Tag Archives: church

02/20/11

Failed Relationships and Then Some II

Needless to say my second marriage was not founded on anything good. As I describe in my previous post. I prayed and prayed for God to change me. I really did, I thought I was so horrible for not liking him. But I perceived him as fake, he would change all the time right in front of my eyes. He kept things from me; twice I discovered piles of bills hidden in our second bedroom. He just wouldn’t tell me. I have no idea where the money went. All of this was going on while we served at church. We served in several areas together. He was being considered as a deacon. All the guys loved him and the ladies thought he was charming or something. There were many things going on but the final straw was actually my fault. Sometimes I am just too honest, thinking that I am helping but I make it worse. We were at a counseling session for couples because we were having problems and we were trying to get help. We were told to be completely honest.

I told him that he really needed to pray for our marriage because I had a crush on another guy at work.

Oh, yes I did. I told him that not because I was acting on my feelings but because I was seeking help in the situation. I told my pastor, who in turn told others in the name of “prayer” and the rumors started flying that I was cheating. I later found out that my ex had told some leaders as well that I was cheating. It was a mess. By that time he had already left, dumping all of my belongings out all over the house and taking whatever he could that he said belonged to him. I felt completely violated and devastated. I am admitting, I got to a point to where I couldn’t stand the sight of him. I had many meltdowns and tantrums because he was a liar and he threw my sensory issues beyond any other thing in the world. At times his presence hurt my flesh.

For a while when he was still there, I wouldn’t come home until wee hours of the morning.

I just couldn’t, I would rather sit with friends or my car alone than go home to him. I will say we both did things wrong but sometimes I feel like I did the biggest wrong by not listening to myself or God and I caused both of us to suffer needlessly. It did not help that in the beginning of our marriage I had a miscarriage, it really made things much worse. He left and caused me lingering problems for quite a while. But the story does not end there. There is the failed relationship of my church family.

I had several very hurtful things happen to me during this time.

I had some people pull me into a room and tell me that people were saying that I had cheated, I went off. I asked them who said it, why did people believe it, even if it was true who had the right to gossip about?? It was discovered the link being the pastor during a prayer meeting. I do not think it was his intention but it was hurtful. I had one of the elders wives corner me in the corridor of the church and say loudly “GOD HATES DIVORCE! You better do something to fix your marriage!” I just looked at her and said “You can’t make people change.” She then replied “Well God can change them and every marriage can be fixed.” I replied with “You cannot know what goes on in every marriage.” and I left. They had asked me to step down for a while serving, I felt they were right and I had no problem doing so.

The day was soon approaching though when I was to return to teaching the kids.

It was the day before I was to return to class, I had asked for the curriculum a week in advance and no one gave it to me or would talk to me. I got a call from the pastor (he was a new pastor than the youth interim) at work telling me to please come to church after work because he wanted to talk to me. I felt like I was in serious trouble. I went after work and the pastor and head elder sat me down and told me that the elders had voted and they decided that I could no longer teach the children. I understood and sobbed for days. They told me that they felt my character wasn’t good at that time to be around the children and that it would be too confusing for the kids. Side note here: The day before one of my friends had seen my ex with a girl going to the bank. It could have been nothing but it didn’t seem to be nothing to her when she saw them. I really don’t know, but it is interesting that my character was being judged.

No one ever talked to the kids about the situation and I was not allowed to, even though they all asked.

The very next Sunday was a final blow to me. The new pastor’s son had recently graduated seminary and was a youth pastor. He started going to the church because he had to move in with his parents. His wife had found another man and left him. That Sunday he got up talked about his divorce and then it was announced by the head elder that he would be the new youth pastor starting immediately. I still don’t even know how to take all of that. I asked why it was ok for him and not me; I was told that he was open and honest about it so that probably made a difference. I WAS OPEN AND HONEST! I told the pastor right away when things were wrong and that I needed prayer and that my marriage was failing. It still doesn’t make sense. I was never angry, I am still not but I was hurt. No one absolutely no one asked me anything except that small group of people.

I felt like I was  wearing a giant red “A” on my clothes.

