Spiritual Equilibrium

Carrying a whole stadium or person on your shoulders

2012-01-15T20:35:00.003-07:00

This may come as a surprise to some people, but I consider myself a Bronco fan. Surprising to people because I don't really write or talk about sports much. I'm not the kind of fan that knows all the stats and stuff, but I like to go over to people's houses and watch games if they extend the invitation. Bronco merchandise that I own includes a Broncos t-shirt and squishy pillow :)

Like much of Colorado and other Football fans, I have been intrigued by Tim Tebow. As a Christian, I am encouraged at how he isn't afraid to talk about God during and after the games. I also smile when I hear from his teammates during interviews that Tebow encourages them even during difficult times. The way Tebow demonstrates his faith as he plays for the Broncos encourages me to live out my faith in my own life.

The Broncos ended their season yesterday loosing spectacularly to the Patriots. What struck me more than the difference in the scores was this: A lot of people put their hope in Tebow to win the game. In some ways it's just like how Mom would sit in front of the TV and yell at Elway whenever the Broncos messed up. And when my aunt and I would watch the Broncos (pom-poms in hand) when I was a kid, we would yell, "C'mon Elway! C'mon, THROW!" when they would be on the line of scrimmage. The quarterbacks always seem to be the center of attention / blame during games.

Though the Broncos did win 5 games in a row, it seems like the team was still getting used to new players, new coach, and a new quarterback. That became apparent when we lost to the Patriots. Twice. But, apparently our team overall has improved a lot since the beginning of the season! I really do think that Tebow has something to do with it since the quarterbacks rally the team.

I think since Tebow is a very outspoken Christian, a lot of people hope that since he has The Big One aka God on his side, they think he's more likely to pull off miracle wins. The expectation about supernatural help on the football field probably adds to the pressure Tebow feels already as a quarterback.

During the last Broncos-Patriots game, I started to feel sorry for Tebow. Not just because the score was 31-7 at half-time, but because of the weight he had on his shoulders of Broncos fans hoping his connection with God would produce a win. Did he feel like he was carrying Mile High Stadium, or the whole city of Denver on his shoulders? If he did, I have felt that same way.

Instead of a whole city's hope of a winning touchdown or field goal on my shoulders, I've felt the weight of my mom's hopes and dreams on me. Her self-esteem was determined by my successes or failures. As a child, this was a heavy weight to bear. Just like a Broncos loss brings Tebow heavy criticism from the media, not meeting my mother's expectations brought shame. And just like Tebow is put on a pedestal when the Broncos win, my accomplishments brought me lots of praise, and I was expected to do more.

This life of being so up and down in other people's eyes was hard for me, and I figure it's got to be difficult for Tebow. However, Tebow has something I didn't have growing up. He has the assurances of God's promises and love being sure. Christ won the battle for Tebow's soul. Christ gives Tebow worth, and dignity. God loves Tebow completely because by faith, Tebow has righteousness through Christ. Therefore, the stings of critical fans or press when he looses a game won't hurt as bad, and he doesn't have to mitigate that shame by winning to regain their love. In Christ alone his hope is found - in his fans or the press - all others is sinking sand. I pray that he continues to remember that.

2011 in review!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2012-01-01T18:39:00.000-07:00

Yeah! So, I got the idea of going month by month from my friend and her really awesome update blog!!!

January 2011 - um..... um.......... uuuuuuuuuuuum...... well, I baked the giant cookie of eek that was gum drops in lieu of chocolate chips, and I baked the dough in a brownie pan so it was a cookie cake and I topped it with SPRINKLES and brought it to a Symbio New Years Eve party :)

Oh, and I watched the Superbowl with my CSU football jersey because I didn't have a Packers jersey.

February - Um - not much. I think I convinced a friend to join Symbio hehe - oh more accurately, I helped her sort out her thoughts about it in her head and she realized she should join :D Oh, and I got to volunteer with a Rock girl in the nursery at church and that was fun getting to know her and the little people!

March - NERDFEST 2011!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Or more accurately the "Transition and Transformation" conference at CSU focusing on the Opportunities for Postsecondary Success which is a pilot program helping students on the autism spectrum adjust to life in college!!!!!!!!!!!! This was the conference where I got a book signed by Dr. Temple Grandin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Did I post a blog about this???? Oh, yes, I did!!! :D Ok - well - sort of!

April - I, on somewhat of a spur of the moment, decided to help with this little career fair at a high school and talk about helping professions. I handed out flyers at a table to kids and also gave out candy :D Oh yes, and I turned 27!!! 27 AAAAAAAAAAAH I'M OLD - almost 30!?!?!

Oh yeah, and I went to a Summitview women's retreat and that was fun!

May - Got laid off from Group Home #1. Wanna know the whole story, let me know! Was super-major-extra-bummerfied!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :( :( :( :( :( I missed the ladies, I missed my co-workers, I missed my income, and it became really hard to trust God with my future and stuff! Twas no fun :(

June - MY FRIENDS GO TO JAPAN! That's right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My Summitview peeps!!!! They went to help the people there and spread the Gospel and it was pretty epic! I kinda organized the prayer team to support them, so I was in the Japan Team in a different way. They had epic and epically sad stories from there.

Note this picture was found with Google Images

July - I started my first pre-OT class! I decided that I want to be an occupational therapist when I grow up :) That was a major life decision. That was followed by major applications to fill out :O

Oh yes, and I started at Group Home #2!!!!!!! I was super happy about that even though working with male clients - most who were 6 feet tall and above were sorta intimidating. However, I've gotten to know them and for the most part, they're pretty great guys.

August - I went on a trip to upstate New York with my mom, grandma, and aunt! The upside was I got to see a bunch of family I hadn't seen before and a bunch of places I'd never seen - including Niagara falls! The downside was that sometimes I was more like a staff member for mom, grandma, and my aunt, and that sometimes got difficult. But I still enjoyed myself!

Oh yeah, and I moved into the apartment upstairs from me :)

September - er - uh - ABRA'S BRIDAL SHOWER! :) Yup! That was fun helping plan her bridal shower and decorating and dressing up silly and hearing her giggle as she enjoyed herself!!!!!!

October - ABRA GETS MARRIED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) Yay! One of my best friends and confidants and the wedding was fun, she was pretty, a lot of eeeking and crying (in a good way) happened!!!!!!!! :) That made me smile and obviously made her smile and a lot of other people had fun too!!!!

Oh - and - I GOT TO MEET DR. TEMPLE GRANDIN AND SHAKE HER HAND AND STUFF!!!!! It was REALLY COOL! After leaving the room and leaving the building, I could let out all my excitement by eeking and skipping around a nearly deserted CSU campus for 15 MINUTES!!!!!!!

November - I registered for Anatomy / Physiology since that's a pre-OT requirement. Also wrapped up applications for OT school!

December - I bought my own Christmas tree!!! Sparkly and pretty and only 5 dollars!

December 2011 was the month of the 3 Christmases :) There was a D-Team Christmas where we all ate a big dinner together, the Christmas at the group home, and Christmas with my mom in Denver a few days after the real Christmas. :) I had fun!

Yup! That's been my year! :)

An Outlier in the Single World

2011-11-13T16:48:00.001-07:00

At some point recently I stumbled across a ministry called Boundless which is a young adults' ministry run by Focus on the Family. It has articles both for people in the Symbio and Rock demographics. A lot of the articles are about dating and preparing for marriage. Luckily there are also articles on college and career choices as well.

When skimming the site, I realized that I'm probably an outlier when it comes to the single world.

On this graph, I'd probably be in one of the end (light purple arrowed) categories. Boundless and even Symbio are probably geared toward the average and out to 1 standard deviation (within the orange arrows). Average being the average person in their mid 20's - mid 30's. Meaning, probably the average person has 4-5 years of post-secondary education, has had in 3-5 years of Summitview or church ministry involvement, and stands I'd say about a 70% chance of getting married before age 35.

Going by those statistics, I'd fall within 1 standard deviation.

But if the statistics were this: Average Symbio female has desired dating or DWAPing for 3-5 years, hopes to marry within 2 years of joining Symbio, and 30% have been in a previous relationship, than I'd be more of an outlier. If the statistics for both male and female were: 90% of the population has frequently prayed for a spouse within the past 6 months, than I'd DEFINITELY be an outlier.

*Note, these statistics were completely made up without me doing a formal study haha.*

In the Rock I had liked guys and wanted to get married, but that's not my reality now. Over half of articles for single people are about how to deal with life when you really really really want to get married but it hasn't happened yet. I've found one article about a person consciously choosing singleness. It sort of bounced around which was a little difficult, but it was decent.

I think I've finally settled that for now I've chosen singleness and honestly is really is because I'm on the autism spectrum. It's not because I feel less worthy than my neurotypical peers, but because I honestly don't think I could handle dealing with another person's emotions 24/7. Was seeing Dr. Grandin's path of life right after I got diagnosed a factor? Yup. But it wasn't the only factor. I've been thinking about it a lot.

So going back to the outlier thing, what am I to do when I realize that ministries like Boundless and to a lesser extent Symbio is geared toward the average population? One thing I remember is God does not treat me as if I'm outside of the statistical norm. He works with everyone individually - those within the average and those on the far sides of the bell curve. And the statistical norm isn't inherently better. It's just what it is. I have to remember that.

And finally, maybe I can find some other outlying friends, which I actually have. There are other people who are content with being single and aren't planning on getting married any time soon or agonizing over it. We can support each other and see how God wants us to work with and fit in to the rest of our local church family.

Nerds of Greatness

2011-11-07T07:15:00.001-07:00

So today Google had this drawing of Marie Curie on their homepage.
One of my aunts told me about her. I think it was in a conversation about the Nobel Prize. I had said something about the Nobel prize of medicine. Anyway I read up on Marie Curie. She didn't become a fixation, but I still thought she was cool. Other scientists I thought were cool were Stephen Hawking, Ben Carson ( neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine), and yes Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Throughout my childhood Helen Keller was still the main famous intellectual I looked up to.
With my current fixation still being Dr. Grandin, I realized a trend as I looked back: most of my childhood heroes were not celebrites or athletes. Rather they were nerds of greatness. I guess that makes sense for a girl who slept with science books under her pillow for a while.

Having nerdy role-models made me feel better about my intense interest in science and medicine related topics. When I got teased at school my list of nerds of greatness made me feel less alone.

Passing on Musical Memories

2011-11-06T21:23:00.000-07:00

In an earlier blog post I wrote about my connection to music as a child. Today I had yet another cool realization. One of my clients really likes Elvis.

Technically Elvis is one of his special interests. I'd say it's his main special interest.We as staff motivate him by talking about doing stuff like Elvis. This client named the group home van Elvis. A while back he got a DVD box set of about 10 DVDs on Elvis' life and footage of live concerts and recording sessions. We watched those all day today.

An older co-worker told me that Elvis covered a lot of old songs because I recognized some of the songs from the radio when I was a kid and Mom would listen to oldies. He covered Simon and Garfunkel's Bridge over Troubled Water and "Sweet Caroline." He was basically a cover-artist who knew how to shake it.

Those songs brought back memories of listening to old records on Mom's old record player and later on tapes. I remember Mom actually would sing "Sweet Caroline" to me. I guess I really liked it when I first heard it. She may have even sang "Bridge over Troubled Water" to me. Those two songs may have been really soothing.

As I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes in the kitchen today I found myself singing those songs as they had been played on the Elvis documentary. Suddenly I realized my client was singing along as much as he could. He was on the stairs trying to dance like Elvis while singing. He had a really big grin on his face.

Suddenly I realized that God was giving me an opportunity to re live my childhood memory of singing the oldies with my mom. It was a neat feeling - I guess what some would call touching - that here I was a grown up in a caregiver role singing these same songs that I enjoyed as a child to another person for his benefit. I think it's cool how God can use stuff like music - sometimes the exact songs I enjoyed to pass on those good memories on.

A for Autism and awesomeness aka Temple Grandin

2011-10-17T17:53:00.001-06:00

So this is a continuation of my previous post :)

When I first was told that I might have autism I freaked out really badly. That was understandable since getting a diagnosis of a disability is hard for anyone. But I truly felt like my future was over and that I would never be successful or achieve anything because I like most other people thought of low-functioning autism when I heard the term.

This picture was taken by the Fort Collins Coloradoan when they covered the celebration where the Temple Grandin Scholarship was unveiled. I was actually at the celebration and ACTUALY GOT TO SHAKE DR. GRANDIN'S HAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) :) :) erm... I digress...

That celebration reminded me of how Dr. Grandin changed the way I thought about autism - about my diagnosis of an autism spectrum disorder. I know I've said this a million times on this blog, but it was her story that turned my thinking around from, "AAAH! I'm on the autism spectrum, this means I'll NEVER SUCCEED AT LIFE and I'm somehow lesser." to "Hm... maybe I'll become a famous researcher now that I know I'm way way way more nerdy than the average person." It made me smile a little.

\More importantly, when I think of autism now, I don't think of a child in a corner locked in his or her own world. I think of Dr. Temple Grandin lecturing, or being licked all over her face by cattle, or teaching a class. I think of the way she's honest about her continued need to adapt to sensory issues and how she's continuing to learn about the social world. I think of how far she's come with the right help from teachers, her aunt, and her mother. When I think of autism, I think of her and I think of how I can help my clients engage with the world and adapt just like she has.

The scary A-Word!

2011-10-17T10:40:00.001-06:00

This article here states that infants with low birth weight are at more of an increased risk for autism. The lay-press article is based off of J.A. Pinto-Martin et. al. (2011) Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Adolescents Born Weighing <2000 Grams. Pediatrics, 128(5), 882-892.

It's interesting because I think a lot of people freak out when they read a risk-factor related to autism. It's like the dreaded developmental disorder diagnosis. Because people often think of kids and adults with the disorder as mute and having severe behavioral issues. They might think about the bad things like uncontrollable temper tantrums that the caregiver can't contain unless he or she figures out the sensory issues or frustration issues behind them. They might think of the things like the child or client not being able to reciprocate affection.

As a caregiver in a group home, I can appreciate how hard it is to deal with the behavioral issues. I have thought many times, "Hm. I wonder what it would be like to get into Client A's head." I can imagine that it would be difficult for someone to raise a child or care for a client long term and have much of that client or child's inner workings of his or her brain be a mystery. I could also understand that the reciprocal affection is not always there. For example, when I say good bye to a certain client, he will sometimes give me a wave, but other times he is off in his own world and will give me a slight glance as I wave to him to leave. On the rare occasion, his wave is paired with a smile. That makes me feel warm inside.

Even if I wasn't on the autism spectrum, I would hope I would have a better outlook when I hear the word autism. I think of when I watched Wizard of Oz with another client for whom tornados and witches are some of his special interests. The big grin he got on his face when I said, "Look, S! It's the tornado! IT'S GETTING THE WITCH!" and he laughed is an image that comes to mind when I hear autism. And the interested look and small smile another client gave me once when I turned on a string of decorative lights in the living room is another good image. Even if I never experienced autism myself, seeing people on the spectrum enjoying their environments as well as when they struggle in their environment might give me a more balanced picture of autism. If I become an occupational therapist, I hope I can pass that along to others as well.

