The Provocative Prayer Book of the Neurodiverse

God, you’re my last chance of the day.
    I spend the night on my knees before you.
Put me on your salvation agenda;
    take notes on the trouble I’m in.
I’ve had my fill of trouble;
    I’m camped on the edge of hell.
I’m written off as a lost cause,
    one more statistic, a hopeless case.
Abandoned as already dead,
    one more body in a stack of corpses,
And not so much as a gravestone—
    I’m a black hole in oblivion.
You’ve dropped me into a bottomless pit,
    sunk me in a pitch-black abyss.
I’m battered senseless by your rage,
    relentlessly pounded by your waves of anger.
You turned my friends against me,
    made me horrible to them.
I’m caught in a maze and can’t find my way out,
    blinded by tears of pain and frustration.

I call to you, God; all day I call.
    I wring my hands, I plead for help.
Are the dead a live audience for your miracles?
    Do ghosts ever join the choirs that praise you?
Does your love make any difference in a graveyard?
    Is your faithful presence noticed in the corridors of hell?
Are your marvelous wonders ever seen in the dark,
    your righteous ways noticed in the Land of No Memory?

I’m standing my ground, God, shouting for help,
    at my prayers every morning, on my knees each daybreak.
Why, God, do you turn a deaf ear?
    Why do you make yourself scarce?
For as long as I remember I’ve been hurting;
    I’ve taken the worst you can hand out, and I’ve had it.
Your wildfire anger has blazed through my life;
    I’m bleeding, black-and-blue.
You’ve attacked me fiercely from every side,
    raining down blows till I’m nearly dead.
You made lover and neighbor alike dump me;
    the only friend I have left is Darkness.

Strong words.  What is your reaction? Are these words embarrassing to read? Do they feel wrong? Ungrateful? Blasphemous even?

Believe it or not, this is Psalm 88 (The Message Version). These words come from a believer.  One of God’s chosen ones.  One of God’s children.  Even more astonishing: these words are featured in Israel’s prayer book, the book of Psalms, inspired by God as a model for how his children ought to communicate and commune with Him. If anything deserves a “Selah”, I think it’s that statement right there.

In Psalm 88 we read depression coming from the pen of someone walking the walk of faith. Do you wish this wasn’t in the Bible?  I get that. But do you also secretly relate to this passage of the Bible more than the beloved Psalm 23 or Paul’s doxologies, praising the love and grace and glory of God? I get that too.

Let’s take a jump back though. Before we can rightly think about the Psalms, we need to rightly think about God’s Word.  The Psalms are provocative.  They are shocking. They feel wrong.  But they are still God’s Word. So let’s back up for a moment to consider the doctrine of Scripture.

Question 157 of The Westminster Larger Catechism asks how the Word of God is to be read. Here is it’s answer: The Holy Scriptures are to be read with a high esteem of them; with a firm persuasion that they are the very Word of God… and that He only can enable us to understand them; with desire to know, believe, and obey the will of God revealed in them; with diligence, and attention to the matter and scope of them; with meditation, application, self-denial, and prayer.” 

In an act of submission, we confess the inerrancy and perfection of God’s speech. In his book Taking God At His Word, Kevin DeYoung says that this means “the Word of God always stands over us we never stand over the Word of God.” Confessing the perfection of Scripture dictates that supposed “defects” in the Bible should lead to revising our standards of what is “defective”. When tensions arise, we don’t revise the Word, we let it revise us and our standards.

You will come up against some uncomfortable realities in the Scriptures.  Especially in the Psalms.  God’s very Word, as expressed in Psalm 88, may cut against the grain of the Christian culture you grew up in, or have subscribed to as an adult.  God’s very Word, as expressed in Psalm 88, may contradict the kind of Christianity you WANT to be a part of.

I am not here to give you another version, MY version, of Christianity.  I am simply seeking to expose some of God’s oft overlooked words, found smack dab in the middle of the Bible, with the desperate hope that it will offer you freedom to communicate honestly with God when you are “camped on the edge of hell” or “in a black hole of oblivion”.  I have found that the picture offered to me in cultural Christianity- the one that subscribes to the emotional prosperity gospel– does not match my experience as a mom in a neurodivergent family (at best), and leaves me in a pool of self-condemnation (at worst). Those of us who experience mental illness, or love someone who does, grapple with the reality that things are not the way they were meant to be in an acute way every day. We grieve the loss that the fall has caused our families, and we may be either directly or indirectly shamed for doing so by well-meaning, albeit misinformed Christians. I recall sharing some of our family’s hardships with a sister in the Lord, tears streaming down my face, my lip quivering, and she looked me in the eye and said “I thought you were a woman of faith.” I immediately shut down, felt ashamed of my tears, and resolved to be more thankful, one who praises the Lord in all things. Friends, I have come to learn that this is not the way of Jesus. My hope is that diving into the more provocative Psalms will give you a glimpse of God’s picture of the walk of faith, the way of Jesus himself.

