When I was 13 years old I was diagnosed with a mild form of asperger syndrome, which is a high functioning autism. People with aspergers have an average to high IQ, have trouble understanding non-verbal cues and social norms, can be obsessive-compulsive, and can have physical clumsiness and an atypical use of language. People with it are usually very strong introverts, which can get to the point where we can spend hours- even days- without any social contact and not give it a 2nd thought.
Aspergers did not make my grade school career easy because I was certainly not normal. When I first received my diagnosis I hated it because to me it was like I had a disease for which there was no cure. Because I've grown and matured as a young woman and as a Christian, I am comfortable and OK with it. I am even sometimes thankful that God gave me aspergers because it gives me an independent streak that has gotten me out of sticky situations.
Prior to entering post-secondary education, my social life was null for the most part. I had only 1 friend during high school, and everyone else disregarded me. Everything changed when I started university, because people are much more tolerant and accepting of those who are different in terms of their physical, mental, and social limitations. It also helped that I was blessed to have a mild form of aspergers to the point where there are times when even I forget that I have it! Unfortunately, my memory returns every Sunday because I find that no matter what church I go to, I always get uncomfortable being around all those people.
For me, going to church is hell because it's constant social interaction and I feel very uncomfortable when I am run into the kind of social interaction I get at church. Often this discomfort gets to the point where I want to run out the door. This is in sharp comparison to how I feel when I'm at school and around my peers. Like church, my school is a strong Christian environment that is designed to foster and encourage spiritual growth as well as academic growth because it is a Bible College. Part of the reason I'd much rather be socializing with my peers is that I have a lot more reasons to do so than just for the sake of socializing.
The majority of people who have aspergers, like me, do not naturally socialize. For example, the first thing I want to do after my last exam before the summer is to go to my room and play my video games alone and not go hang out with my friends. Another example is that as soon as we're done opening Christmas presents, my first impulse is to wander off and look at the things I received by myself instead of hanging around with my family. I find that my friends at school are more comfortable with me preferring to go off on my own as than my family is. I've also found that my church family is like my earthly family in that it was more designed for the extroverts and natural socializers as opposed to the introverts and natural loners. This is something I've observed over the years between the different social circles I interact with. This lack of understanding can be frustrating at times, because a lot of the people I interact with on a regular basis have known that I have aspergers for a long time but seem to choose to not acknowledge it.
Going to church, talking with people after class, or going to a family reunion means I have to fight a large part of me that does not want to socialize. It's not those social groups themselves that make me want to run away, but the socializing. What causes me to warm up to socializing a lot more is when the people who I socialize with understand me. My current friends at school do understand me in more ways then 1. First, we all have Jesus Christ in common. What's nice about going to a Bible College like Emmanuel is that almost everybody's first and most important priority is their faith in Jesus Christ (I say almost because there are people who go there, where Jesus Christ is at the bottom of their priorities). Not only does that make them more understanding, I also find that it is what causes them to be more celebrating and more appreciative of differences because they all believe God created people to be different. Second, they understand me because we are a part of the same generation so our interests, values, and experiences within society as a whole are pretty much the same. Third, they are some of the few people I've met that have really tried to understand what it means to have aspergers. I've encountered people, both family and non-family, who've ignored it, tried to explain it away or make it less than what it is, have tried to cure me and make it go away, say they understand it but refuse to make some accommodations for it, fail to see how I can be better than my diagnosis, and/or they pick and choose what parts of it they'll accept and then lose patience or disregard the rest. Not my friends at school.
I have to be honest, about 50% of the stuff in the list has come from my earthly family. This has turned my off interacting with a lot of people in my heavenly/Christian family because if I can't find some degree of tolerance and understanding in my earthly family then why should I expect to find it in my heavenly family? Tolerance and understanding, something that so many people who have a liberal view of things advocate for, yet I've had to fight for and I am still fighting for in my mostly liberal family... and a family that will probably deny this completely when and if they read this but can they really get mad at me for commenting on what I've observed and experienced over the years? Not really. And they should know it's not just them. I've received this kind of treatment from people I've met at church too and from my non-church friends.Furthermore, they have loved in ways that my peers in all walks of my life have fallen short in and they do understand me in ways that my peers don't.
The need for understanding is something that I don't get at church. First, a lot of the people that talk to me are not in my age group. Although, we do have Jesus Christ in common, there is a difference between how Jesus interacts with someone in their mid-life and older as opposed to how He interacts with young adults. God meets people where they are at, and there is a difference between where a 20 year old and 40 year-old are at. Second, I find that a lot of people at church want to get to know me on a more personal level too quickly. This would not be so bad if they didn't automatically ask me really personal questions, like how I came to know the Lord. My faith story is a bit more personal than others, and it doesn't make sense if I try to leave the more personal parts out. If you combine that with the impression I have that if you don't give them an answer, you are looked down upon.
This is true about your faith story, and even about whether you are completely honest about your week on say the first day of a small group. If I don't want to share, I don't want to share. If I don't want to hug people, I don't want to hug people. At school I have the option to share or hug people, or to not share and hug people. At church, I don't think I really have that choice or I'm frowned upon if I choose to exercise it and keep quiet about my life or refuse to hug someone. No, for people like me, we need time to get to know people more and develop real trust. I will never be comfortable sharing my faith story with someone I've only known for 5 minutes, it's as simple as that.