I stayed for a while longer but then I felt led to go to another church. The new church helped me recover. They were very accepting and they built me up. They encouraged my challenging questions and they even let me rant about inconsistencies with the scriptures that I felt I saw. I feel like the Lord really led me to a place of healing and it also helped me to not become bitter and angry at all churches. That was my first church experience as an adult. My first church experience as a new Believer. My first church experience with groups of church people. It was not a good one and unfortunately it was not the last. It feels good to write this out. I have held on to it for so long for fear of people thinking that I am bitter or hateful. I am not, I am sad by the experience. I am sad that people can go to church their entire life and never get the message of Christ. I wish the message wouldn’t get lost in experiences like this.

I know that I am not the only one and that makes it even harder for me to bear.


 


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02/20/11

Failed Realtionship and Then Some I

I have mentioned before that I was not brought up in church, though I was influenced by Biblical teachings and ideas of Christian faith. I came to Christ on my own, through reading the entire Bible (Protestant) from beginning to end, by myself. No one told me to, except I felt very compelled to read it. When I read it I had a pretty distorted view of Jesus, I was good with an all-powerful God but Jesus? What was He all about? For some reason when I read the Bible in its entirety He made sense in my mind. I took to His teachings as literal. I looked upon Jesus as a Jewish man, who showed us how to live by the Jewish teachings and concepts. I knew I was a gentile and didn’t feel like the lifestyle of the Jewish people was what I was supposed to do, though.  I did not become confused until I started reading more Westernized Christian influenced teachings and listening to their preaching. Mainly what many “Americanized” teachings have  adopted as a philosophy and call it “religion”. (I mean no offense I am just trying to explain my mindset.)

I felt like in order for me to understand my faith that I needed to go to church.

One morning I felt led to turn on the radio, I flipped through the channels and at the end of some sermon, which I had missed completely; the preacher went into how to accept Jesus into your heart. I fell to my knees and just felt like that was what I needed to do. I sobbed for an hour, nothing in particular coming to mind, except for, I felt accepted. Accepted and at peace for the first time in my life. I became obsessive about learning the scriptures and studying all about what the Bible meant. I heard in my inner being, I guess that is the best way to describe it, to get baptized. No one told me this; I read it in the scriptures. I was baptized by my father at his church, that became mine too.

I had conflicting feelings the entire time I was there.

First of all, when I arrived the pastor of over 13 years just got removed because it was discovered that he and the secretary were having an affair. The youth pastor had just taken over as the interim and there were a lot of emotions flying that I didn’t know how to process. My dad was a church leader at the time, until my second sister got pregnant at the age of 15 years old. Everyone was forgiving, with very condemning comments when my first sister had gotten pregnant, but after my second sister did, well….it was too much. My dad stepped down. I quickly got involved and started serving in children’s ministry. My first husband would not go to church with me; he was Catholic and felt very uncomfortable in a Non-Denominational church. We had a lot more problems after I became a Christian and started studying. His family did not appreciate my history lessons about the Catholic Church and they did not like my many questions about their faith.

I wasn’t trying to be rude; I genuinely wanted to know about their faith and beliefs.

Eventually we came to terms that our marriage was not going to work no matter how much counseling we did, I was obsessed with my faith and he was not. We just couldn’t get past it. The church was very accepting of me during this time, because he was Catholic and they felt that his faith was wrong anyway. Those are not my views, that was what the church felt. I was beyond devastated. The Christian faith made it clear that divorce was wrong; I personally never wanted to get a divorce because of my family history of multiple divorces and the pain that it causes. I felt like a failure and a horrible Christian. I carried the burden of him getting a divorce because he was Catholic and no one in his family had gotten divorces, there was just a lot.

The church made it clear that it was ok because they felt that he had abandoned me.

They needed that to make it ok. The children at church never even knew I was married because I was always alone so they had no problem with me to continue serving. I then found my second husband, whom I despised from day one. I never liked him, I thought he was a fake and a phony and I told him so. A lot. I went against my gut and I listened to all of the church people tell me that he was such a great guy, “he is so spiritual”, a “real man of God” and so and so on. I knew that he lied to me while we were dating and I called him on it every time. He would ask me “How do you know this stuff?”  I wish I would have listened to my feelings that told me to get away from him. I will give you one example of how I feel God was trying to make it very clear that I was right in my judgment, but did not trust it.