Feeling Behind no matter What

2011-10-03T15:00:00.000-06:00

So today I had a moment of feeling behind in life. I just checked Facebook and found out one of my friends I knew from my time in an internship got married. She's younger than me and she adds to the ranks of other people younger than me getting a ring on it.
I also hung out with my cousin today who's a teacher and is married with two daughters. Her daughters were really cute. My cousin is 2 years older than me. After we hung out, I went to the CSU campus to work on my Occupationaeltl Therapy school application.

Suddenly I felt behind.

Suddenly I felt like I wasn't where I should be in life. I should have a good career going OR I should be married and producing grandchildren for my mom.

Even though my job at the group home is fulfilling, most people don't see it as a long-term career goal. And I obviously am not married.

Yet as I entered my coursework into the application, I realized: I accomplished something: A CRAP-LOAD OF SCHOOL!!!!!! But seriously, not everyone gets a chance to go to a university or go to grad school. So those things are accomplishments. And not everyone has the personality needed to work in a group home.

I thought about it further: What if I had a career? What if I was a program manager instead of a direct support provider at my group home? I could still feel behind if our organization wasn't running our facility like another in the region. I could still feel behind if I didn't have a ring on it.

OK. Well, what if I had a ring on it and had a kid or so? If I stayed home, I'd feel behind because I wasn't working in the 'real world' even though providing direct care for a child's physical needs and teaching them social skills and helping them accomplish developmentally appropriate tasks is hard hard work. I get a glimpse of it when I work with kids in a classroom and when I see parents out in the field.

Let's take it 1 step further: Let's say that I had a good career and was a wife and mother. First of all, I'd go insane. Secondly, I could STILL FEEL BEHIND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No kidding. I could be like, "This person with the same family structure is moving faster in her career. This person with the same hours as me somehow scheduled in more activities for her kids than my kids have..."

Suddenly a lightbulb came on in my head: We all want to be ahead - to win the big prize of accomplishment.

I think it's just human nature and part of wanting to be a god of sorts. Yet if I realize that God has a plan for our lives and if we are in Christ, God has our approval because we have Christ's righteousness that He gave to us on the Cross. So we don't have to work for some sort of tangible or intangible trophy. We fall in to the temptation ALL THE TIME. We just have to apply faith and do good in the stuff God calls us to do and tell people about Him. And the cool thing is God helps us with that.

Then I don't have to bemoan, "Oh, I'm not married. Oh, I don't have an AMAZING career, oh, I'm going back to school while everyone else's lives are moving on.... oh woe is me. :P" I can thank God for where He has taken me, where I am now, and where He would want me in the future :) Then I don't feel behind anymore. I feel right where God wants me :)

Seeing another's path and finding my own

2011-09-20T12:51:00.000-06:00

I'm taking a class called Handicapped Individuals in Society (OT 355) as part of preparing to apply to CSU's Occupational Therapy program. Sometimes it makes me remember or think about how I've dealt with my disabilities in the past and how I'm doing now.

According to the reading I read yesterday, people who are in the bargaining mindset (from Kubler-Ross's grief process model) see a glimmer of hope and seek out how their disability can be fixed.

I realized that was partially to account for my fixation on Dr. Temple Grandin. Soon after my diagnosis of PPD-NOS, I was searching for a future. I was wondering, "Now what?" Conveniently enough, someone had lived life with an autism spectrum disorder and she was just a bus-ride to campus away.

I became fixated on her life because I needed a path to walk down. My whole sense of who I was and my future was rearranged, and I needed somewhere to go.

I thought, "If my life could look like hers, I will be ok." "If I do what she does, then I think all this will be worth it." That was why it was the bargaining phase of my thinking. That clamoring to find something to not necessarily fix, but finding something good to balance out the really intense bad feelings of, "Oh my goodness, someone threw a sledgehammer at my development / identity / future plans!!!!!!!!!"

Well, EXACTLY A YEAR AGO, I actually got to see Dr. Grandin at a lecture!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, she gave that exact lecture, though this picture wasn't taken at Colorado State University. It was pulled from Google Images. Anyhoo... I saw her at the University Center for the Arts at Griffin Concert Hall with one of my best friends Kristina.... IT WAS REALLY AWESOME AND I TOTALLY EEKED AFTERWARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Erm - sorry, I got distracted :) So after the lecture, I realized that I can't follow exactly in her footsteps a) because livestock is not my thing (I'd so get trampled, and cows and horses smell funny) and b) more importantly, our ASD affects us in different ways. Dr. Grandin is totally cool with giving a lecture in front of millions of people since that's apparently what she spends half her life doing. She's less comfortable just hanging out talking with people even though she does it during book signings. I don't know how much she'd like working at the group home where I work. I like it :)

So I realized this: Our paths initially cross wherein we both are on the autism spectrum, and we are both affiliated with CSU, but we're very different. Part of moving into an acceptance frame of mind was when I realized that I could look at her path to see how God used one person's disability and then trust Him for how He would use mine. One way where Dr. Grandin and I are the same, is that I've had the opportunity to help my clients on the spectrum and empathize with them because I've felt similar frustrations as they have. Where my path will go, I don't know. It might cross Dr. Grandin's path again, or it may go a completely different way, and that's fine :)

When the feeling is (neurochemically) stripped away

2011-08-27T22:21:00.000-06:00

Something I didn't mention on the vacation summary was that I did all that on 2x my normal dose of antidepressants that I take in very low doses for anxiety that comes with having an autism spectrum disorder. I decided ahead of time to up my dose (which my doctor said it was ok to do in times of stress) because I knew I'd be a formal caregiver for my mom, and to a lesser extent, my grandma and my aunt. It was hard being "lead staff" at the airport at DIA. I felt sensory overload coming on, and if I had aggressive tendencies, I probably would've thrown something. I was grateful that I was potentially 'overcompensating' by having more calming neurotransmitters in my brain for crisis situations that did actually come up.

I went back to my normal dose after vacation, but I still felt emotionally 'blah.' it's like someone still hadn't turned back on half of my emotional connections that were somewhat suppressed on vacation. The basic emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, and anger I could still feel, but I didn't have access to more complicated or in depth emotions.

This affected my relationship with God, along with not really being able to completely focus on reading the Bible and/or praying over vacation. I didn't feel motivated to pray or long for a connection with God.

Yet I knew logically that connecting with God is good. God calls us to remain connected like a branch to the rest of the vine (John 15:5), and as I am one of His creation, and one of His redeemed, it's nice for me to check in :) I knew God's Word is spiritual nutrition, and depriving myself of that is like not physically feeding myself.

During the time when I was going back to my normal dose and letting my brain 'reset' itself, I still felt like I was in an emotional dry spell. People would tell me things and I could logically empathize with them and feel sad or happy when they told me something, but I couldn't quite completely feel the complicated emotions they were feeling. I realized this during a meeting with some other people from Symbio. It felt good to tell people that I was in an emotional dry spell and needed my Creator's help to connect to Him even if only the intellectual channel was open and also it would be nice if He helped my brain :D

Well, good news, I think my brain has finally reset itself!!!!!!!!!!! I feel excited about a friend's bridal shower, and a greater depth of joy as I read the Bible and listened to some worship music. One thing that I think helped me connect to God was just to listen to truth (getting a Chris Tomlin CD from the library helped :D ) and just soak my brain in it. I just pondered it and reminded myself that it was logically consistent. Chris Tomlin's And if Our God is For Us CD has a lot of great theology packed into its songs!

When many of my more complicated and deep emotions appeared neurochemically stripped away, my belief in God was retained. My connection with God was retained of course through His Spirit and also because I have learned too much about God to just deny Him. I know He holds all things together and is the strength of the believer. I know He rebuilds and redeems and nothing can stop the rebuilding process for a people or for an individual (look at the books of Nehemiah and Ezra). I know He is sovereign, and He works all things for the good of those who love Him. He is Savior because Christ ressurected from the dead defeating death and sin. I felt happy being reminded of these truths and being reminded that they are logical and conceptually tied together in a lot of ways. Now that more emotion circuits are turned back on, I can feel a deeper joy and my love can grow more and more in knowledge and depth of insight (Philippians 1:9). I am glad that my growth is ultimately up to God and not dependent on my own emotions and neurochemistry!!!!!

So how was the vacation anyway?

2011-08-24T15:06:00.001-06:00

So, yeah, I mobile blogged sort of in a bad mood haha!!!!! But really, I enjoyed my vacation. I went to a family reunion. The relatives were pretty neat to get to know. I'm not posting any pictures of them because I don't know how they would feel about their photos being in the blogsphere....

One of the first things we did was visit the Genesee Village and Museum. It was a working 1850's village. I nerded out asking about teacher training back in the day when Mom and I visited the school. This time was the first time I really felt like I was on vacation. That was nice :) I took a 'break' from walking around with Mom and walked around with some great aunts and cousins. It was fun to talk with them as we walked around.

The next place I visited was Niagara Falls. That was fun.Ok - it started out with me being more like a crisis-intervention staff for my mom because she was mad at her sister for not letting her out of the car sooner when she was trying to find a place to park. Mom had to go to the bathroom and we narrowly made it into a cafe. Mom was still pretty miffed and I dealt with that.

But seeing the falls reminded me that God was bigger than all that. I'm pretty sure that Niagara Falls was formed after the Flood. At first I thought it was ironic that people were flocking to a place that was created out of the Flood which was an act of God's judgement. But seeing beauty in it reminded me that God was gracious too. Being reminded of who God is helped me relax and enjoy myself again :)

Yup. That's me. Mom and I went on the Maid of the Mist tour and I got a little wet. But it was so refreshing - it was like the stress of getting to the vacation and Mom's crisis just was washed away. I realized that when God says He's washing our sins away, it's not like standing under a regular garden hose, or even a nice shower. It's like standing under Niagara Falls. He washed my stress away and I enjoyed getting wet haha! Funny thing, the water was salty. After getting wet, I bought a cute stuffed duck that was wearing a little rain-jacket like the one I had on. She's cute. I named her Misty the Duck.

The next thing we did was go not the whole 15 miles, but about 3 miles down the Erie Canal on a boat tour. They had a live musician that was rocking an acoustic guitar. He was about Mom's age, so he knew a lot of the songs she liked. My favorite part of that trip was sitting next to my great-aunt Doris and singing along to some of the songs with her. That was fun because singing is just a neat way to bond with people. I also had a 'dance party' with my distant cousin Taysie. It felt sorta weird to be busting a move in front of everyone with her, but I realized I probably would've done it with one of my Summitview friends. When it was just time to relax and I didn't have any caregiving duties, I reminded myself just to be me. Sometimes it's hard being me when other people need me, but dancing around with Taysie was fun :) Also we got to go through the locks on the canal and that was pretty awesome!

Other than sight-seeing awesomeness, we just hung out as a family and talked. Sometimes it got tiring doing all that socializing, but it was nice sharing my life with everyone. They seemed to enjoy talking to my mom and I because they laughed in a good way a lot. Mom and I slept a lot on the plane back as did my aunt Flora. Flora got a kick out of watching the guys put the luggage on the plane while loading it onto a giant conveyor belt. She was laughing and saying, "Wow!" and I told her, "See, that's how they get all our bags on the plane! That is so cool!"

Now that I'm back, I can say that the vacation both had it's rough spots but also had its fun moments. I'm glad I went and I will keep in touch with some of my new-found relatives! :)

Family member clients

2011-08-13T07:40:00.002-06:00

It's my second day on vacation. Yesterday we went to Genesee Country Village and Museum. That was pretty cool :)

Today I'm still trying to negotiate the balance between being a family member and being a 'staff.' Whenever my aunt or mom gets agitated, I seem to slip into a "staff" role. This is good because I can use my training, but bad because I tend to become more emotionally distant. I think you have to be distant to use logic, but perhaps when everyone is calm, I can engage emotionally and feel more.

Leaving ... on a jet plane!!!!!

2011-08-11T08:17:00.002-06:00

Right. Cliche title, but yeah! I'm going on vacation - ok to a family reunion. Dang, getting four people to the gate : one with osteoporosis, one with Down Syndrome, one with anxiety / depression, and one spectrumite is honestly and truly an act of God. If I wasn't related to Mom I probably would have smacked her when she kept on asking if I still had all our boarding passes.
I could feel myself hitting sensory overload in the coffee shop. So many people and me keeping track of everyone and the coffee machines grinding. I had to stop and think, covering my face for a moment. But we're all here now.

In these moments I can choose to get bitter that I have to deal with anxious family members as well as deal with my own sensory issues, or I can cope. I cope. Pray, and I did sort of pretend I morphed into Super-Nerd since she frequents DIA en route to lecturing everywhere. But yeah. I'm glad God plus a double dose of my meds is getting me through the morning!!!

This is a real child

2011-07-05T15:30:00.000-06:00

This is a picture of Caylee Anthony - as posted by Fox News. Today I read news articles on the verdict of her mother Casey Anthony's trial. She was found not-guilty for this child's murder.

The thing that hurts more than the fact that someone could have gotten away with her murder is the media frenzy and public eye frenzy regarding her murder.

This is a real child. If she came into my world, she would probably be in the 2.5 year old room at Summitview, maybe a bit clingy to her mother or grandmother as they pinned the plastic visitor nametag on her back. If she liked reading, she might calm down in my lap or a helper's lap if we offered to read her a book. She probably drank milk in that sippy cup in her picture, and maybe was to the age where she could try and drink out of 'grown-up' cups. She probably threw tantrums in Target or the grocery store, but she also probably was proud of pictures she could draw with big crayons.

In a news report I read, people flocked to the court-room to watch and people even traveled from out of state to listen to the trial live. It makes me feel sad, and sometimes it even makes me feel angry if I think too much about people forgetting that behind the evidence, behind the anticipation of wondering whether Casey Anthony was guilty, there is a child. There was a child.

Little Caylee will never learn to write her name. She may have learned the alphabet and count, but she will never learn to read or do basic math. She will never grow up to fit in a grown-up chair or drink from a grown-up cup consistently. She may have dreamed about being a princess and dressed up as one, but she will never go to prom or a school dance. She will always be 2, but she will never grow up and develop to achieve the dreams her grandparents or even her mother may have had for her. She's gone and someone may have murdered her and now gotten away with it. I don't know how many people will remember this in all the hype and that makes me sad.

God, I want to run away!!!!

2011-06-23T15:52:00.001-06:00

Long time no blog.... Well, not EXACTLY true, I do have a draft, but it always seems to be pushed to the back of the to do list....

Anyhoo, recently, I've told God that I want to run away.

Huh?

Well, for starters, I'm (hopefully) starting up at a NEW GROUP HOME! Yeah... For various reasons, I've left the old one.

For a while all I had was my call-center job. I call it my 'crap' job when I don't feel very grateful for it. Thanks Google Images for finding the perfect picture for how I feel sometimes...

Even if I get this new job, I'll still have two part-time jobs that I am still pretty overqualified for... Because I still put so much identity in my job (working on getting my identity elsewhere... we'll get to that) and because my mom will only believe (for now) that God is good when I get a full-time job in my field and will not be in debt.

