come, and keeps on coming, that you do not understand. Grey’s Anatomy’s April Kepner put the feeling well: “God is asleep at the wheel and humanity is locked in the trunk” (s14e12). God seems distant. God seems silent. Heaven has closed its doors. Every day feels like an attack. It’s lonely, not because you’re alone, but because you live in a world that doesn’t understand. Faith feels fragile and threatens to break. Feelings of betrayal, sadness, confusion, anger, self-pity, resentment, and numbness settle into your bones and feel as natural breathing but as destructive as cancer.
I have come to identify as a watchman. I am in the night, and it’s dark one. Perhaps as dark as the nights of David the shepherd, in a time before light pollution, streetlights, flashlights. Dependent on and waiting for the rhythm of the sun. The cycle of day and night, outside of his control, but dependable and sure. David knew darkness, both literal and figurative. He knew what it was to wait on the Lord, to wait on the Light. More than a watchman for the morning did David wait on the Lord. More than a watchman for the morning, I wait for Jesus to return, to make “all that is sad come untrue” (IYKYK).
Tolkein, the author of The Lord of the Rings, said in a letter to his son: “There is a place called ‘heaven’ where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten, and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued. We may laugh together yet.” I desperately wait for that morning when we will laugh together. In the mean time, I am here, and it hurts. And it is precisely for the pain in the waiting that the Psalms were gifted to us by God.
The boom of Psalms was Israel’s prayer book, a collection of words that God’s covenant people could say to Him to express their hearts and connect with their Creator. The Psalms know pain. Paul Tripp summarizes the pain well: “The dear parched running through the bush looking for some kind of brook, some kind of pond, even a dirty puddle, to somehow get something to drink. Weaker and weaker with every step. A picture of such strong emotion that you don’t want to eat, crying so hard that your tears stream down your face and into your mouth, and your tears actually are your food. Pictures of the waterfalls of grief, the waves of grief rolling over you. You get a minute of respite only to feel the waves roll over you again.”
These images, these emotions, this darkness– they unsettle us. Can this happen to a Christian?! Don’t these sorts of emotions indicate a spiritual failing?! Surely one of God’s people couldn’t go through this experience.
I fear that we have subscribed to an insidious prosperity gospel– the emotionalprosperity gospel. One that says that if you know Jesus and have enough faith, you will know nothing but joy and peace. While this is attractive (just like the oft repudiated health and wealth version of the prosperity gospel), it is not Biblical. David knew nothing of this gospel. Job knew nothing of this gospel. Paul knew nothing of this gospel. Jesus Himself knew nothing of this gospel, having wept, having experienced such intense anxiety that blood seeped out through His pores, and having felt such hot anger that He flipped tables in a public place.
R.C. Sproul said “we may think that the dark night of the soul is something completely incompatible with the fruit of the spirit. Not only that of faith, but that of joy. Once the Holy Spirit has flooded our hearts with a joy unspeakable how can there be room in that chamber for such darkness? We must make a distinction between the spiritual fruit of joy and the cultural concept of happiness. The Christian can have joy in his heart while there is still spiritual depression in his head. The joy that we have sustains us through these dark nights; it is not quenched by spiritual depression. The joy of the Christian is one that survives all the downturns of life.”
The Psalms take us on this journey. The prayers in the Psalms take us through the deepest grief, the darkest depression, the most crippling anxiety, to the most peaceful calm, and the most jubilant joy. But they don’t rush it. They provide a path through pain, not a way around it. “In this world you will have trouble…”
The Book of Psalms is our prayer book today just as much as it was then. And it is our prayer book, the neurodivergent’s prayer book, just as much as it is the neurotypical’s. As a mom to a child with both developmental and psychiatric disabilities, the prayers expressed over two thousand years ago by a Jewish shepherd turned king could not feel more like my own.
If you are here, I imagine your life often feels dark. As parents to children living with disabilities and/or a mental illness, the world has little to offer, and heaven seems to have even less at times. Sure, we all know that our children are a gift, and not every moment is cruel. But I bet you often feel like you are out in a a dark and empty wilderness, with weak and feeble sheep in your care. The darkness so thick you can’t see your own hand, no one around to hear your voice if you call, and with the ever present threat of savage beasts keeping you awake.
There is a home for you in the Psalms. Read them, study them, memorize them, pray them. They are provocative, personal, polar, pivotal, and preserving (sneak peak into the next few posts). The Psalms will be the oil for your lamp that threatens to flicker out. Keep your lamp burning as you wait for the promised morning. Like David, dependent on and waiting for the rhythm of the Son. The cycle of night and day, outside of your control, but dependable and sure. Keep your lamp burning, and expectantly wait. More than a watchman for the morning.