It was New Years Eve weekend and he had made plans to go to his hometown.

I begged him not to go. I just knew something bad was going to happen. He told me “I have to go; it’s like the ending of my previous life. It’s symbolic.” He went and I was praying the second he got on the road. I was up all night, that New Years Eve, I wrote it all down in my prayer journal. I saw like a vision of what he was doing throughout the evening. When he came back, I told him that I knew he had cheated on me and that I saw all of the things he had done. He claimed that they did not happen and that I made it up. I described the girl. He still denied it. After a few months he did something similar and the same thing happened though I did not see him cheat but I did see him with a girl.

He finally broke down, confessed all.

I had been right about everything. I then felt like it wasn’t about me, it was about him and God. I led him into prayer and he rededicated is life to Christ. Then after that he asked me to marry him. I said I don’t know. Later that day I was working alone, my heart was broken because I had been right and I didn’t know what to do. I heard my name being called, like in the air and I looked up. I saw like a vision  and I heard, “I would not give you someone who would hurt you.”(Not audibly, it’s hard to explain) I understood what that meant because after all of my failed relationships (with the exception of my first husband), the common thread was they lied, they cheated, and they did drugs, and was abusive to some extent. I ran to my ex and told him what had happened and I told him how I felt like that meant we were not to be together.

He said “No, I think that means that before, if I did not rededicate to Christ. Now that I have changed you know I won’t hurt you.”

I was very confused, I talked to my Christian friends and they all said what he had said. I assumed that I was wrong. I thought “Well maybe it is possible that he was the wrong guy before but now that he has accepted Jesus, maybe he is the right guy.” I didn’t trust my gut with my first marriage and I didn’t with my second. In my first marriage I made the decision based on never wanting a divorce. Since he was Catholic, I really believed we would never get a divorce. The difference about him and my second ex-husband was that I genuinely liked him as a person. He is now remarried and very happy and I was so happy to discover that. My second husband I married because everyone else told that he was right for me and since I couldn’t trust my judgment on relationships, I believed them.

Our marriage was built upon distrust and my overall dislike for him as a person.

More to come….

Personal Note: When I talk of hearing voices or seeing visions, I am not really sure how to explain it properly. It could be a variety of things going on. I have intense dreams as well that have given me clear direction, so scientifically it could be my brain telling me the right thing to do. Spiritually it could be how I experience God.  I have gone over mental reasons and do not fall under the criteria for any of the mental disorders that I have read. For me I am comfortable with both the reasons being science and God.


 


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02/15/11

Damaging Distractions

I mentioned in my previous post that David and I were rather disconnected during the time we were seeking answers about Daniel. One of the issues was that we were in a church that had a very dominant woman pastor who regularly spoke ill of her husband, the head pastor. They actually would make negative comments toward each other on the pulpit, in a joking way but I never found it amusing. They were constantly saying how marriages are hard work and rough. David and I didn’t feel that way but after a while of hearing it, doubt starts to trickle in.

We had miscommunication about Daniel and I consumed myself in serving at church.

I was also directly under the woman pastor’s leadership, in several ministries. I now know I was trying to escape what was going on at home. Women would call our house all hours of the day and say that we needed to pray or that “things” were going on that needed to be discussed. It would disrupt our entire household and cause chaos. Daniel and I both do not do well with ringing phones. David was trying to do work in an open room and I was spending my days full of anxiety trying to keep two, three yr olds and a 1 yr old quiet so David could work.

We really didn’t have time to talk about Daniel anyway, but then I started taking Daniel to therapy on a regular basis as well.

We didn’t really have time to discuss how either of us were feeling. I was in constant action mode. Try to do everything to keep Daniel at peace, try to do everything to keep peace in church, try to do everything to keep peace with my mom. Since we had just moved here my mom and I were trying to figure out our relationship. We had not lived near each other in about 10 years and our past experience was not a good script to go by. She also refused to believe that Daniel was on the autism spectrum at that time. Everyone in church was praying for healing and I was in the middle not knowing what to believe. Do I believe the doctors, do I believe the websites, do I believe the church people who said it wasn’t of God, do I believe David that he will grow out of it? So many questions and I was full of fear and misunderstandings.

I now know what David meant by “He will grow out of it”.