I have also been searching for a job - ahem - a "real" job for over a year now. Sometimes I want to give up. Sometimes I just want to "slam the door" on God and not talk to Him and just walk off and find a job all by my onesie since sometimes I feel like He's not helping anyway... It's one of those if God is the one ultimately responsible for where I go in life, and if I want to go to point A, but God is holding me back, then I must walk away from God and walk to point A on my own. In short, I want to run away and find a 'big girl' job on my own.

I can pretend that God isn't real, however, here's the problem: If God is sovereign over every single life whether that person acknowledges His presence or not, and if God directs everyone's path whether we are aware of it or not (Acts 17), than logically, I cannot ignore God if He indeed has shown Himself to me through some form of communication. He has revealed Himself through The Bible, Creation, and His Spirit (personal connection).

There is a reason I put a picture of a little person in this blog. Other than the fact it's sort of cute, it makes a point: Me 'running away' and pretending that God is not good and thinking I can get what I want on my own is like a child running away from his parents thinking he can get what he wants without them.

This actually happened two weeks ago in Children's Ministry. One of my little guys wasn't having fun in the classroom, so he was about ready to make a run for it. Well, what would be bad about him roaming the halls of Summitview? Well, for practical purposes, if he fell, got hurt, got lost, etc. I would have a harder time tracking him down and getting to him. If he fell down in the classroom, he has three adults to help him versus if he fell down on a deserted stairway. And also, if he's alone, he isn't building a good relationship with his little classmates or with his teachers. Keeping him in the classroom is best so he can build beneficial relationships with people that want to influence his life in a positive way and teach him good things. Luckily our faithful Children's Ministry director was there and gave him a good talking-to as he was about to escape. He came back (sulking a bit), but brightened up with one of the helpers got him into building with blocks.

I think God brings this image to mind because there are similar parallels. I could suddenly stop talking to God and try and find a 'real' job on my own - without praying to Him, without seeking advice from friends that believe in Him. I could move to a different city where my job would be and never find a new church group errantly thinking God let me down the last time. But I wouldn't have God warning me of spiritual danger, I wouldn't have God watching my behavior and correcting my habits as The Great Interventionist / Father / Teacher. Therefore, I'd 'fall' and I would probably wait a while before calling on God to help me. Most importantly, if I up and stopped talking to God and letting that relationship deepen, I'd miss out on what He had to teach me and remind me that He ultimately has good for me.

Dear God,
I know sometimes I want my real job, and sometimes I feel like You don't want to give it to me. But I know it's not because I'm a bad girl because You paid for my sins on the cross. Sometimes I want to run away and not talk to You because I don't think You're giving me what I want. But I know it would be bad for me - Your child - to never talk to You again to run away from my 'spiritual home' so to speak. So, God, I'm sorry for the times I have gotten mad at You. I'm thankful for the job You've given me and the things You're teaching me now.

Thank You for prompting me and gently whispering: I have good for you right here. Please stay and talk to Me.

Amen :)

What if it was more than a love tap?

2011-06-09T18:33:00.002-06:00

The most random incidents get you thinking about life, I realized today...

So, I was "love-tapped" by a truck as I was walking to Rite-Aid. Yes. Big truck, little me. Luckily, a) the truck was in the driveway and was just going along and b) I was walking b/c pedestrians had the right away and the driver was looking the other way before pulling out & didn't realize I was still partially in front of her vehicle until she heard the squeak of terror from me. She bumped my left side and it hurt for like a few seconds, but I was ok :) I waved to her to let her know that I was ok.

Anyway, I'm sure it's happened to a bunch of people before, but I did think: Wow, what would've happened if she was barreling out of the driveway and instead of giving me a love-tap, she made a Katie-pancake?

Well, first of all, I would've beat Dr. Grandin to heaven (assuming she comes to know Christ at some point) which is sort of weird to think about because she's old.
Second of all, I am glad that I have an app in my phone that lets me put in my emergency contact information.
Third of all, it would be sort of ironic for my doctors since I was just at an appointment....

I think what naturally happens after a true brush with death or a 'wow, that could've been a brush with death if the circumstances were different' is we don't take life for granted. Even the small things like being able to dig into a bowl of yummy cookies and cream ice-cream after coming home from a warm walk :)

As I ate my ice-cream, I thought about it further: How would my life be summed up today? I am a 27 year old Human Development and Family Studies grad who has worked at a group home and a call-center, is a pre-k coordinator at Summitview, a part of Team Ninja in Symbio, and a resident in The Quad. I also have a nerdy-crush on a certain CSU professor and I enjoy flowers, stuffed animals, and cute things. At some point, I want to get a PhD in something and I'm about ready to start some occupational therapy (OT) prerequisites.

This is the sum of my life so far. From a mere earthly perspective, I'm an average - ok, physically shorter than average person who's trying to get her career going and is a Christian who's involved in her church. If one digs deeper, they realize I'm a person on the spectrum who's trying to go somewhere using another exponentially more well known spectrumite's life as a guide.

If I was turned into a Katie-pancake today, what would remain of my life? Well, my thesis got published, so I would have made it into the PsychInfo database as first author!! :D I also am third author on my advisor and her post-doc's publication. There would be this blog that would be here on the interwebs and there would be pictures of me that my friends have and that I have on this computer. At Summitview, there would be several groups of little people that would remember me as one of their Sunday school or AWANA teachers. I think that last contribution would be something I'd look down and smile about because of my HDFS interventionist side. The fact that I got to influence the next generation as a single person is nice :)

What would be my eternal impact? To put it more accurately, what would I look back at my life and say, "God, thank You for using me here on earth." ? Probably the first thing I would thank Him for would be His using me to teach little people about Himself :) And the second thing would be Him using me to love people with significant disabilities at the group home. And the third thing would be "Thank You for using me to reaching my family, the CSU campus, and the Fort Collins community in the little ways You've used me."

The weird thing to think about now is that even if I ended today going splat, my life would have some sort of eternal impact.

The cool thing and convicting thing is that I didn't end my life as a Katie-pancake today. I have more days. God, I thank You that though my current professional status isn't much, and I'm a pretty average person and definitely not normal, You still use little me for eternity. God, help me live in light of what counts and help me not to take life for granted. Help me live for You because honestly, I really don't know how long You have me here. Thanks for not making a Katie pancake out of me today!!!!!!! :D

A Basement Recovery Room versus Crow's Nest

2011-05-14T17:33:00.007-06:00

Two years ago I graduated from Colorado State University's Human Development and Family Studies Master's program. Graduation is usually a time of great celebration and pride. Here I am outside the Alumni Center. They had an old graduation robe that seniors could put on to get their pictures taken by Cam the Ram. Of course I had to go for it :)

I enjoyed sitting by my friends during graduation. One of them was joking that he looked like one of the kids out of Harry Potter in his robes. Of course we laughed.

Behind the smile I had, there was a lot of pain. My mom was worried about job prospects for me and she also noticed I had spent more time cranking out pages for my thesis rather than cranking out sweat on the treadmill. I remember walking up to my friend in Moby Arena with tears in my eyes saying, "You know how your thesis was on body image and self-concept? Well, My self-concept just got shot down." My friend understood and gave me a giant hug before we all lined up together.

After graduation, my mom had a bit of a meltdown in my apartment over my job prospects. She didn't like the idea of me staying in Fort Collins post graduation and going to El Paso on a summer mission trip.

While other kids were celebrating with their parents over dinner, I tearfully went to the first safe place I thought of: Newsom Hall my old undergrad stomping grounds. One of my friends was still in the process of moving out. His father graciously let me sit on the empty bed and cry as they moved their belongings out. They both prayed for me and were very nice and didn't probe much.

After they were checked out, my friend invited me to watch a movie with the rest of the Reynolds Team. I came to The Quad and sat in the basement watching the movie. I just didn't want to be alone. I was trying not to cry, but I was anyway. I did enjoy the movie, but sometimes I would cry thinking about my mom's worries or just that graduation night wasn't the happy moment I thought it would be.

In contrast, Temple Grandin (played by Claire Danes) is portrayed in her movie as going up to the Crow's Nest on her graduation day. She has a smile as she's stepping up the ladder and opens the door as a symbol of her confidence that she could successfully go on to college. Her mother is cheering her on during this moment in her life. In her book The Way I see it, Dr. Grandin says that praise from parents and teachers for tangible major accomplishments like graduations or completing large assignments or projects helps boost the self-esteem of children on the autism spectrum.

Looking back on that day two years ago, I faced great fear of uncertainty rather than high expectations on my graduation day. Instead of climbing up to some sort of "crow's nest", I was in a basement after a good long cry. According to her movie and her books, it seems like Dr. Grandin knew she had talent to offer to the world and was ready to go on to the next step with the support of her mother and Mr. Carlock her teacher. I wonder if Dr. Grandin draws on this love and support she initially felt whenever she speaks at current graduations or remembers her own.

Yet though my own memories of graduation bring back a degree of sadness and fear, I can still draw on the love and support of my discipleship team. Knowing they were there for me that night in the basement of the Quad to support me gave me a glimmer of courage amidst my anxiety and sadness to trust God with the next chapter of my life.

An Explosion of our Thoughts

2011-05-09T21:44:00.000-06:00

I have more empathy for Dr. Grandin's co-authors and other staff than I did this morning. Today I typed up some notes from one of her lectures to give to a teacher who works with a vocational training program in a high school here in Fort Collins.

I didn't realize how much she jumped around in her lecture - even though she had a slide show - until I started organizing her points into main categories. Oh man... It wasn't impossible, but I did have to work on it.

Seeing her thought process through my notes made me smile. Though I am not a purely visual thinker like she is, I had problems organizing my thoughts. I would write essays that had good content, but the organization was terrible. Getting yelled at to make sense only made trying to organize my thoughts even harder. I would get scared that what I was saying or writing didn't make sense, and the impossibleness of the task was affirmed if I was yelled at.

Over time I learned how to write an outline and I saw how others organized their thoughts through reading books. Noting how authors described things and transitioned scenes or ideas gave me a template on how to organize my thoughts. I progressed in my writing as I went through school with the help of teachers who helped me in this area as well as encouraged me to express my ideas in writing.

Now to tie this in to Dr. Grandin's writing: I only know her through books and lectures. I see the progression in her writing as she has improved in organizing her thoughts. I am grateful that she never got yelled at (as far as I know) for not organizing something perfectly and she had tremendous support from her staff and other writers as she began her writing career. Her brain is an explosion of thoughts - of amazing images. She has others help her piece together into a coherent whole she can present to the world.

I have had that support through my latter years of high school and throughout my years at CSU. My mind can still be an explosion of thoughts, but I am learning how to put them into a coherent whole as well. Through this process, I hope to share what God has done with my life to reveal the hope He has to offer to individuals in a broken world.

Truth, Logic, and my Emotional Connection to God

2011-05-08T21:47:00.000-06:00

I have always had a physical reaction to music. Mom has stories of how I could clap in time to the music on Sesame Street and how I would move my body to music when I played the piano. Therefore, it was easy to take that reaction and be able to worship with my whole being. People always comment at how I'm always moving during the music part of church.

However, the emotional connection with God came gradually. Even during The Rock, I danced around and stuff mostly to blend in at the beginning. When people got really passionate and emotional during prayer, I didn't get it at first. It might seem odd to people who know me now, but it's a process.

Here is the process:

Much of my early Christian development was focused on learning about God. I first had to learn about God as Creator. This is the most tangible example of how my emotion process to worship worked, so I'll use this as an example. I first had to learn that He was Creator. This meant that I had to learn about why evolutionary theory didn't work and why the idea of an intelligent designer made sense. This was logic.

The next thing that happened was experience. As I went through my biology classes, I saw the complexity of the cell and organ systems in the human body, I realized that an intelligent agent was behind it. This reinforced the logic. I could see and experience it.

Once I was convinced logically and experientially that God was Creator, I felt happy. Someone made me. Therefore someone cares for me. I am not alone. Someone made this world and made it to make sense, therefore, curiosity about the world glorifies Him!!!!!! That excited me because I enjoyed learning about His world anyway :) Then the happiness and 'eeks' flowed out!!!!! When we at The Rock first sang a song that I recognized as a song to our Creator, I went up front. I was a little nervous because I knew it was going to be loud, but I just felt like I had to jump around and praise God as Creator because I finally realized He was Creator and He showed me - He graciously showed me even though I denied it to His face for so long.

I believe God had to teach me physical foundational truths of His presence and how He addresses the larger problem of evil and sin before He began teaching me more about how to have a relationship with Him. Getting concepts about Him as Creator and learning apologetic tools to explain His existence to others tapped into my intellectual side. I got excited about those things first.

However, having a relationship with a largely abstract Person was different. I would see my friends cry at a prayer meeting because they "were feeling their hearts drawn toward Jesus" or longing for Him. I could understand crying for a friend in a biology class that needed to know Jesus because I could see the inconsistency of studying God's intricate creation of the cell and not acknowledging Him for it.

I only really started to get it after my sophomore year of college when I realized that The Lord's prayer started out: Our Father. Somehow God was a parent to us. Back to logic. As I saw in the Bible of how God cares for us, guides us, has rules for us, comforts us, gives us strength and encouragement, I realized those are all things that competent parents do for their children. Trust formed out of that and I would ask Him for simple things. Seeing tangible answers to prayer like having little circumstances work out built that trust and thus reinforced my praying. After trust and that experience that was built on logic finally allowed me to feel God's love.

Why do I draw out this diagram and explain things the way I do to break down my thought processes around my emotional connection to God? Because Dr. Grandin says that she doesn't feel the same awe toward God or scenery He's made like other people due to her autism. That made me wonder for a long time if a lot of my reactions were contrived in an attempt to be neurotypical - especially before I knew I was on the autism spectrum.

Yet I know I have an attachment relationship with God. Recently I read an article about adults with high-functioning autism / Aspergers Syndrome / PPD-NOS who completed the Adult Attachment Interview. They were able to be classified in the usual way and came out with a variety of attachment patterns. Therefore people with autism can form connections to people. Dr. Grandin talks about her mother and Mr. Carlock a lot and I can see from her history that she trusted them growing up and saw them as attachment figures. Therefore logically, I know it is possible for me to have an attachment relationship of some sort with God as He is indeed a personal God. An all-knowing Creator who wants to connect with me will do it taking into consideration on how specifically my ASD affects me because He knows how it does. He knows exactly how my DNA is sequenced and how that affected my brain. That just makes logical sense. I came back to that when I was asking myself if my emotional connection was real.

I realized that I needed more of a logical / intellectual base to have that initial emotional reaction, but once I did and my intellect was convinced of the truths about who God is, the emotion I feel toward Him is indeed real.

Escape and Connection through Music

2011-04-29T14:21:00.002-06:00

One of my Pandora stations is Journey. Yes I'm old - 27 years old - AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! =O I'm getting old!!!!!!!!!!! Anyway... listening to these really back-in-the-day (Ok, 80's and 90's) songs reminds me of listening to the radio as a kid when Mom and I were in the car or when I got my radio in 6th grade and I would spend hours in my room listening to music.