If all of this is really rubbing you the wrong way, maybe take a break. Take a Selah. Pray and wrestle and re-submit yourself to the inerrancy and perfection of God’s Word to you. Be a good Berean.  Don’t take my Word for it— is it in the Bible?  Is David’s cry in Psalm 88 in the Bible?  Is Job’s claim that “God slays Him” in the Bible?  Is Jesus’ deep sorrow expressed in the question “God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” in the Bible? God’s Word in general, and the Psalms in specific, are surprising and provocative. They are refreshingly honest and raw. And if you stick with them, allow them to carry you instead of fighting against them, they are beautifully hopeful and life-giving. They pave a path through pain back to the one who made you, to the one who promises the fullness of joy in His presence, to the one who is preparing a place for you where no words like those found in Psalm 88 will ever be needed again.

I quoted The Message Version above, because it gives a great idea of what our prayers might sound like as they come out of our modern lips. It gives a more relatable model to follow. For the purposes of exegesis, I would ALWAYS use a more literal translation, but I have found that The Message Version has helped me pray God’s Word back to Him in a way that feels more natural. Some of the phrases of this Psalm are viscerally reflective of what I have felt as a mom to a neurodivergent kiddo.

Stanzas like “I’m written off as a lost cause, one more statistic, a hopeless case” are eerily similar to the way I have felt after being dismissed from a doctor’s offices with a cold diagnosis in hand, a grim prognosis of my daughter’s future, and little advice on how to handle it. Or after having called eighteen doctors only to be told eighteen separate times that my child is suffering from a condition outside of the scope of their expertise. Stanzas like “I’m caught in a maze and can’t find my way out, blinded by tears of pain and frustration” remind me of coming up against the same difficult behaviors day after day, year after year, the same unhelpful solutions to try a reward chart or to “ignore the unwanted behavior”, medication after medication, each one only making things worse. Feeling like there is no answer. Feeling like I’m in a maze with no exit, and a metaphorical Minotaur lurking around every corner. Panic in my throat, sadness in my gut, rage in my head. Stanzas like “I call to you, God; all day I call. I wring my hands, I plead for help” bring up memories of sitting on my bathroom floor yelling at the ceiling “where are you God, why aren’t you helping me?!” Psalm 88 is so very real, my friends. And for that reason, I am so very glad it is in the Bible. It tells me God sees me, it tells me God “knows my frame” (Psalm 103), and it tells me there is still a place for me in His Kingdom even as I yell at Him from my bathroom floor.

Which stanzas stick out to you? Which ones feel like a page out of your own book?

After finding yourself in the stanzas above, and maybe a few of your own that I didn’t point out, we come to the most important thing about this Psalm. The thing that separates it from just a whiny, bitter rant from an ungrateful brat to a God-honoring, life-giving prayer to the God of the universe.

It’s verse 13.

I’m standing my ground, God, shouting for help,
    at my prayers every morning, on my knees each daybreak.

This poem is filled with utter despair and hopelessness, but it is a prayer because it is directed to God. The fact that the Psalmist is “standing his ground”, the fact that he continues to shout for help, not just out into the universe but to his God, the fact that he does it morning and night reveals that this is a prayer of incredible faith. This is not the prayer of one who has given up hope in God. This is the prayer of one who has given up hope for salvation and restoration in medical professionals, therapists, homeopathic remedies, special diets, friends, family, the legal system, the education system, and even themselves. This is the prayer of one who knows that God is his only hope. It is the prayer of one who waits for the Lord’s answer in the darkness. It is the prayer of a watchman.

This is the most instructive part of this Psalm. You can be ugly crying, shaking your fist, on the edge of hell, and blaming God for it all– but if your face looks up to him as the only hope for help, you will be radiant as His glory reflects off your face, and you will never be put to shame (Psalm 34:5). That’s a beautiful thing. It’s a hopeful thing. It’s a provocative thing. It’s a NeuroRadiance thing.

Learn to pray like David, like Job, like Jesus. There is freedom there. There is embrace there. Dare I say, there is even peace there.