He doesn’t mean that this will all go away. He means that we help Daniel achieve success through helping him help himself. He means we need to educate ourselves and implement those things that will help Daniel. He means look into all kinds of resources and see which are the best fit and try them. Use the things that work, find Daniel’s special interests and use that as a tool. He means that Daniel will grow out of a lot of the behaviors that can hurt him or us if we understand how to help him. Not that he will grow out of autism. Had I understood what he meant then, I think I would not have felt so alone and disconnected from my husband. I would not have felt so fearful and hopeless. We actually were thinking the same things but with the outside distractions and constant chaos, we couldn’t communicate.

There were many distractions going on.

David was trying to work, we lost a lot of our income which caused a huge stress on him. The jobs he did have were extremely intense and consuming. We had additional medical bills that we had not expected. David lost work because of me being gone so much taking Daniel to therapy. The fact that our kids were so young is enough to take energy out of a relationship, no matter how wonderful they are, they take a lot of time and energy. Even though I felt that David was a great husband and father, the church atmosphere made it feel as if he was not a good spiritual leader. In prayer meetings, the women would complain about their husbands and I would always chime in how David doesn’t do that. Of course they assumed I was lying, I didn’t understand this until later. Why on earth would I lie about that? It didn’t even occur to me to lie about David. Whatever. We would end up talking me down off the ledge after every prayer meeting, not only because of what they said about their husbands but because they would bring up all of this weird theology.

I couldn’t keep mouth shut and would blurt out things, like the actual context of the scripture and the pastor would go off on me.

We spent what little energy we had on exposing the false information, how some people were bullies and the wrong understandings of the Bible teachings instead of on our marriage and kids. David has never told me what to do or think, he knows that I wouldn’t handle that well anyway, but he is not that kind of person. He does give me little bits of information and he knows that I will automatically go into research mode. That is what I did with autism, with church, with marriages, with whatever else that would pop in my head during that time to try to bring clarity and peace to our life. I should have paid attention to my kids, they never wanted to go to that church. Daniel hated it. He would have complete meltdowns before we would go and then he would have to leave class if I wasn’t in there. Many times even when I was in there. This church was a huge distraction to my faith, my marriage, my family and the focus I needed to put on learning how to help Daniel.

We decided that our marriage, unity and full support for each other had to take precedence over all other things.

I eliminated people who caused division in my marriage, we decided that the church we were in was not the best for us, we decided to discuss Daniel’s needs together. We decided that no matter what we would tell each other what we were thinking and if we did not understand one another we would find the best means of communication to help us to understand. We decided that if we were unable to have words to express ourselves then we would tell the other person and give each other the time to be able to gather the right words. David explained to me that I sound like I am yelling when we discuss things, I explained to him that I had no idea what he is talking about because I do not yell. Those kinds of things make a huge difference. I had no idea that I get louder and louder when I am discussing something. So now we know and I am more aware of it and it has become another one of our jokes.

That time was the breaking point for all of us and we knew something had to change.

When we left, I had what felt like a huge chain around me lift. While there David and I were constantly battling slides of truth, false information, and hidden agendas. The problem here was that I just wanted to help and my “help trump card” would kick in and override what I knew was going on. I can easily get sucked in if I see people in need or if church leaders make me feel like I am failing as a Christian. I do not believe this anymore, though there are times when it still comes up and I have to fight the words. We wasted precious time on nonsense and gossip and it brought division to our marriage because that is not who we are or what we do. Another form of escape for me is to obsess about people to try to figure them out. I have learned to stop that too.

Within in a couple of weeks we actually saw huge changes in Daniel.

We both believe that the constant stress and chaos that I was maintaining, Daniel was feeling and responding to. Ariel and Joshua did too but Daniel’s was much more apparent. We quickly regained our peace with each other, our kids and now after two years or so, I am finally getting some clarity with my relationship with God again. Some of our other family members have become more accepting in many ways, since I have shared and tried to bring awareness to what autism really is about. My mom has had a tremendous amount of healing for herself and understanding, she has changed a lot too.

If we had not stopped to take control of our miscommunication we would not have survived, at least not well.