Music was my escape from life. Life as a visually-impaired kid who was also on the autism spectrum and not diagnosed was difficult. Not impossibly traumatic, but not easy either. I could get lost in the music pretty easily, zone out, and be in my own world. When my favorite songs came on the radio, I would try and memorize the words. Often times, I would day-dream as I listened to the music. Sometimes my day-dreams would reflect the content of the lyrics, other times the music would be a nice back-ground soundtrack to whatever I was thinking about.

I'd say later I would use music to connect with my own feelings and to help myself shape a notion of God at around 8th grade. This is normal as teens get more into abstract thinking and meta-cognition, meaning thinking about how they think/feel. This is why some songs are clearly 'teenage-angst' songs :D Songs that would put into words what I felt helped me in 'structuring' my metacognition and processing about life. This processing was something that I had to do a lot of times on my own just because not many people understood the way I thought.

Music became really therapeutic during the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School and later the terrorist attacks in 2001 on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. During these incidents, I was often left to process my emotions by myself, or I would process them in the process of helping another person process her emotions. I also watched the news with Mom as her source of emotional support. Unfortunately, the images from both events ended up getting cemented in my head. According to Animals in Translation by Dr. Grandin images stick more strongly with people on the autism spectrum because some of us can't verbally repress and work through the images as quickly as others. She mentions she can't watch violent stuff or else it stays in
her brain & she can't shut it off. That was me exactly. Since I didn't have the words, I depended on the music I listened to for the words. Even now, there are some songs I associate with those events. After the September 11 attacks, the song Shimmer by Shawn Mullins and Overcome by Live really helped me put into words how I felt. I would listen to Shawn Mullin's Soul's Core on repeat, sometimes some of the same songs over and over again as I rode the bus to school. I also listened to Lifehouse's Everything and Breathing on repeat in my discman. Before the other kids boarded the bus, I had that time to cry.

During Shimmer, Everything, and Breathing I began praying, or listening to those songs as a prayer to God to tell Him how I was feeling and that I wanted the world to be right again. Music was my escape and my way of processing, but it was beginning to be my way of connecting to God. I had a basic understanding that God was somehow in control (didn't realize He was Creator... yet), that He sent His Son Jesus to the earth, and that He had set out standards of right and wrong for us to follow.

God knew that music was how I escaped my world when it got too hard and how I processed things when I had no one else to turn to. This is why I was able to connect to Him even in the "loud blasted-out" environment of Summitview's college group The Rock my second week at CSU. I could sense somehow that these students were singing to Someone real, and the words were really powerful. The band did a cover of the song Flood by Jars of Clay. During that song, I acknowledged that the secondary PTSD from the September 11 attacks and my feelings around my transition to college were overwhelming me. I began crying. Connecting to God would save me from the flood of my emotions. I prayed for Him to become real to me to help me.

Instead of it being a numbing agent, I use music to connect to God. It's not my only means of connection, but it's a large part. When I realize that a song embodies a theological concept that was trying to grasp, and I have that 'aha' moment, I get really excited! For example, I really like the song Our God because it embodies the concept of a sovereign Creator who is involved in His creation and will be victorious over all the pain and sorrow. When I connect to God through music, I am not just singing to the air, I'm singing to a real person, and I'm not listening to wishful thinking. I'm listening to Truth.

I Sort of Feel like Super-Nerd...sort of!

2011-04-27T18:01:00.002-06:00

This seems like an odd title for a post about a career fair, but it's true. I felt like Super-Nerd...aka Dr. Grandin. Here's why: I shared my experiences (so far) about my career and what I did and wished I did so that these graduating seniors would be able to do what they wanted in the helping professions. Just telling them to go for it made me smile because that's more encouragement for them. There was a guy who wanted to be a gym teacher and was sort of unsure. But when he heard that UNC had a program and he could get experience at sports camps and that kind of thing, he got a bit more perked up.
Just being able to use my experience to encourage others makes it worth it. Even though I am not at a master's level of employment yet, I shouldn't take what I have for granted.
Talking about the easy typical stuff will make it easier to talk about the difficult stuff for others' benefit if that's what God wants me to do.
I also realized that I don't have to wait to be at Super-Nerd's level of fame to make a difference. God wants all of little me and what I'm doing now.

God is Greater than what He went through

2011-04-22T14:30:00.000-06:00

Recently due to some instances at work, I have felt a bit blamed and stepped-on for things. I can take it unfairly or I can say, "God is sovereign and I should forgive my people and obviously be upfront and honest when need be." Additionally, I've told God that I really really don't want to do what He seems to be calling me to do and just settle for something less to please people in the here and now.

Today is Good Friday, and like many of my Christian friends, I've read passages dealing with the crucifixion. Jesus was stepped on (probably literally) and the high officials - both priests & those in the Roman government used His case to appease the people and to maintain or gain political popularity. "If we let this guy go, our popularity ratings will be shot in the polls next week." would be what they would say if they were politicians today. So, He's been there as the guy-powerful-people-push-under-the-bus very very unfairly.

He also had a moment where He could've walked away. He could've chosen something different. He even said to His Father, "Lord, take this cup if You are willing, but not my will but Yours be done." He's been there when He had to do something painful but eternally worth it. He had to let his disciples down - for a little bit because they were all thinking, "What the -!!?!? Oh, this isn't good - aw, man, now what!?!" for the rest of that day and that Saturday.

It's nice to have a God who sympathizes with us in those moments of being walked on and in doing what the Father wants even when we really really don't want to. It's nice to have a God who has felt extreme pain, defeat, loneliness, shame, etc. that was felt on the Cross.

Yet Our God is greater!!!!! I imagine He rose and looked around at the suffering / death / evil, and was like, "What up NOW!?! You want a piece of Me!?!" Ok, maybe not like that, but He is greater than all the pain and sufferering He took on which was all the pain and suffering of this world.

This is why Good Friday is sobering but is still good. Sobering because we remember what Christ went through, and good because we know He sympathizes and He has and will ultimately overcome it all!!!

Our God is greater
Our God is stronger
God You are higher than any other
Our God is healer
Awesome in power
Our God
Our God

:)

Nerdy Geeky Brains!!!!

2011-04-18T14:56:00.003-06:00

So both my grad school friend, former advisor, and I have no idea what's going on for our meeting in an hour!!! I blame our specialized and under-connected nerdy geeky brains!!! According to different studies and images of Temple Grandin's brain, there are less connections between parts of the brain in autism and some specialty areas get very developed.

My former advisor and my friend are definitely NOT on the autism spectrum, but if nerdy / geeky normal people have some traits that are still within normal limits, that means their brains might have some mix of over and under connectivity that allows the geeky nerdy traits to happen. This includes being able to code interactions, but forgetting about meetings and such ;) There's a reason for the "absent-minded professor" jokes :)

Dr. Grandin and I have more extreme versions and variations of that. This is why we're on the autism spectrum. But it's nice to know even certain normal brains resemble ours!!!! Maybe that's why nerdy geeky people keep coming back to or staying in academia!! Similar brains think alike!!!!! :D

Motivation in 1 Peter 1

2011-04-06T09:24:00.002-06:00

As a disciple, Peter had a mix of motives. He did stuff truly to please Jesus, but he found his faith and motives wavering. He walked on water toward Christ, but the fear of the waves overtook his faith. He proclaimed Christ was the Messiah but disowned him later. He also cut off a soldier's ear.
Yet after the ressurection, he knew beyond a doubt that Christ was Lord, Saviour, and Victor. So his motives for enduring trials and being holy were Christ. He encourages his people to have Christ as their motives as well.
That's how I am also. As I learn more and more of who Christ is, my motives become more Christ centered. Are they perfect? No. But the pattern is there and that is a sign of growth and a growing relationship with my Creator and Savior. May He always remind me more of who He is! Amen :)

And off the ivory pedestal she goes!

2011-03-25T13:38:00.001-06:00

Wednesday and Thursday were Katie's Nerdfest days haha! I went to the Transition and Transformation symposium at CSU that was on students with ASD and their needs in a university setting. It was definitely very interesting!

What I regret was that I saw Dr. Temple Grandin 3 times and never once did I have the nerve to even say hi :( It wasn't as much "Aw, bummer, I didn't get to tell her she did a great job." as much it was "Oh bummer, this whole having her on a pedestal in my mind has affected me much much more than I had ever imagined." I'm sure my friends would say, "Yes, Katie. SURPRISE! We knew that... for a long long long long (long) time." Well... SURPRISE!!!!!!! You guys were right (if you are reading this).

God used that morning to show me that this whole putting her on a pedestal thing was becoming maladaptive. I realize that a lot of people would get shy around celeberties or highly regarded people in their field or in a prominent position (like politics). The reason it was maladaptive for me is because it hindered otherwise normal interactions that should've happened that God could've used.

Well, after a day or so of examining it, I have come to realize this: I believed for so long that her life existed on a completely different level and reality than the average spectrumite (me included) experienced that there was no possible way that we could really sincerely connect other than on a distant way where she was on a stage behind a lecturn against the backdrop of a power-point presentation.

Yes, she should definitely be respected for her expertise in her field and her contributions to autism research :) But I would be mistaken if her renowned professor /author / researcher was her sole identity and experience in life. In reality, she wakes up every morning and gets breakfast and decides what to wear (though her closet contents are definitely DEFINITELY unique) and then thinks about her workday or travel assignment or whatever she has to do that day. She's probably had awkward moments with her co-workers like all of us spectrumites have and when she's bored, she looks at stuff in her special interest. On Wednesday she said that she looked at how the nuclear power plant issue in Japan could've been solved when she couldn't sleep. When I'm bored, sometimes I read or go for a walk, but sometimes I do stuff in my own special interests just like she does :) Work can probably get overwhelming, especially at book signings for her, probably. Work can get overwhemling for me, especially when multiple clients struggle with their behaviors simultaneously.

Each day for both of us has its challenges and successes, and each day, we are given grace to function and interact with the NT (neurotypical) world that sees things differently than us.

So what's the conclusion? She's not on an ivory pedestal telling us spectrumites what to do from this whole other dimension of functioning. To use an analogy close to her world, she's like an equine trail guide who's on the similar type of horse we are. We can go up to her and ask questions and she can ride back to others in the line and help them along. Yes she has experience and training to serve as our guide, but we must remember that she's riding along with us also.

With this newfound and much more realistic picture, I hope that one day if we meet again, we can interact as fellow people on the journey and through that, God can reveal that He is available to guide all of us :)

If I owned a website...

2011-03-22T21:08:00.001-06:00

So, just for fun, I thought I'd do a Google search to see if eek.com existed. Well, it does.... sort of :D EEEEEEEEK - Anyway.... if I really did have a webpage that was made up of things that made me eek, I would have to incorporate: God as Creator, Flowers, cute fluffy animals, cute little people, soft things, HDFS related things, God and how He fits into HDFS research, Temple Grandin, ice-cream, candy, random sparkly things, fun /exciting announcements in friends' lives, um... Summitview stuff, and probably other randomness.

It's funny just to see how many things make me eek aka get me excited :) I'm glad that even though parts of my life might be hard, God allows me to feel joy in seemingly random stuff :)

An eternal perspective on the earthquake in Japan

2011-03-15T22:13:00.000-06:00

Our Summitview pastor Mitch has done a really great job of posting summary, Biblical response, and resources for us to help the people of Japan in his blog. He is a much better writer than I as well :)

Anyway, once again, God taught me things that I at first thought were random but then realized were actually connected. I realize I'm a pattern thinker - not necessarily a visual pattern thinker the way Dr. Grandin sometimes implies when she shows a complicated Oragami folding pattern when she talks about pattern thinking. I get more conceptual maps - anyway... when I think about the earthquake in Japan on a personal or global level, I must have an eternal perspective.

For two days I wondered how one of my HDFS friends who was from Japan was doing. We worked on a end of semester project together. Unlike two other girls I know from Japan, she had not posted anything on her Facebook page about the earthquake. Also, people had written on her wall and she had not responded. I started to get worried. I didn't want to think about the worst happening, but I knew I had to at some point. It was easier for me to imagine her doing double-overtime at a hospital as a child-life specialist or being stuck at home with no internet or TV than it was to imagine her stuck under rubble or stuck out at sea or something worse. I wrote her an email and asked friends if they had heard from her.

This afternoon, I finally had to settle with the reality that she might have been gone. That hurt. A lot. I felt a crushing feeling in my heart and in my head. I had memories in my head of us working on that paper together and sitting in class together. I also had memories of her graduation. I had to contend with how I would cope if she was indeed gone forever. The first thing that came to my head was the complicated grief literature. There are different issues and more of a chance of unresolved or complicated grief that come with family or friends who cope with a missing person. I was trying to remember where I put my grief / loss textbook so I could look that information up. Then I felt God prodding around in my intellectual corner of my brain. "Katie, you need more than that textbook." I knew God wanted me to come to Him with my feelings and with my fears of, "God, how will I handle it if my friend was lost in the earthquake?" Tears came to my eyes. I could call Summitview and see if one of the pastors is around. But first God wanted to hear it from me. God, I know You have been good to my friend - bringing her to the US and letting her get her degree here. I know You have given her every chance to know You. You are glorified in her life no matter what, and I know You will help me deal with things if she's not here. God, I need Your help to deal with any grief issues.

As I had that settled in my head and wondered what was going to happen, I got an email from our mutual friend: SHE'S OK! SHE WORKS IN THE SOUTH PART OF THE COUNTRY! She just doesn't have electricity with the craziness that's going on. I was most DEFINITELY RELIEVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) I could've asked God why He couldn't have allowed me to know that SOONER, but I think He wanted me to go through that whole process of trusting Him and believing He is good even while preparing for potentially bad news. He wanted me to keep an eternal perspective - an eternal hope for me to hold onto in case I had a physically real loss.

Later tonight, my roommate shared that her friend had posted Luke 21:10 - 11 with a note that the World Trade Center / Pentagon attacks were on September 11, the Haiti earthquake was on January 11, and this latest earthquake in Japan was March 11. Odd and definitely getting into the realm of it being less probable that it was random, but I'm guessing there's still some wiggle room for randomness. Yet even here I go imagining plugging data into SPSS and somehow generating a printout that shows, "Well, it's ALMOST p>.05 that this came out that way, but you know, you can't reject the null hypothesis of randomness completely." I'd like that, though. I'd like somehow a nice little statistical table showing whether these things truly are 'chance' or whether God is deliberately creating a pattern or not.

Well, why do I get unsettled when I ponder if God IS setting all this up and when I think about "What if the end times ARE coming soon?" Part of it is a carry-over from my childhood where I was terrified of God coming back because I wasn't ready for heaven because I didn't know Jesus. Another part of it is that it shatters my notion of life as I know it. There's a comfort in a waking up and going to work / church / activities and even a comfort in dealing with 'normal' daily hassles. It's just part of life. Yes, the end - the FINAL end of the world would mean no more sickness/disease/death/suffering/hardship and mean an eternal party with Jesus, but unfortunately we have to go through super hard probably unpredictable stuff here first.