Another thing that turns me off is hugging. Again, if I've only known you for 5 minutes or a couple of days, I don't want to be hugged by you. Unfortunately, I almost always get the impression that talking and hugging are not optional but required in order to be a a part of the community. When I'm with my friends at school I am allowed to say Please go away or I really don't want to talk right now. People at school know when and how to keep their distance, and they still welcome me into the community as their friend! Why can't church be like that too? People at church , and a lot of other Christian-specific places never understand that I have boundaries and they never figure it out when they are crossing them. And when they want to hug me, they just hug me! There is no seeing whether I want to accept the invitation or not, they just hug and expect me to hug back. Then I try to figure out on Saturday night why I want to do church on Sunday morning, because there are plenty of reasons why I do not.
Another thing that really gets me mad is that people will read a blog article like this, see me reject their hug, and/or my refusing to talk and they get all mad and look down upon me even though whether I do or don't do those above things is my choice to make. It was always me who was going to see the guidance counsellor while I was in elementary school, or I was the one who needed to change and learn to ignore people, and not my peers who treated me like I was less than crap every single day. This seems to be true about a lot of things: I'm the one who is always wrong and always has the problem, and never the people I am interacting with. In fact this is true for people who have a disability or a syndrome that affects how we socialize and interact with other people- it's always the person who's an introvert, or the one with aspergers, or the one who's blind, or the one who has autism who always has the problem in any situation and never the people who want to hug us, talk to us, tease us, and/or ignore us.
Ah Saturday night. It's the night where the battle over whether I should make the trek to church occurs every week. Sometimes I'm at church the following morning and sometimes I'm not. It's a battle that only fellow brothers and sisters with aspergers would understand. It gets annoying when people who don't have aspergers try to give me advice about how "fix" my tendencies and help me "win" my Saturday evening battle. I know, at least I think I know, that you all want to help but with all do respect, you don't know what you're talking about. Aspergers is not a disease that is affecting my body and once the disease is removed everything goes back to normal. Aspergers is a part of my being that affects everything, including my relationship with God, and it is something that cannot really be "cured". It is controllable and it can be managed, but all the control and management in the world won't get rid of it completely.
I just want to say that I have never been hurt by the church. Part of the reason people at church are not more careful and cautious around me is because a lot of people at church don't know that I have it because it is something that I don't share right away. In fact, sometimes I forget I have it because there are times when I am perfectly comfortable with socializing and I act relatively "normal" until I do something that's socially unorthodox. Then I think to myself, Why did I do that...? Oh yeah, I have aspergers- Damn you! In a lot of ways, the church has helped me a lot because God uses it to push me outside of my comfort zone and improve my social skills. It's also one of the few work places that shows more mercy when my aspergers comes out.
If I could summarize how aspergers has affected my so far 21 years of life, I would use the opening to one of Charles Dickens' greatest works, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only."- Opening paragraph of a "Tale of Two Cities".
You are probably noticing that I talk about me and my aspergers like they're separate people. That's because aspergers is a part of me but it is not me. Just like when Paul talks about his or the flesh he is referring to something that is in him and is a part of him, but it is separate from and is not him. The only Person I ever want to be defined by is Jesus Christ. A part from Him nothing, including aspergers, really matters. In Christ, everything falls into balance and aspergers falls into its rightful place. Finally, it is only by trusting in Christ that I can continually be better than I already am.
As my life continues, I hope to strive to be better than who I am now. This is true in my relationship with God, my relationship with others, and my relationship with my aspergers. I like to consider myself like Captain Picard and the android, Data in Star Trek: Nemesis. In the movie, Data discovers a prototype android, B4, that looks exactly like him and Picard encounters his clone, Shinzon. In many ways B4 and Shinzon are exact replicas of Picard and Data to the point where for Picard and Data to look at Shinzon and B4 in the eye is to look in a mirror. However, they are not them because Picard and Data strive to be better than they were, Shinzon and B4 did not. The one thing, or rather the One Person, that separates me from Picard and Data, is Jesus Christ. I can be better than myself if I remain dependent on Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
Data and Picard can only so much better than themselves for two reasons. First, humans beings cannot redeem or improve themselves a part from God and His offer of salvation through Jesus Christ. Whoever reads this can argue against what I've just said with me until the cows come home but the first 15 minutes of the news proves me, and the Bible, right. Human history, especially the last 100 years, have proven that humanity in and of itself can only get worse and not better. If anything, Captain Picard and Data are exceptions to the norm. Second, the majority of discouraging comments about self improvement come from human beings, even people one trusts. Only dependence on the Father, in the name of Jesus Christ through the power of the Spirit will make me successful in my goal to always strive to be better than myself.
If humans don't try to discourage my self-improvement goals, they try to help me by trying to cure me, which hurts more than it heals. I think there is a way for me to be better than I am that includes my aspergers just like there was a way for Paul to be better than he was that included his "thorn in the flesh" (2Corinthians 12:1-10). If Paul wasn't better with his thorn, God would no have allowed him to have it. In the same way, if God didn't think I could be better than myself with aspergers, I would not have been born with it in the first place.
Life with aspergers is the best of times, it is the worst of times. It is one of the interesting gifts God can choose to give someone, and I am content and sometimes baffled that He chose to entrust it to me. As St. Paul said, "I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (2Corinthians 12:9-10, TNIV).