We are now very protective of our time, our family, who and what we allow to be apart of it. Not in a freaky way but we are very cautious of how we do things now. We are open to new things and try but if we feel that oppressive or divisive feel, we do not stick around that place or people long. It is just not worth it to sacrifice our marriage or kids for the sake of making people feel good. The majority of time those people don’t even care if we are around or not. Besides David and I are the kind of people who usually say the wrong thing and make the situations very awkward or uncomfortable. It’s our gift. :-)


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01/26/11

Dancing Free Singing Loud

All of my family will agree that I am an uncontrollable dancer. I will dance and sing anywhere without thinking. I make up songs about anything, but I do not have the greatest voice so I try not to be too obnoxious. As a kid I danced everywhere we went. I was always moving and driving my mom batty. Anywhere we went that had music, I was dancing. If there was no music, I made up my own. I have passed this trait on to my kids. We sing and dance around here a lot. Sometimes they are not into it as much as I am. I really enjoy all of their children song cd’s we have.

Ariel and Joshua can be heard across town singing as loud as possible while in our car.

Daniel likes to listen, rock back and forth and smile. He will sing sometimes. I find it interesting that he doesn’t sing as much as he used to, his singing is how we knew that he could talk. He wouldn’t say words but he wanted me to play music 24/7 in his bedroom and every cd I played he had memorized. He memorized the words and tune to every song, in the order on each cd. One set was this 365 song, 8 cd set. He would play in his room, with his spinning gears and sing. I knew that he hummed but I had not actually heard him sing until one day. I heard singing coming from his room, peaked around the corner and he was singing the words.

I didn’t want to disturb him but I paid more attention to his singing.

Since I have always made up songs anyway, I started making up songs about everything and singing them to Daniel. I would sing about eating, taking a bath, changing a diaper, brushing teeth, whatever we were doing I sang a song about it. I still do this and we still sing certain songs that were crafted during that time, my favorite is the chant I would sing when Daniel got upset with me “Mommy is annoy–ING”. This chant was accompanied with some sort of silly dance that made him laugh, it still works. I am not sure why he has stopped singing like he used to but you can tell that he still knows the words to all of the songs that were played for a year in his room. He will ask for them to be put on in the car and if I start it on the wrong song he will say “That’s not right”. As he listens he just rocks back and forth and smiles.

All three of the kids love music and it is a big part of our life.

Though I play no instruments, well I can do a little guitar but not much, I still love all kinds of music. Music has been a huge part of my life. My mom has always played many different types of music and my dad is a self-taught musician, since I can remember he has been teaching himself to play various instruments. He plays the keyboards, piano, guitar, drums, any percussions really, he sings. I would watch him practice in his basement when I was little, teaching himself entire Rock Operas. He always had a dream of creating a Rock Opera. He and my mom saw the premier of Tommy in Britain and he was in love. He rarely plays any secular music anymore, he now leads worship at his church. I think he could probably come up with a pretty great Rock Opera though.

Both sides of my family love music.

I feel that is probably why me dancing and singing was encouraged or at least it was my label. Family members labeled me as the “dancer” since it was my special interest. Every family member I can think of has a special interest and then it became their label. There are many stories about me dancing but one of the family favorites is when I had to be dropped off at my dad’s work, I was about 6 or 7 yrs old, my dad was very busy. He was the manager of a fast food restaurant at the time and the drive thru was out of control. It was pretty normal for me to have to entertain myself or work, while I waited for my parents to finish work. On this day for some reason I decided that the people in the drive thru area needed to be entertained while they waited.

My dad was extremely stressed and he was short an employee so he was running the drive thru.

My dad was pleased that people were not getting angry because they had to wait, he also kept hearing people laughing and saying things like “that is so cute”.  Finally, he decided to look outside to see what was going on. When he opened the back door he saw me dancing and singing next to the menu. I had been entertaining all of the customers while they waited. I have a vague memory of this but I do remember being out there feeling so happy that people were happy. I still do this, not to this existent….most of the time.

I had this same freedom when I first started going to church. 