Ok so... what if the earthquake in Japan is a sign that God is up to something? How should I pray? Well, first of all, I should pray for the nations so that more people know Jesus :) He's invited TONS of people from EVERY NATION to His eternal party so, might as well tell people :) Second of all, I should pray that believers' faith is strengthened. This is something I've been praying for people in Japan - that they have an understanding of God as their secure anchor even though the earth literally gave way. Wow, that will be an intense testimony from those people!!!! Second of all, I should pray that myself and others maintain the eternal perspective of 'possible pending doom aka end of the world chaos' that God is good, He is in control, and He has our best as Believers and He has given others who don't know Him yet every opportunity to come to know Him. This eternal perspective can be my anchor through potentially huge nation/societal shifts just like it would've been my anchor had I found out bad news about my friend.

Having God as an anchor to all of our souls can get us through physical earthquakes, potential personal losses, and larger upheavals in life. It is definitely a relief and I have seen it slowly replace fear I have had with a sure hope. I pray that many people in Japan and around the world come to this same hope in Christ as well!

Super Nerds!

2011-03-03T10:30:00.001-07:00

I CAN'T GET THIS OUT OF MY HEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

For a while, I've been referring to people on the spectrum including me (in my head and sometimes out loud) as super-nerds. I'll say, "And that's because I'm a super-nerd." I also refer to SUPER-NERD (Dum dum da DUM DA DUM!!!!! [Superman theme song]) who is a specific person ;)

There is method to Katie's madness :) Those of us with an ASD could be called super-nerds within our area of special-interest because one of the key diagnostic features of an ASD is the ability to and history of learning about and talking about one particular topic to death. Many people call it having a special interest or a fixation. People who have leveraged their special interest into a career generally do well. Many people become experts within their special interest and are called on for advice. For example, Bill Gates is like the master Microsoft dude. Donna Williams is a special-education consultant. I'm sort of the attachment person hehe :) People at Summitview also ask me about Creationism since that's another special interest of mine. If one of our pastors was on the spectrum, his special interest would definitely be Creationism hehe!!! :) In that regard, he's a lot more nerdy than me on it :)

When I say 'super-nerd' especially in regard to myself, I try to say it in a positive light to think of myself using the strengths-based perspective: I'm a nerd, but God can use my nerdy-powers-of-fixation to help others :) :) :) :) :) :) Ditto for others on the spectrum :) Seeing the ability to fixate and learn how to leverage it appropriately as a strength has helped me deal with living life on the autism spectrum, and remembering to see others on the spectrum in that light is obviously a good thing :)

I'll give readers 100 POINTS if they can guess the person who has exemplified this trait so well as to deserve the name SUPER-NERD!!!!!!!

100

90

80

70

60

50
...

Ok, haha, I bet half of you (who know me and/or read this blog regularly) guessed Temple Grandin :) Well, yeah (blushing) :) :) HEHEHEHEHEHE!!!!! :) She cares for cows!!! She rides on planes..... she's - SUPER-NERD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D

She's the go-to person in her field as an animal behavior researcher and she's the go-to person for autism too. She's leveraged her fixation on cows and animal behavior into her livestock handling business, and she's leveraged her fixation on sensory thinking into broader animal science and allowed researchers to gain insight into the autistic brain.

This is how much of the world sees her as THE Super-nerd and thus the most prominent voice from 'inside the Autistic brain.' Note, she's not the ONLY representative from inside the Autism Spectrum, but she's the one the world has chosen to be the rock star of the Autism community. She's also proud to be a CSU Ram as a professor, so she gets cool points from my end because of that too! Anyway, she was the first example I looked to when I realized that I needed to allow God to heal my shame around having fixations and not being normal. She was also an example God used of why He allowed certain people - me included - to be a super-nerd in a specific area to work His purposes :)

Spiritual Mentoring from the Great Interventionist

2011-03-03T09:40:00.002-07:00

According to the HDFS literature, mentors serve as alternate attachment figures to at-risk youth. A mentor can teach a child skills that he or she didn't learn in the home environment, provide emotional support that can increase the child's confidence, and help the child cope with difficult circumstances. A mentor ideally knows how to structure the environment and activities that help build a child's skills and provide emotional support. Good mentors know when to just be there and when to teach skills. They are well trained by someone who knows the research and understands child and adolescent development.

Spiritual mentors are very much the same :) I've come from a spiritual 'at-risk' environment where I was taught that God exists, but He is distant and not as reliable. We can do good to try and get into heaven, but we can't really connect with Him. This is what I believed when I became a part of Summitview. These beliefs had to be demolished and replaced with Truth after I became a believer. I also had very real attachment issues and other developmental issues that I had to deal with on top of growing as a new believer. One could say that I was at high risk for maladaptive spiritual development because I had added risk-factors that could hinder my spiritual growth.

Luckily God is the GREAT INTERVENTIONIST :) :) He knows my development better than even I do :) He put me in the best church environment for me to grow. Specifically, He provided older sisters in Christ that both served as actual and spiritual mentorship. I remember calling them and talking to them whenever I had issues. They served as my examples, and helped me work through a lot of my past and helped me grow in my spiritual development. They would 'structure' my environment by checking on me to make sure I had regular quiet-times and help me have conversations about the Bible. They also helped 'structure' fun things like Ultimate Frisbee. An older sister and Aaron Ritter coached me about how to play Ultimate Frisbee with much patience since I told them that I couldn't see well and was terrible at playing sports. It really was rewarding when they cheered me on when I threw the frisbee in the right general direction, even if my teammate didn't catch it. Through the love of my older brothers and sisters, I had alternate attachment figures and spiritual mentors in Christ that really helped those first few years of my development.

It's really uncanny - but not surprising that God actually did help me achieve developmental milestones that I missed. While playing on the playground with my Ritter teammates, we joked that we were going back to our childhoods. Suddenly I got really excited and I remember jumping up and down squealing: "Oh my gosh!!!! I'm really back in middle-childhood learning peer-peer interactions and receiving peer-group acceptance!! God's re-doing my middle childhood!" I'm pretty sure those were close to my exact words. Yes, I should've realized I was a super-nerd beyond most of the 1st year HDFS students. :) yet even in that nerdy realization on the playground, I had the first glimmer of hope that God would begin healing things in my past and work to grow me into a spiritually mature person :)

I'm in the stage now where I see younger sisters-in-Christ being mentored in much this same way and I have been able to serve as a mentor to some girls. That part is startling to me because I think "Can I really do this?" Then I realize, "God, the Great Interventionist placed me in this role to help this other person develop :)" That also means He helps me, and really He does the real work :) Seeing my younger sisters grow with their mentors and looking back on how God used my own mentors reminds me that He will complete the work He started in all His children and He is the solution to their spiritual and developmental needs :)

Obligatory Valentine's Day Post

2011-02-14T11:41:00.004-07:00

Haha.... No, I'm not really cynical about Valentine's Day, c'mon :D But I have to laugh at PhD Comics (Piled Higher and Deeper) because of this comic!!!!!! I was sort of bummed on Valentine's Days of years past during the years when I liked specific guys, but I enjoy how Summitview D-Teams still try and do stuff for the singles :) For instance, Symbio singles are taking over Coopersmith's tonight!!! WOOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) But yeah, I do tend to stop and think a bit about my life in the guy-girl relationships arena on Valentine's Day. I think it's only natural since - yeah. I am a girl. However, that doesn't necessarily obligate me to spend a lot of time pondering guy-girlness. Yet the Bible says that married women are helpmates of their husbands. We are equal in worth yet different in our roles. Because of this we long for being a helpmate to someone.

Last night D-Team went to the home of a family from church for dinner. Their four little people were there so of course we played with them for a bit!!! I have to say, Team Ninja guys have decent paternal instincts :) I enjoyed hanging out with the little people too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They say some pretty great things. What I like about little people is teaching them stuff. Especially since my diagnosis, I've been noticing how I seem to have a more intellectual style in interacting with kids. It's not to say I don't care about them. I just seem to express it differently. However, I can't say that because my interaction style is different, I would be incapable of raising children if God called me to. But one thing I realized is that I saw raising children as a developmental step that I had to somehow achieve to succeed in life.

When I liked certain guys, I would get all twitterpaited when I saw them playing with kids, especially if they had really positive interactions and I could see that the kids were responding well. I would think: "Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!! High paternal emotional availability potential here! Well, this increases my desire to marry said person because our potential children would have really great developmental outcomes because of this and also see God's love a lot more clearly in their father!!!!!!" I would evaluate guys on the basis of how well they would fulfill the role of servant-leader and father in a marriage. Of course, that's not a bad thing at all to evaluate men on, but I think for me, I had a goal: marriage and I liked guys based on how well they would do in partnering with me in attaining said goal. It was mostly intellectual rather than the feeling of "fluffiness" that seems to happen in guy-girl movies. Sorry, can't think of a more precise word.... ;)

In an earlier post on this blog, I go a bit more in depth into my thoughts on marriage and how they've changed post-ASD diagnosis. So what goes through my mind when I hang out with kids now or approach days like Valentine's day or other times when the focus is on marriage or guy-girl stuff? I think it comes down to just being in the moment. This comes from releasing myself from the expectation that I should get married to be 'normal.' Shoot! I'M NOT NORMAL, so essentially: who cares :D So I can focus on doing single-people stuff on Valentine's day like our Symbio thing tonight and when I'm around a family, I can just be me around the kids and enjoy teaching them things and hanging out with them. The pressure of wanting things is gone, so the angst of all these things is largely gone too :)

6 months since my life changed forever: Goodbye to the notion of normal

2011-02-06T15:06:00.002-07:00

To continue the series of the 6 months since my life changed forever (and yes, I know it's been more than 6 months exactly), one thing that I realized today is that I had to say goodbye to the notion of normal. There was definitely an intial grief process because it was the loss of my perceived identity as a typical 26 year-old Christian female who was pursuing her career post-masters degree. When I was told that I might possibly have Asperger's Syndrome, I was faced with the prospect of identifing as a member of the individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders community that I had always viewed from the outside as a student or reseacher looking in. Yes, I had read articles about ASD and knew some of the descriptors sounded eerily familiar, but I had thought, "And here I am, having basically overcame some of these difficulties reading these articles as a future interventionist." Suddenly I was going back over textbooks and articles reading them thinking, "This might be me. I always wondered, but this might be me. These descriptors may be immovable for my life."

My friends told me that there would definitely be positives about pursuing a diagnosis such as receiving services to help me and finally understanding how God had made me. But my mind was reeling when they told me Aspergers Syndrome. I told them, "Imagine if someone told you, 'You might have cancer.' Well, you guys are basically telling me, 'You have cancer. Of your development.'" I wasn't mad at them. I was just scared that there was a sledgehammer about to come down and absolutely shatter all my previous notions of who I thought I was.

Well, figuratively speaking, the hammer did come down. It fell in a bit of a different place than I expeccted with the diagnosis of PPD-NOS. But still, though I knew my identity in Christ was unshaken, my identity of 'a typical girl with a bit of an eye problem' was shattered. My identity as another interventionist in the HDFS field was shattered. I was not a typical post-graduate. I was not a typical person in my field. I didn't know what the future held for me with my new diagnosis. I didn't know how to think about myself. Yes, I knew that God had a purpose for me and that He loved me regardless, I just didn't know where to go from there. That's why I clung so tightly to Dr. Grandin's story in the beginning. I had to see how God directed her life so I could trust Him to direct mine.

After many tears and pondering my life, I am ok with not being normal. No, I don't want God to make the rest of my life a carbon-copy of Dr. Grandin's life :-D I'm NOT THAT CRAZY HAHA!!!!!!!!! But I don't hold the expectations of a 'normal life' over myself and hence get mad at myself when I don't meet them. For instance, I can feel more comfortable in the group-home with the clients than in a staff meeting. Previously, I'd chide myself for that, but now I just say, "Meh, that's how the way God made me." Of course, I've learned some coping strategies and learned how to speak up at staff meetings so I can contribute in a good way.

One major step I took last sweek was making an appointment with the Departmet of Vocational Rehabilitation. Definitely not normal. But I figure, if they can help me learn interview skills and different ways to help me cope at my current and future jobs, than that works for me. I avoided getting disability services for my eyes in undergrad because I had intense shame at admitting any weakness. Anything that would make me stand out from the norm, I avoided.

Yet as God removed the shame of me being different, I felt more free to access these resources. I had to believe that God loves me even in my weakness; that He does not grieve that I am not 'his perfect little child' because I am not apart from Christ. He looks at me - flaws an all - and because He sees Christ in me - He loves me. Not for my abilities or goodness, but because of Christ. As I let go of this notion of trying to be normal, I embraced this truth, and this has made a ton of difference.

6 months since my life changed forever: Work and what I want to do when I grow up

2011-01-11T17:52:00.000-07:00

First of all:
OH MY GOODNESS THE BLOG LOOKS DIFFERENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Just thought I'd say that since I know that's what people will think if they are used to the old format. Well, I added the followers gadget and a search the blog gadget & apparently Blogspot has had updated templates for a while. Well, new year, new DECADE - new blog layout?

Now onto the intended content:

I thought I'd go a bit more in depth about how realizing I have an ASD has changed my life in several different areas just because it's nice for me to see and because it just shows how much I had to re-think my identity, but also how having an underlying trust in God in all these areas made this shift so much easier.

I went into HDFS because as a pediatrician, it would be nice to know about child development. I wanted to be a pediatrician so I could eventually work with and treat kids who were adopted that had attachment and/or development and/or sensory integration issues. Contrary to popular belief, I didn't chose HDFS because cute kids automatically made me eeek. In fact, my mom has a picture of me holding my second cousin with this look on my face like, "Oh dear God, help me hold this kid because I don't want to drop her and I'm not used to being around kids!!"

I had to grow into working well with kids. I had to grow into working well with people too. In retrospect, if I was in Temple Grandin's words, "an anthropologist from Mars" when it came to figuring out people and social situations, studying HDFS made it a bit easier.

Why do I start out with this? Because I was always bothered by the fact that the book-learning about development didn't necessarily translate into being able to handle interactions. For example: most people felt at home in the early-childhood classroom at the lab school at CSU and would feel at home in the Summitview nursery when they volunteered. For me, I could talk nicely to the kids and do basic stuff like remembering to get down at eye-level and explain things so they could understand, but I always felt like I was going at it firstly from an intellectual rather than an emotional standpoint. God gets infinite points (well, first because He's GOD) for helping me open my emotions to these kids that He allowed me to help. I think one of the reasons it was hard for me to open my emotions up was because if I felt the attachment a caregiver feels for his or her child, I would begin to miss the attachment I needed to feel growing up. In fact, I felt a sense of sadness when we discussed optimal parent-child interactions in class because I knew it wasn't like that for me growing up.

Anyway, as I got further into working in HDFS, I realized that a lot of people assume that people with an HDFS degree are naturally good at helping people and don't expect a person who does attachment work to put her foot in her mouth while at her internship. Well, during my summer internship in grad school, I ended up with foot-in-mouth syndrome a few times. Thankfully, God gave me grace & my supervisor understanding :) But still, I think that was a shock to both of us. Even in other things like doing research, I had some difficulties actually interacting with the team. That was always weird to me. Also, I could observe parent-child interactions, but it took me a bit longer to pick up on cues. My advisor always seemed to point out little things I missed, and it took a lot out of me to observe that keenly.