I was so excited when I first started going to church, being surrounded by music that was full of joy and so peaceful to me. I had not been brought up in church, so I did what came natural. I remember the first time I was in a worship service, I had my eyes closed, my hands raised and danced to the swirl like visions that were in my mind. I seemed to just know the songs and had no need to read the words, my body flowed to the music and I just sang to God. I just did it. It was only after this that I felt wrong. I discovered that people say “worship God freely” but  they actually mean do it in a way that does not make them feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t really stop, it is very hard for me not to just flow with music. Just to be clear, I wasn’t dancing down isles, hitting people or being seriously out of control. :-)

I have been in churches where freedom of worship styles is encouraged.

I have also become aware that I can be distracting so I learned to find a happy medium at most churches. It has been a bit confusing for me to understand the rules for church, every church is different even if they are the same denomination. The church we are going to now is a lot more conservative than what I have been in, in the past, so I find myself feeling anxious and clasping my arms together so I will not move my arms or hands and also leaning on the seats in front of me so I will not move as much. When we get out of church though I am running and jumping with the kids the second we get out the doors. I can worship at home, I am fine with that. However, I still dance and sing like a fool in stores or in my car. In stores this is how I stim, it is the only way I can survive in the store. It helps me stay focused and ignore all of the sensory stuff.

Throughout my life people have thought that I was seeking attention or just being obnoxious because of this.

I do not like having attention. It makes me feel very uncomfortable and I do like being unseen. It’s a catch 22, I dance and sing without thinking about it and that causes me to receive attention. :-/ These things are just natural to me though. When I was a child my dad would take me to the grocery at wee hours of the night, we would sing and dance the whole time together. My mom and I spent a large amount of time at home dancing and singing, even though I drove her nuts sometimes out in public, she never told me to stop. Unless I was way out of control.

I do the same things with our kids.

David thinks its awesome. He doesn’t have that freedom and wishes that he had. Things in his life as a child just made him self-conscious about singing or dancing. He loves it too and sometimes we get him going with us but not always. I have never meant to be a distraction and wish church leaders had not used that word to me because it made me feel awful about worshiping freely in church. I don’t let it affect me like it used to though and in past churches I have had people thank me for being so free because it helped them to be free as well. If anything that is what I would want for people, if they feel like dancing or singing, to just have that freedom to do it whether at home, at church, in a store, or where ever as long as it is not harmful to others or to the point of being so distracting its irritating.

I am aware enough of my surrounding to not do that….most of the time. :-)

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01/17/11

Oh, Happy Days!

Yesterday, I was in class with the kids at church, I was not sure how Daniel was going to do since we haven’t been there in a few weeks. I was both surprised and amazed at what he did socially. He has been more visibly aware with the other kids, he has always been aware but for him to acknowledge them is something recent. He will laugh at them or smile but the initiating any contact has not happened. Until yesterday! I was so excited to have been there with him as he stepped out a bit to talk and play with some of the other kids.

He actually sat down with me and the group of boys that I was sitting with and said, “Hi Zach”.

He remembered one of the boy’s name! I asked Zach if he could say “Hi Daniel” back to give Daniel the confidence that his words worked. Then I told Daniel all of the other boys names, that he may know, but be like me and feel uncertain that they are the correct names so not say anything. I do that all the time or I cannot remember names at all no matter how many times I am told. After every boys name he said hi to them and they said “Hi Daniel” back. He was so happy! He tried to play a bit but then wasn’t sure how to keep playing so he left.

He did not do his normal walk the perimeter, yet.

He went and sat next to the other teacher who was doing a puzzle with one of the little girls. He just started talking to her. He continued a conversation with her about her watch. She handled it pretty well because he REALLY wanted her watch and wanted to keep talking about it. He participated with singing and dancing, which he usually does but he was doing more of the hand motions than usual and interacting with the other kids. A lot of the times he will stare at the screen and rock back and forth. There were some moments when he was distracted with the DVD player and managed to mess the TV up a bit but we got that fixed for our 5 minute video. When the story was read, at first he looked like he was not paying any attention but there were times that something was said and he turned and looked.

So it was clear that he was actively listening.

After the story and video we went to go make our craft and he was fixated on the remote controls. I had brought one from home just in case, I figured he would not be able to focus unless he had one. At the tables he was refusing to sit and started to get a little agitated. I told him that it was craft time and that he needed to sit, he asked me why, I explained it to him, he wasn’t sitting and I took his remote control. He then said “Why did you take my remote?” and I told him “Because you are not listening to me”. He sat down and said “Can I have my remote?” I gave it to him and then he did his project.

WOW!

When he was finished he asked if it was time to go home so I told him that I would take him to daddy, but it wasn’t time to go home. Class was almost over but he had done such a great job and he was getting to his limit, I knew it was best to let him go with David. David was sitting out anyway with Ariel because she was having “anxiety” about her stomach problem. That is another whole story that I will have to write about but the short version is she was worried about people asking why her stomach hurt and she didn’t have an answer for it. She told us that she was “nervous and anxious about not being able to tell people why if they asked”.

Daniel did have a few moments of walking the perimeter and banging on the walls a little.

He did not do it for long though and he kept coming back to the floor or tables to try to play with the other kids. He tried to talk to them but then I could see went blank then didn’t know what to do. I tried to help him by initiating questions between him and the other kids but at some point Daniel just had to go. It could have been sensory, anxiety or just not knowing what to do next but he was a happy guy after we left and said he had fun. He has even been telling me what he did in class this morning. I am guessing he really did have fun.

The other amazing thing is that he did not have any problems all day after we came home.

He kept focused on a Wall-e game he has and then he wanted to play on this website Jacob’s Lessons but he learned how to play Othello game with David last night. Games can be hard for him. He also had been talking to me and hanging out with us off and on the whole day. He had some alone time but it wasn’t all day.  Today has been pretty good too. Right now all three of them are “making music”, Daniel on guitar, Joshua on keyboard and Ariel guitar and vocals. It’s pretty funny. I am so excited that the social skills curriculum and books have been working. Between that and Ariel and Joshua, Daniel is making some huge progress in stepping out in social situations. I am dreading the full moon though, he seems to make huge changes then the full moon comes and he has such a hard time.

Hopefully this will be a good full moon cycle!

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01/11/11

Autism & Church: I’ve Been Waiting For This

In the last two days Lynne Soraya who writes Asperger’s Diary on Psychology Today, has brought up the question about autism and the church. Her question was regarding if the church has been accepting of autism, helpful, what are people’s experiences etc… For us this has been a mixed bag. At the church before this one, it was a very negative experience, though they never directly made it difficult for us. The situation was more in terms as autism being something that God could heal and was caused by my sin, David’s sin, or a demonic being keeping Daniel trapped inside his own body. None of those seemed logical to David and myself and after a period of time we found their theology to be more harmful to us than helpful.

Despite the theological problems the other main issue derived from the lack of acceptance and wanting to understand our family.

In our current church they have been very accepting and helpful in many areas, however there is still the lack of understanding and what feels like lack of interest to understand. This could totally be wrong in my thinking, I really do not know but it has the feel that in order for us to be involved we must change everything in our life to participate. We are just unable to do that. We want to be active participants in our church but some days we cannot leave our house. We are unable to communicate what we need because we do not know how. It is not because we are prideful, which we have been told by church leaders in the past, we honestly do not know what to say.

When someone says “If you need anything just let me know” I do not know how to respond to that, other than “thank you”.

With some people I am able to be quite clear in that we do not any help that they could offer, not in a rude way, it is a practical way. There is just nothing that they can do besides pray for us. At least from all of the scenarios I have gone through in my head. The issues that we have going to church are many, there is the social, the sensory, and the thinking issues that we have, each of us in our family. David and I both tend to pick apart the sermons and find all of the things we see as inconsistencies. We do not want to do this but it just happens. We have resorted to bringing things to work on, or I will take the scriptures from the bulletin and do my own study. We do this and try not to be openly rude about what we are doing. Actually, I see other people sleeping, playing games on their phones or listening to music so really we are not being that rude. Even though we try not to listen, we can’t help it and end up having a discussion on the way home, so I guess we are not being that rude to our pastor. He is a great guy and really tries to help people.

Let me focus.

Back to the Lynne Soraya topic, she put up several sites regarding Autism and Church and I was feeling so much hope about it. Though the resources are from a Christian point of view, I feel that the information is good for any belief system or social group. It would just need to be adjusted accordingly.The information is practical especially from this one Welcoming those with Austim and Asperger’s Syndrome in our Churches and Communities which is a guideline that has an Asperger’s and high functioning autism point of view as well which can be a voice for those who are unable to communicate. She put up several other resources that I thought were good, there were some moments and phrases that I had a problem with reading and some of the videos, but ultimately they are trying to do a good thing here and be inclusive and that is what my heart desires for communities whatever faith/belief or no faith for that matter.