Finding out I had an ASD made all of that make sense!!!! FINALLY! Yes, I can still teach kids on a limited basis, yes I can still do research, yes I can still work with a team, but it is more challenging than it would be for most people in the HDFS world. They only have to study interactions for research purposes. I have to study interactions all the time just to avoid foot-in-mouth syndrome or other things. Unfortunately, this means that some jobs in my field might not be good for me. I thought about maybe going back and getting a Marriage and Family Therapy degree, but I know that reading client's feelings closely as well as analytically figuring out their problems would be a lot for me. Also, I don't think I could work in a child-care setting 40 hours a week. I enjoy doing Sunday school and babysitting for special-events at Summitview, but there is usually a 1 adult to every 3-5 kids, and in a child-care setting the ratios are much higher. I know I'd get overwhelmed if I had to manage a classroom with a 1:6 or above ratio because that's what the ratio was at the Early Childhood Center, and I was exhausted after a Friday afternoon of being there for my practicum.

So, what can I do? Well, I've decided to do some volunteer grant-writing to see how that goes. I enjoy research, and recently, I wrote an article for the Examiner, with more to come :) I'm pondering the idea of having a developmental services company that specializes in grant-writing, curriculum development for interventions, and more what I call 'techie' aspects of Human Development and Family Studies work. If things start rolling along smoothly, I might go back and pick up a PhD to gain more research and expertise. Hm... yes, this sounds a bit like what a certain professor did, but different field very different field, folks!!!!!!!!

This is definitely not what I was expecting to do with my degree, and knowing that I'll be in the human services world, but not in the way people usually are took a lot of shifting in my thinking. I panicked a bit and thought, "Oh no, did I go into the WRONG FIELD!?" No.

If I believe in a God who is sovereign and who opened the doors to me being in HDFS, this is not a mistake. I thought being premed was a mistake when I didn't do so hot on the MCAT, but God came though and provided that job in the hospital that allowed me to use my knowledge. I'm still using some of that knowledge in my current work as a direct care provider at a group home. God taught me about trusting Him for a career in general when I graduated, and it is this groundwork of trust that is helping me trust Him with whatever unique role He has for me in the HDFS field given both my strengths and my limitations.

6 months since my life changed forever - the overview

2011-01-07T11:36:00.000-07:00

This is a re-post from my blog on the Wrong Planet forums. I thought it should be on here too. Some of this content is a bit repetitive from my other posts, but it's kind of a summary of my life these past 6 months.

Yup. June 30, 2010 was when I went into the Psychological Services center at Colorado State University for the evaluation to determine whether I had Aspergers Syndrome or not. In May on Memorial Day, three friends from church - two Human Development and Family Studies (HDFS) graduates like me, and one licensed middle school teacher, sat me down and told me that they had been noticing social quirks and how I still talked about HDFS intensely even though I had graduated a year ago. They suspected that I had Aspergers syndrome, even though I studied parent-child attachment and had accurately observed interactions. Yet, I wondered if they were right because though I could observe interactions, I had trouble in actual social situations with a lot of people or if I was already stressed out. Throughout my life, I had always had special-interests. Even in my classes, when we'd talk about autism spectrum disorders (ASD), I could relate in part when I reflected back on my childhood. However, I thought it was because I had learned how to interact late in life due to being adopted at age two after being in an orphanage and after chronic malnourishment and infections. I thought somehow the environmental factors in my early development were the causes of my childhood issues.

The day before I went into the evaluator's office, I went into the Animal Sciences building. This was the building where Dr. Temple Grandin worked. I stood in the lobby and thought. Sometimes I would go in there to write my thoughts about whether I had an ASD or not. Other times, I would sit on the stone benches in the courtyard because I didn't want to spend too much time in the building in case I did actually run into Dr. Grandin. I wouldn't have known what to say or how to explain why I was there.

I found her work about a week after the "I think you might have Aspergers Syndrome" conversation. The first thing that popped into my head was, "SHE WRITES IN APA STYLE!!!!! HOW COOL IS THAT!?!?!?!!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!" Right then, we had a nerdy connection because I wrote my thesis and all my papers in APA. It's required for my field. Anyway, that was comforting, yes, in a nerdy sort of way!!! That started my fixation. I knew after the second day of looking up more of her articles and then sitting outside the Animal Science building writing about her work that this would be a fixation. "Yeah, Katie, face it. You probably do have Aspergers. Wait - she had full-blown (classic) autism! She can do it!!! So can you even if you have this thing!!!" That thought, second to Christ, was my anchor. Her life was my anchor. There, I said it! Even though I'd sit there and cry worried about my future or if I was re-experiencing the pain in my past just thinking about it, knowing she got through life somehow helped me. God used her life to remind me that everyone - no matter their talents and abilities - has a purpose in His plan.

Thinking about my past and going back through my past hurt a lot. Like I said, I was adopted, but my arrival with my medical problems and need for intensive intervention plus a very dismal prognosis (severe brain damage) at my initial evaluation really traumatized my mom. That and other things influenced how I grew up. I had pain in my childhood from that, and I felt I could never reach normal because of my fixations and social awkwardness. I wanted those to go away so Mom could finally have a perfect child, but I didn't know how to make them go away, or how to stop my brain from going into fixations. I would get yelled at eventually when my mother would get sick of me beating a subject to death, and that stopped a fixation only until another took its place. Until then, I didn't want to be me. Once in 11th grade, I wondered what it would be like to suddenly step foot into my life right then: retain all the academic learning and basic biographical information of myself but loose all the emotional pain of myself? What if somehow I could push the reset button in my life-history? I wanted to.

All this crossed my mind when I walked into the CSU evaluator's office. Luckily one of my friends from the trio that talked to me on Memorial Day came with me. I was nervous. Super-nervous. I was about ready to have my brain spilled out on the table (figuratively) for someone else to sort through to see what was wrong with it. Being an HDFS graduate, I knew what she could find. That made it worse. And knowing I had to talk about my past made me hurt even before I said anything.

I made it through the diagnostic interview. I also made it through half a box of kleenex and probably put indentations in the carpet from my evaluator's rocking chair. Yes, I knew it was a stim, but I couldn't help it. YOU'RE PULLING APART MY BRAIN, what do you expect!?!!?!?!?! One highlight of the meeting was that when I told her that I was pretty sure I was fixated on Temple Grandin, she told me that she had met her. I was like, "COOL!!! TELL TELL!" And my evaluator gave me the cliff-notes version of how Dr. Grandin talked to some of the staff just about autism and stuff by giving one of her standard lectures. That kinda made me smile. The suggestion that I should meet Dr. Grandin made me eek (haha, more on THAT later ;) ;) )

I was calmer later when I had to do the actual ADOS. It wasn't as bad as I thought. The evaluator seemed to think the same thing. Then came the two weeks of waiting for the results. That was not so fun. WHAT!?!?! I seriously spilled my BRAIN and now I have to wait two weeks for you to sort through it!?!?! Welcome to the world of psychological evaluation, especially for complicated clients like myself.

So, two weeks came and went. THEN came the results

Congratulations, you have PPD-NOS - Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not otherwise specified. You have a speech delay which puts you out of the Asperger's camp, but you're not as impaired in some areas as people with classic autism. However, you almost almost almost almost came close to getting a classic autism diagnosis (high functioning). This means you and Dr. Grandin almost almost almost were DIAGNOSIS TWINS!!! (except for being like a billion years apart in age, obviously)

What!?!?!?

Weird??
Ok!
Cool!
Wait.... what?
Oh ok.... Whelp, that explains a lot!

Where did I go from there? Well, the day AFTER I got my diagnosis results, I went into the Animal Science building again. I was sort of re-creating the 'going through doors as symbols of transitions' thing that Dr. Grandin wrote about. Walking up the steps felt different. I was effectively saying, "Well, I admit it. It's official. I'm like you, Dr. Grandin. I'm on the autism spectrum. Here I am. I've seen your life unfold through your writings and lectures. Now I am trusting God with my life. I know He has a plan for it, because He had a plan for yours." It felt weird. Somewhat foreboding making that physical manifestation of accepting my diagnosis. The door had closed on me ever being 'normal.'

But that was liberating too!! An odd side-effect of this whole diagnosis process was that I didn't stress about getting married. That whole stress of getting married was because I wondered: "When would I be like most girls my age? When will I become a mature Christian woman?" I thought marriage was a developmental milestone to mark those two things. But now, knowing I wasn't normal, I didn't have to strive for developmental milestones. God might have another plan. Dr. Grandin admitted she didn't want to get married because it was emotionally complicated and she knows she can't do emotionally complicated stuff. So she just does AMAZING research instead!!!! Suddenly I realized, "That's not such a bad idea for my life!!!!!!!!!!!" Pressure to get married started to come off from me and that was pretty great :D :D :D It's helped me focus on what God wants me to do NOW to reach people, to grow, to serve in the church, and to reach the next generation (via Sunday school teaching for me). I don't have to wait for a magical diamond ring to do it. I just do it in the unique way God wants me to!

Since I wasn't stressing so much about marriage, I could finally FINALLY seriously bounce around the PhD or not to PhD question. And no, not just because Temple Grandin eventually got a PhD. My HDFS friends had been asking if I would continue doing research even before I graduated. I admit, the whole, "What if I get married, would a PhD be worth it?" was a larger factor than I had thought. So, yeah!!!! I'm thinking about eventually PhD-ing it!!! Just have to get some street cred (work experience) first!!!!! And pay off student loans. And then convince my mom that it's still a good idea for me to go back to school, if that's what I'm supposed to do.

I work in a group-home now, and I think I'm more patient with my clients because I know that they'll never be normal. I keep their behavior goals in mind, but I don't hold them to 'normal people' standards of behavior. They won't ever be normal, so why push it with them? I just help them grow in their areas of behavior that they need growing in, otherwise, we just chill. Sometimes I joke with them like, "Yeah, I'm not normal too, so I know." Learning about my own sensory issues has really helped me support one of my clients who also has sensory issues.

Over these past six months, I've had to look at my past again. During the diagnostic interview, I realized just how much pain my past had caused me. It was tempting just to focus on learning about Temple Grandin's life, but I would make myself stop and line her life up against mine. When something bothered me such as: Why did she get a full-time decently-understanding nanny and I got a traumatized parent?? God would help me think about my past differently. No, I didn't get a full-time nanny, but I had amazing teachers that spent about the same amount of hours with me as Temple's nanny did with her. Realizing this, and realizing that God did get me through the pain helped heal me. Her life was a starting point that God used to really heal me from the pain in my past. This healing isn't done, but when I look at where I was six months ago, it's amazing! I think learning to accept myself the way God made me, and learning to accept my developmental history was huge. Knowing that He did allow for me to have a lot of teachers and outside influences that were very highly adaptive shows His hand in my development. That has been such a great comfort!!

And last but not least, if I hadn't gone to get evaluated for an autism spectrum disorder, I probably would've never attended a lecture by Temple Grandin on September 20 at the CSU University Center for the Arts with a friend of mine who was an equine science major :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) That's right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We went together because I was still embarrassed that I had a fixation on Dr. Grandin the way NT people get 'typically' obsessed with celeberties. So, I didn't want to go alone. Each to his own, right ;) The lecture was pretty awesome!! I did a mixture of eeking and crying in a good way when she walked on stage. Everyone was cheering loudly anyway, so it wasn't like that was noticeable, but yeah.

I knew most of the content from reading her articles & some of her books. But it was nice to see everything woven together in about a 50 minute lecture. The professor side of her totally came out when she started the Q & A by saying, "Now it's your turn to ask questions, and if no one comes up, I'll start calling on people." I laughed SO HARD!!!!!!!!!! Then I got to ask her a question!!!!!!!!!!!! I was SO SCARED but EXCITED too :D My dear friend came with me down to the mic and that one malfunctioned two people ahead of me. I thought, "SUPER-DANG!!!" but the tech people were like, "Use the one in front." since we were in the middle of the auditorium. I was thinking What!?!?!?! You mean the one right in front of her lecturn!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! That's right. That one. I looked at my friend like, "You are SO COMING WITH ME, RIGHT!?!?!?!" My friend totally had my back. Totally!!!! She came with me to the front and gave me a comforting smile before adjusting the microphone down to my little height.

I had to concentrate SO HARD just to make eye-contact and not just read off the paper that I had written my question down which was: "considering the cognitive differences and sensory issues people on the autism spectrum face, how would you help a child on the autism spectrum deal with something traumatic?" I looked up and my brain was like, "AAAAAAAH! I'M ACTUALLY LOOKING AT HER!!!" But I kept my cool :D Her response was, "Well, I broke myself once." Ok, she didn't actually say that, but she told me about a time when she broke a bone but was fine. Then I said, "What about if it's psychological trauma like PTSD?" And she said to remember that it affects each person individually, like several soldiers can see the same things and some could be fine and some wouldn't. I thanked her and went back to my seat with my friend. YE-AH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I also gave my friend a GIAN HUG after the lecture as a thanks for moral support during the Q & A & just being willing to be very nerdy with me! She told me that the lecture helped her work better with her horse, so both of us benefited :) Let's just say that after the lecture, I was giggly for a week!! No joke!

Other than just eeking about meeting Dr. Grandin, I've began to pray that she knows God better if she doesn't already. Over these past six months, I see how God has helped me walk through life now knowing that I'm on the autism spectrum. He's shown me that He has been there in my past and has a plan for my future. This gives me hope that goes deeper than if I was just learning about the latest interventions. I can connect with God in my unique way because He allowed my brain to be the way it is. This is a big comfort, and I pray that she finds this comfort for her life as well.

Hebrews Past and Present (and future)

2010-12-27T19:07:00.000-07:00

We're done with yet another Advent season of Hebrews! :) I really like going through it. Last year, I had to cling to the promises of Jesus being ultimate and my example in perseverance a lot because I was going through a pretty rough patch with finding work and my mom freaking out about me not having a steady job. I was also still dealing with my past because the current dynamics of my family were bringing it up.

This year, I was surprised to find that the only real terrible distraction from the true meaning of Christmas was all the preparations: getting stuff for the casserole, picking my aunt up so she could help make the casserole, being ready to go over to my cousin's house, etc. It wasn't a terrible distraction relatively speaking :D Though, I was thinking about it when I was up in the middle of the night & that's why it took me longer to get back to sleep. I think Mom's fretting about all that - starting on Christmas Eve was a factor. When she was worried about it Christmas day, I kindly told her that I knew the plans, and she probably shouldn't freak out so much that she misses Christmas altogether. I had to remind myself of that. Was my righteousness in how well I helped my aunt make the casserole or in Christ? Was our holiday success wrapped up in getting out of the grocery store on time and to my cousin's house on time or was its success in gaining a deeper understanding and appreciation for why Christ came to earth as a baby?

No matter if I deal with a really intense family crisis like I had with a relative dying around Christmas 2007, or whether it's just the mundane things, I always have to remember who is supreme and handle the rest of Christmas through that lens. This way, no matter what happens, I can always find hope and joy.

Faith is concrete!!!!!!!

2010-12-23T19:53:00.000-07:00

I've been bouncing the idea around of faith being concrete for a while to answer the question: How can God reveal Himself to people who rely primarily on the concrete world rather than on abstract concepts? Today when I read Hebrews 11 it hit me. Verse one says, "Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen." Light-bulbs DEFINITELY went on in my head!!!!!!

I was listening to OC Supertones' song Faith of a Child. Suddenly, I realized that kids do have faith, and they don't wait until they can grasp abstract thinking. They get it when they are still in the sensorimotor & concrete operations stages of life (Thanks Piaget!) in other words, infancy to middle childhood. Their faith is first expressed in their parents when they form some sort of attachment relationship. Children realize that they have one primary caregiver who feeds them, spends time with them, and cares for them. Children get stranger-anxiety around six months of age when they are held by anyone other than their primary caregiver because they realize, "Hey, you're not the person who cares for me on a daily basis!!!" They experience this attachment relationship in sensory ways by looking at, making sounds to, and reaching for their caregivers. Elementary school children know their parents are there to pick them up from school, help with homework, and attend their activities. They ask their parents for advice and rely on their parents to teach them different skills. This attachment relationship continues.

Attachment to God is a little different because we can't physically see Him. Yet we can see evidences of Him. One of the most comforting things that got me through the deaths of two family members in undergrad was my biochemistry class. Yes, that sounds weird, but when I looked at the complexity of the cell, biochemical pathways, and cellular machines in the cell, these were all evidences of a Creator who was an engineer at the micro-level. He was telling me, "I exist." Even when I didn't understand why these losses happened or why He allowed them in His plan, but being reminded that He exists was the beginning of how He comforted me. Some people have said that they see something like the Big Dipper or a butterfly and are reminded about a particular aspect of God's character, often when circumstances would lead them to believe that God is not good. The more sensory things we experience and know about: God's influence in changing someone's behavior patterns, His hand in Creation, personal encounters with God such as answered prayer, hearing a certain song, etc. the more secure our attachment is to God. As this grows, we can withstand adversity without wavering in our faith as much. Psalm 1:1-3 verifies that as well as the lives of Biblical figures like Job, Moses, Peter, David, Ruth, Daniel, Joseph, Paul, and the list could go on.

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible...And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Hebrews 11:1-3, 6

...

Celebrated but lacking; Worshiping and whole

2010-12-15T09:09:00.001-07:00

I was listening to Chris Tomlin's "Glory in the Highest" Christmas CD. Worship songs sound more epic (to me) when they are live. This CD is recorded live, and thus sounds EPIC!!!!!!!!!!!! One of my favorite things is when Chris or whoever the singer is goes a capella and it's just him and the crowd singing to their Creator!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) :) :) :) Yes that kinda makes me eek a little bit :)

While I was listening to this CD I found myself praying for Dr. Grandin. Suddenly I remembered when I went and saw her lecture with a dear sister in Christ who was willing to be nerdy with me :) :D :D When she came onstage after the Poudre Library staff made their introductory speech, clapping and cheering erupted through the packed-out auditorium in the UCA. People were cheering (I eeked) and shouting her name. People cheered and clapped for her at the very very end after the Q & A as she left to go to the book-signing table. This is sorta her life: lecture as a professor where it's more normal, research, and then lecture at special functions like that where other nerds sort of give her the rock-star treatment. There's a reason I have dubbed her as Super-Nerd (with the Superman theme-song playing in my head after I say/think that).

I wanted to be like that. Waaaaaaaaaay back in my premed days, I wanted to be a doctor and at some point open an International Adoption clinic and go around speaking about attachment and adoption as well as medical issues adoptees face. I wanted to tell the world my own story to show that I've overcome so that other kids wouldn't have to suffer as badly as I did. In my head, I did sort-of want to be a rock star super-nerd. Yet as I achieved each academic milestone: getting into CSU, graduating 17th in my class out of 320, doing well in my first round of college classes, etc. I felt that something was missing. Until I really started to let Christ into my life, I felt like even though I was achieving stuff, I was always striving to prove myself. I was always wondering if I was good enough. I was always wondering if each accomplishment would somehow redeem my past.

I don't know if Dr. Grandin still feels the need to strive. If she still wonders if her life is worth it, even when she's standing on stage in a packed-out lecture hall with everyone cheering for her. If she doesn't have Christ, she really is incomplete standing up there.

In contrast, one of the places where I felt complete was surrounded by my Summitview people singing and worshiping God. Travis would wrap up a song and we would cheer, but we're not celebrating Travis because he is cheering for someone else: the Maker of music, the Giver of life, the reason for all of our joy (Thanks Steele Crosswhite). I didn't have to strive or achieve to prove myself. In Christ, I found my worth. He imputed worth onto me on the Cross. Who cares if I didn't have the most glamorous job or if I didn't make it into medical school. I had Christ and that will resonate into eternity.

In my head, I pictured Dr. Grandin among a crowd singing and worshiping God. Maybe even at a Chris Tomlin concert - or maybe at Summitview - where she's just singing with everyone else in the background being led by a worship leader. Out of the limelight. Off-stage. Maybe among a group of people that have never heard her lectures or read her books. But yet, I picture her complete because she found her Creator and Savior. With those contrasting images in my head, I pray that one day, this image will one day - by God's grace and power alone - become reality!

Working hard to rest - or letting someone else do it!

2010-12-13T09:02:00.003-07:00

I feel like I sorta started a trend with opening Mr. Bloggy to the world with this Hebrews for Advent thing. Well, since it's apparently encouraging to others, I guess I'll keep it going!

Hebrews 4 is all about entering into God's rest. We do this by believing and holding fast to the Word of God. Well, none of us does this perfectly. We all have this goal of entering into God's rest, but we never really truly get there. Even when I look back at my own life before I became Christian, I sort of started to understand more of who God is, but honestly reading the Bible was like reading a foreign language. I remember my small group leader asking me to read a passage that made absolutely no sense to me as I was reading it. I remember finishing and saying, "Ok, I read it, what does that mean?" There was also this striving to do better, to not sin as much to make God happy.

Even as a Christian, I could fall into the trap of not being good enough. This was really difficult when I was called out on social-graces type stuff. Here I was - a Human Development and Family Studies student who struggled to interact with her peers. Ironic in a painful way. I wasn't a leader, though I was super-old for being in the college group. So many other girls were doing 'better' than me by officially discipling (mentoring) other girls and achieving developmental milestones like full-time jobs and getting married etc. I wasn't finding rest because I wanted to do better to do more for God. I wondered if God was really pleased with me.

Hebrews 4:14 - 5:10 talks about Jesus as the High Priest. He is the mediator between God and I. He brought me into God's family so I could finally have a true relationship with my Creator instead of sitting there wondering if anyone was really truly out there. He atoned and became a propitiation (thanks for big words, Mitch) for my sins and so I no longer was condemned for my sins :) :) :) Something I learned last year was that I didn't have to strive as hard to please God. This doesn't mean that I could just sit there and sin and let myself atrophy. But it meant that I didn't have to compare myself to others. God started the work in me, He will complete it. Forward progress is made just by growing closer to God and obeying. If I fall down, I don't have to beat myself up and say, "Bad girl, bad girl!" If I fall down, Jesus bends down and picks me up again so we can keep walking. Because I don't have to strive, I can look at others in my life and truly love them and encourage them instead of secretly comparing myself to them :) :) That is true rest indeed :D

Resting in God this year

2010-12-11T10:16:00.002-07:00

Hebrews 4 is all about entering into God's rest. This verse confused me A LOT when I first read it waay back when. The lights came on in my head last Christmas when Summitview went through Hebrews during Advent and I heard, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. God rest ye merry gentlemen / let nothing you dismay / remember Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day. Suddenly I began to get it. I was like, "Oh my gosh!!!! This is the answer to Hebrews 4!!!!! I felt like a super-nerd having an, "I GET IT THEOLOGICALLY" moment when I think I heard that song when Mom and I were shopping at the mall. I was sorta zoned out for a few minutes thinking about it.

Anyway, going through Hebrews again, I got to think about it even MORE!! Rest means not striving, not struggling, peaceful. Kinda like my stuffed animals here in the picture hehe :D Just chillin'. When can we be just chill in every circumstance? WITH JESUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) No really! This doesn't mean that we go through life all zoned out and totally not caring about anything. We still have the normal range of emotions, but with Jesus we don't completely meltdown in a crisis situation. Of course, we as believers living on earth aren't ever completely sanctified on earth, so of course we're going to melt-down at points and never be perfect. That's why the author of Hebrews is like, "ENCOURAGE EACH OTHER!!!!" so we stay as focused on Jesus as we can & thus can spend more of our lives resting in Him :)

So, personal appy: In what circumstances has God helped me rest in Him this year?????????

1. Definitely definitely the finding-a-job circumstance. That was hard. I cried. A lot. I got mad at God. A lot. I had several meltdowns. My friends and even Mitch encouraged me greatly during this time reminding me that God is good, He is provider, He knows my needs, He will reward me for seeking His kingdom first and trusting Him with the rest. I did find more and more rest in that, and I was more confident in sharing that rest & trust I had in God's goodness with Mom so she could see that God is real!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

me as a giant teardrop

2. In dealing with my past. This is an ongoing thing, but God hammered into it this year. That was and still is hard. I do cry. A lot. I'm a giant teardrop at times. I rested in Isaiah 52, 61, 54, 40 - ok, I just rested in the promises in the book of Isaiah :D The Breaking Free study helped a lot. My 'Summitview Moms' helped a lot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My friends helped a lot!! Team Fun encouraged me with Truth when I would cry. I rested in the fact that God allowed my past for His reasons and He showed me often how much He has healed me already. When I would read something in the HDFS literature, sometimes He would remind me how He did that particular intervention. For example, I had a broken self-concept for a long time and that's a giant hindrance to development. He showed me that finding my identity in Him progressively fixes that particular area :)

3. Closely related to to dealing with my past was getting my ASD diagnosis. Talk about my world just caving in and blowing up in my FACE..... That hurt. A lot. I cried. A lot. I had insomn1ia. A lot. I spent many hours (in between doing what I normally do) under a specific tree on the CSU Monfort Quadrangle journaling about it and crying. And praying. My rest was John 9:3, 2 Cor 4:7-9 and 12:1-10. My rest was that I was growing closer to God even when all I could do was cry. There was a time when I had a meltdown and in the middle of rocking, crying, and banging my head against something, I felt God say, "I'm here. Open your emotions to Me." I stopped banging and let Him take all the emotional pain that was too overwhelming and that I needed so badly to be released physically. I let Him take it so I could just lay there and cry. And I felt joy. No kidding. I felt joy that I could bring my emotions, my broken neurology to my Creator. I felt joy that I had a connection to my Creator because there are people on the spectrum that don't. I don't know if Temple Grandin has a connection to the One that made her and a cattle on a thousand hills, but I pray so much that at some point she does. I rested knowing that God has a plan for my weakness. He has a future for me and He will use this for His kingdom. And one day, I will not have an ASD anymore. My friends reminded me of these truths, and I felt better and I kept on coming to God with stuff. Did I do it perfectly? Nope. Oh no... definitely not. But each time I did come to God, I learned more about Him. He showed me that He can and is using me even in spite of my ASD. I am still in children's ministry and I - with massive massive amounts of God's help was able to nanny for a single parent this summer :D and sometimes I doubted my abilities, but when I noticed progress in their behavior and when they would come to the door and almost knock little me over with hugs, I knew that God was helping me connect with them :) Our God is greater / Our God is stronger / God You are higher than any other / Our God is healer / awesome in power / our God / our God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Oh yes, God used that song a lot!!! THANKS SUMMITVIEW WORSHIP TEAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and Chris Tomlin and Matt Redman :)

4. Guy stuff. Since I'm a girl. I write more about this in another blog post, but basically, God helped me find rest in the fact that He is pleased with my development in whatever trajectory He decided to lead it and I don't have to strive to meet developmental milestones like marriage to please Him and be useful to Him. He also showed me more of how He is my eternal Husband. He gently reminded me, "Katie, I coded your DNA. I know you. You don't have to be afraid to tell Me things." Also, when I would whine and cry and pray in the middle of the night, I would say, "God, I thank You that You're my eternal husband, because I think an earthly husband would be grouchy if I woke him up with my crying in the middle of the night." Yay :) I know that God has given me rest in this area when I can go to weddings and enjoy them and eek without feeling the, "God, when will that be me???" feeling.

Yeah, those are the four main areas of Katie's life that God helped me find rest in Him :) :) :)

Wow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GOD YOU'RE AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks SO MUCH that I can find rest in You and I can continue to find rest in You just by praying and connecting to You and reading your Word OBVIOUSLY and - thanks for my SUMMITVIEW FRIENDS for encouraging me with Your Truths and just by their example of living by faith and it's so cool!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thank You that I am finding more and more rest in You even if it's through tears or after a meltdown or after I have to repent of some serious sin!! Thank You that You share the moments of me giggling to me crying in pain from something that's really bothering me. God I am soooooooo thankful that it's BY YOUR GRACE ALONE that one day, I'll wake up in Heaven and find rest in You because You're there and there will be no more sin or brokenness coming between us!!!! :) I always imagine You and I drinking tea and me snuggling in Your lap with a fuzzy blanket :) :) hehe! That will be super-awesome-ultimate rest :) :) :) :) :) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) God, I pray also that my brothers & sisters would come to know Your rest better here and look forward to the rest in Heaven. I pray Mom comes to rest in your salvation. I pray Temple Grandin does too. And I pray that other people I know who don't know You also come into Your rest because You bring them there through the Cross!!!!!!!!!!!! AMEN!!!!!!!!!! ((HUGS))

A little community church in a little college town

2010-12-02T12:49:00.001-07:00

Wow! God is SUPERTIGHT! :) So, I got to hang out with this girl from Zolder 50 which is a church in Amsterdam that was started by people at Summitview 8 years ago. It was cool to hear what they were up to and even COOLER to hear that they were supporting a church in Kenya that ran an orphanage. The Kenya church/orphanage seemed very much like the Nepali church & affiliated orphanages run by people that are also connected to and supported by Summitview. In my head I had this diagram:

So wow. I mean SERIOUSLY! WOW!!! The church in Amsterdam reaches people from all parts of Europe, so God is using it to reach other parts of Europe too. But seriously!!! God is - in a distant way - using US at Summitview to reach kids we've never met in Kenya, Africa!?!?!?!?! And in parts of Europe most of us have never been to??? I thought of Col 1:3-6 where Paul thanks God for the church in Colosse because they heard the Gospel, understood the hope they have in Christ and they are a witness to others so God is bearing fruit in that church.

It just reminded me of this: God is using this little church in a little college town to reach the world. We're not the biggest church in Fort Collins. And Fort Collins isn't the largest or most famous college town. For a while, we didn't even have a building, and when we got it, it was basically a hand-me-down building from a larger church in town.We're not the most known church in town. Yet God chooses to use us.