I am sure whatever the things I had a problem with were semantics and my interpretation of what they said, that is why I am not even talking about it. :-)

Personally, I would like anyone’s input with this. I have been searching for almost three years trying to find information about autism and the church, autism and spirituality, if others have found it difficult to be in church for any reason and if so how do you cope? Do you even go to church or a place of worship and if you do not have a spiritual belief what do you do to socialize?

Here are the videos and some articles.

Making Sense of Autism: Part 1

Making Sense of Autism: Part 2

Is Your Church Open to Autism?

Bullying, Hypocrisy, and Church: An Asperger’s Perspective on Religion

Dealing with Autism, Lesson by Lesson, In a Quest for First Communion

Other articles that I got a lot out of.

Lessons from Gandhi

Is the Bible Obsolete?

The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain

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08/28/09

Obsession Thing Answered

I have been wanting to know for years why I would go into study frenzies of certain things, people and places. They were usually things that had some sort of dark imagery or association with it. I loved things like vampires, gargoyles, went into a Marilyn Monroe phase, loved and still love Edgar Allan Poe (who I was reading obsessively at the age of 9) and I used to watch horror movies and read horror novels like crazy.

Then there is always my serial killer thing.

Through the years my obsessions have changed off and on. I gave up my lovely vampires and gargoyles and traded them for God and religion. I don’t just like things I study things, I devour information. When I fell in love with vampires I didn’t just fill my house with vampire like items; I had every book I could find on them. I talked about them as if they were real. I began to believe in them. That is my pattern I have noticed and now have read about with Aspie’s. For the past 11 years I have traded my vampires and other goth loves in for God and religion.

I had an experience with who I feel was Jesus and that set me on a quest for truth.

I had to find out who this Jesus was. I got tons of books researched the Internet high and low. I researched the Bible to find out what that was all about. I was doing pretty well at adding things up and finding the info I was looking for until I started going to church and that messed me all up. Then I was getting exposed to all kinds of inconsistencies and people who lived lives very confusing to me. I had already hit the shelves of Barnes and Noble and Borders which drove me to questions that led me to the Christian bookstores. I started going to the Christian book stores which opened a whole new world of reading. What I found were a whole lot of different beliefs, ideas, theologies under one roof and I needed to know them all.

So began the enormous library I have now from Christian authors and theologians.

My book shelves are also filled with about 10 different translations of the Bible, Greek and Hebrew Lexicon, Bible dictionary’s, books on how the church was started, how the Bible was organized and put together and on and on. Many a books I have devoured to try to understand the faith I claim to hold. The problem is it is not black and white. I cannot have a simple answer. I find out one thing that makes me go into a whole line of questioning and it continues with no end.

I have to stop myself.

I have done this with people in my life as well. Sometimes that is not so good. I have been trying and trying to let the whole church thing go. I have tried not to be angry and obsess about people who are on TV and online everywhere acting all crazy and robbing people. I try not to obsess about the experiences I have had with people being horrible to me and others in the church. I have tried to just let it go when I have seen leaders who claim to love and then destroy the lives of others, it infuriates me. Those people who claim they know who God is and they are closer to Him really sets me on a tangent.  All of the inconsistencies, hypocrisy, lies, manipulation and fear driven agendas make me very confused and upset. I always have to pull myself out of the obsession and remind myself that not every person in church is like that. Sometimes it is very hard.

These things have almost made me mad but I think I found my resolve.

I was wanting an answer for my behaviour so through my strange way of reasoning I came to search for “serial killer obsession Aspie’s”. I found a great article that answered a lot of my questions. It also made me feel better about how I think. I do study , research and dissect as much information as I can when I do not understand something. I also do it when I love something. I do not just do it with things some people consider dark or wrong. I have done it with home schooling, dancing, working out, diet, music and the lives of people who intrigue me. The many great writers, musicians, scientists and artists.

If you have made it through this post here is the link to the article that helped me understand my obsession thing.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/aspergers-diary/200901/interest-in-serial-killers



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