I see this pattern played out in other areas too. I remember being part of a church in Littleton that also had a really good missions program in many parts of the world. God uses these little churches to reach people in really unexpected ways :) I think it's just so that we can look at it and say: Oh wow!!! OH WOW!!!!!!! That is so AWESOME!!!!!! God is so AWESOME!!!!!! :) Not to us, but to Him be the glory!!! :)

All the Single Ladies

2010-11-15T10:55:00.001-07:00

Wow!! I haven't had a girly-related post for a while. My purely nerdy side has taken over this blog for a while. Not like that's a bad thing :D Anyway, the single women in The Rock/Symbio are dropping like flies. With two weddings and TWO dating pairings of 2 good friends within about two weeks, I'm at that stage where I'm like, "DUDE!!!! EVERYONE'S GETTING MARRIED including EVERYONE YOUNGER THAN ME!!! :O " That's not a bad thing because that means dressing up & hanging out with people I might not get to see every day and of course dance parties when the reception comes.

I've been wrestling with the marriage question for a while. For much of my college life & even into grad school I assumed at some point I would probably get married. If so, the goal was to somehow attain enough developmental normalcy and get to that point where I could manage issues from my past adaptively enough so that it wouldn't freak out Mr. Whoever and it wouldn't affect the next generation. Well, that whole achieving-developmental-normalcy was completely ripped apart with my diagnosis of PPD-NOS. Suddenly I was like, "Crap!!!!!! I will never be normal even though my HDFS training equips me to develop / participate in interventions that help children and families lead a more normal life. Hm. God, that's ironic, but unfortunately not very funny." I also thought, "Wait, if I struggle with social interactions and other stuff, does that make marriage possible?" According to Dr. Grandin, it's only possible if I married another person on the spectrum since our brains would be more similar. She bases this on interviews with married people who have autism since she herself is not married. According to Donna Williams (author of Nobody Nowhere and a special education teacher / consultant in Australia), it's possible because she's married and has high-functioning autism as well as multiple personality disorder (resulting from extreme physical/verbal abuse as a child) as well as other DSM diagnoses. According to my friends, it's possible if God wills it and whether He chooses me to be married to a person on the spectrum or an NT person, He has His purposes.

This should close the case, but there is more to consider than just the fact that I officially have an ASD. What was my goal in marriage? It was to go down the expected trajectory of a Christian 20-something woman: Get saved, get involved in college and/or young singles ministry, get married, focus on raising children to know Christ and minister to other families in the same demographic. Much of the women's literature in the Christian world is geared toward married women, and the singles literature (from what I've read) is: be content & learn about God until Mr. Whoever-God-Chooses comes along. Having noticed these patterns, it made sense to conform my life to these expectations. Also, Mom really wants grandkids at some point, and as an only child, I'm her only source for that. Dr. Grandin has several other brothers and sisters, so her parents got grandkids from other sources. Therefore, she probably didn't have that pressure like I do. In summary, my goal in getting married was to say: I'm following the normative pattern of a Christian woman's life and I'm giving Mom grandkids. I know God would use marriage for His sake and that is something that still excites me, but to be honest, that wasn't my primary motivation.

Another thing to consider that God helped me understand from Mitch's message yesterday on building intellectual towers for ourselves is this: am I giving up on marriage because I might be bad at it and thus need to build my accomplishments in other areas such as research, a career, getting a PhD, etc? When I realized this, I thought, "Dang." Marriage or singleness with a focus on professional development and/or getting a PhD would not be glorifying to God if the primary motivation behind either one was just to further my own sense of accomplishment. That is humbling. Very humbling. This made me cry, but I needed it. Both the crying and the humbling. Yes, if I stayed single AND got a PhD AND became a professor, I would live a life really similar to Dr. Grandin :D (though I will probably never be as famous as her & that's completely ok!!!) but if I lived for my own accomplishments, how much would I really be allowing God to work through my life to reach academia? Or if I had a career & stuff but lived for that, how much would I rally be allowing God to work through my life to reach my community & workplace? Similarly, if I got married and lived for that I would be in danger making my husband and children live up to the make-Katie-appear-like-she-is-developmentally-adjusted and I would be repeating the same parent-child cycle that I'm still hurting from.

God, You made my brain, You determined the places I should live in order that I may know You and learn more about You and come alongside You in Your work. For these things and for Your redemptive power and Your ability to teach me more about Yourself and conform me to Your Son (by Your grace) even when it hurts and makes me cry - I am really really really really thankful. So, Thank You for making me realize that my singlness or marriage must firstly be motivated by You and Your glory. My accomplishments either professionally, academically, or developmentally will fade literally a million years from now. But what You do with my life when I have submitted to You will remain. That's humbling and still makes me cry. But God, I just ask You to use me in whatever capacity for Your glory and Your glory and accomplishments alone. I know I will never perfectly submit to You. THANKS FOR SHOWING YOUR FORGIVENESS AND PROPITIATION FOR THAT and a TON of other things on the Cross. Amen :)

PS: In Heaven, I actually get to give You a hug and that's pretty exciting! :)

A specialist mind needs a like-minded person

2010-11-02T09:14:00.000-06:00

I wrote about the joys of having a specialist mind in an August blog post on this site. Going throughout life these past few months, I've just wanted another like-minded similarly-wired person just to hang with and to share random awesome nerdy stuff with and someone that I didn't have to act normal around. This need to have someone to relate to and someone to go to and lean on has been a void in my life that has never really been filled. I knew I was different in childhood, but I couldn't figure out why. I received support from teachers, relatives, and my mom as a child, but I was also called to be a support to an adult earlier than is developmentally appropriate.

The lights came on in my head during my quiet time when I was going through Beth Moore's Breaking Free study where she goes over how God can fill the voids in our lives with His unfailing love. In Ephesians 3:19 Paul prays that we would know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. According to Moore, the word know in the Greek is ginosko which implies experiential learning of a concept - learning by trial or perception. I pretty much 'eeeked' because I thought: "THIS MEANS THAT PEOPLE THAT ARE VISUAL LEARNERS OR CONCRETE THINKERS LIKE DR. GRANDIN CAN EXPERIENCE GOD'S LOVE!!!!" That was super-awesome to think about because I think it would be way cool if she came to know Christ :) :)

Then God reminded me: You need to learn this too. Then I was like, "What!?! Oooooooooooh! I get it!" The reason I wasn't getting God as the One to run to / confide in / lean on and who could relate to my crazy brain was because I haven't really experienced it. Until now!!!!! Until He gave me that nerdy thought about experiential learning. During seminars on college teaching in grad school we talked about different learning styles and how students can get concepts using more than one learning style and experiential learning is the best method. God, using this study, revealed that He works in that same way. He understands our own unique learning styles because He has wired our brains in specific ways. For example, I'm an auditory learner, so oftentimes, theological concepts really click when I hear them integrated into a song. I also get excited when I can compare concepts to HDFS related concepts. God knows what my special interests are at the time (because He's God!!!!!!!!!!) and so He uses them in teaching me things. Creationism has been a long term special-interest within my Christian life, so He uses biological concepts and reminders of Himself as Creator to really root and ground me.

What does this mean to tie this all together? If all this is true, I no longer have this need to try and find that one earthly mentor that understands my brain and thinking to be my go-to person. God is more than enough. He wired my brain and knows any/all special interests I currently have or ever will have, and He has shown me that He can connect with me in moments where all I can do is jump around and eek or if I go into a meltdown and all I can do is cry. He knows the voids in my life left by my past, and He knows how best to fill them - even more than any attachment specialist or HDFS interventionist. I can stand on this foundation of truth with confidence and seek God to lean on no matter if I have to go to Him for mundane ordinary things or share an ultra-nerdy moment with Him or ask Him for help when my ASD makes functioning difficult.

Though I have began to get this in fragments, it seems like I got a more complete picture of how this works today. As God teaches this through experiential learning - meaning throughout my life - I will always be learning this at a deeper level and will only truly see it in full in Heaven. It is in that hope that I continue to press on and ask God to teach me more about His love and presence now.

God in the darkness of my past & rebuilder of my future

2010-10-13T17:10:00.000-06:00

My friends keep bringing up the song Our God is Greater by Chris Tomlin because the Summitview worship band has led us in it a few (a lot) of times. It's a pretty epic song!!!! That song came just in time in my life to remind me that God is bigger than any limitation I had. I think I had newly been diagnosed with my autism spectrum disorder when we sang that song. Of course, I ended up crying profusely upon hearing the song & digesting the lyrics.

Thanks to having a 'specialist mind', I can hone in on one concept and just go with it. The part of the song that really made me cry initially and has resonated with me every time I hear it is, "Into the darkness You shine / Out of the ashes we rise / There's no one like You / None like You ..." THAT LINE HAS SO MUCH MEANING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First of all, God is the source of energy and in the beginning He made electromagnetic energy shine out of the void of nothingness as His first act of creation!!!!! Second of all, God shines light into man's heart which is dark due to sin (2 cor 4:6) and this light is the Gospel. Third of all, God shines light into dark circumstances - not just in general, but He is with us through each individual circumstance & shines His light in a specific way so that we see it. This is backed by Psalm 139:11-12 "If I say 'surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me' even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to You." I read that and eeeked and then cried because I can see God's light shining in my own circumstances. Yes, I didn't always have someone who was consistently there for me emotionally, but I had a ton of other adults I could go to. I attended a church that emphasized works-based gospel, but I had a grandfather that showed me what it truly meant to trust God as an example to keep my heart close to Him.

Second of all, God brings us up from the ashes of utter destruction. Back to.... GENESIS again! Thanks pastor John Meyer for this :) Adam and Eve blew it with eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, but God didn't annihilate them on the spot. He gave them the promise that the woman's seed (Jesus) will crush the serpant (Satan's) head right there afterward. He clothed them and told them that they would still work the ground and be fruitful, but there would be pain now. Yet He didn't completely leave them. Isaiah has a bunch of references about freeing the captives and restoring them, with the clearest proclamation of bringing them out of the ashes in Isaiah 61. He brought Ruth from being a young widow in a hostile nation to marry an awesome kinsman-redeemer & bear a son that would be in the Messianic line!!!!! He brings Paul out of being a super-fanatical persecutor to church-planter / New Testament writer. He has brought me out of being an abandoned traumatized child with a bleak developmental outlook to being His child - His daughter whom He is using to reach the next generation & people in FoCo - by His grace. And He has turned my whole ordeal with discovering that I have an ASD from pure crushing dissapointment/grief/anger to an area where He can show His sustaining grace when/if I let Him :)

Into the darkness You shine
Out of the ashes we rise
There's no one like You
None like You

Our God is greater
Our God is stronger
God You are higher than any other
Our God is healer
Awesome in power
Out God
Our God

:)

Is this a veneer of academic musing?

2010-10-11T22:29:00.001-06:00

Expanding outside my current fixation can hurt sometimes. Not because I'm expanding outside it, but because of what I might find. Today I began reading Nobody Nowhere by Donna Williams who shares her experiences living with Autism. She appears to have more severe sensory issues than Dr. Grandin and more severe delays in speech. However, the aspect of her life that struck me the most even in the opening pages was the trauma she experienced at the hands of a physically abusive parent. She understands the origin of her abuse in adulthood when she is able (as best she can) to examine this parent's life. Another thing that struck me was Donna's writing is raw experience and emotion while Dr. Grandin's is a blend of personal experience that is generally coherently backed with the research that has been done as of the publishing of that particular book. APA style citations dot Dr. Grandin's narratives. In a sense, Dr. Grandin's life is told in a nice orderly way and polished by an academic lecture-style veneer that isn't too obscure for the general population to see through.

As I read Dr. Grandin's work and listened to her lectures (both on YouTube and LIVE!!!) I could touch this veneer (figuratively speaking) and trace the logical flow of her life and how the research explained it. I could stand on it and begin walking out my life as a person who newly discovered she was on the autism spectrum. Yet, there are parts of my life that are too painful to be ordered as nicely and laid out. There is still pain from parts of my childhood that come out and are too painful to try and really analyze and put into this nice life-backed-by-research framework.

Donna Williams doesn't try and fit her life into a nice research-backed narrative. She lets us see the pain and experience the pain she experienced. I hurt when I read how she hurt because she touches those pieces in my life that are too painful to handle just on an academic level. There is no academic veneer to hold her life together or hold back any of the pain. In defense of Dr. Grandin, she also is honest about her painful experiences. They came in different ways than Donna's did, and her pain is just as real. However, it's easy for me to see how Dr. Grandin could focus on academically analyzing her experiences rather than accessing the pain if her style is to emphasize how her life connects to autism and neurological research rather than just a pure narrative of her life.

In that moment of that realization, I cried. I had checked out the book from the CSU library and was reading it under a tree outside the CSU Animal Sciences building and ended up laying on the grass with my face buried in my sweatshirt crying. Because I did that exact thing that I could see Dr. Grandin doing. I would rather write a nice semi-academic book on attachment, autism spectrum disorders, and sensory deprivation and weave in my own experiences than write about my pure emotions and experiences. I would rather see my life and experience my life the way Dr. Grandin presents her life: Protected and presented behind an academic veneer. The pain is still too hard and I don't like to cry. I do cry, but I wish I didn't hurt after 20+ years since some of these experiences. Yet I know that God doesn't want me to hide my pain behind any sort of academic research. He was there and sympathized with every pain & psychological trauma I have felt. God wants to reach behind the academic veneer of all of us that have our experiences as inspiration for our research because He doesn't want our theses, dissertations, poster-presentations, and peer-reviewed publications. He wants what we feel deep down in our souls - He wants to touch the deepest pain we have so we can feel His love & healing there. That's what He taught me as I began to read Donna William's unabashed account of her life. He wants me to open my life up like that - not just for the world to see & learn from - but so I can feel His hand.

Songs and lessons from back in the day revisited

2010-09-15T15:45:00.001-06:00

My roommate and I were singing worship songs that we used to sing in The Rock a long long time ago in a dorm far far away. The song that made me cry was Give us Clean Hands by Chris Tomlin. I remember singing this with Aaron Ritter or Nathan Hrouda leading us with the acoustic guitar in Danforth Chapel. In my Junior year, I'd sing this with my friends, our voices bouncing off the stone walls & floor. Tears would be streaming down my eyes because I was asking God to rid my life of an idol. That idol was this chemistry professor that a fellow Rocker and I had the previous year. We had tried to reach out to him, and I had gotten to know him a bit during office hours since I struggled in his class at the beginning. Over the summer, I realized that I still thought about him because I wanted him to be there as a bit of a father-figure since my mom was dealing with her brother's cancer and needed my support at the time. At the same time, my grandpa who was my current father-figure was showing clear signs of dementia. Over that summer and into that next year, I often would go to this professor instead of God for my issues or just sit there and wonder what he would think rather than ask God.

Yet I was reminded that he was an idol every time I sang that song. "We bow our hearts / we bend our knees / oh Spirit come make us humble / we turn our eyes / from evil things / oh Lord we cast down our idols / give us clean hands / give us pure hearts / let us not lift our souls to another .... oh God let this be / a generation that seeks / that seeks your face O God of Jacob. " In a sense, I was lifting my soul to another.

l did this a bit this summer too when I found out that I was on the autism spectrum. This time, I hadn't met this particular professor except by watching documentaries and lectures she did. Dr. Temple Grandin is a bit of a legend in the autism world as well as the livestock world. I wanted to read her stuff & wished I could spend a day with her as someone who could mentor me & understand how my brain worked. I knew about the father-figure void, I didn't know I also was looking for a mother-figure. I realized that at points, I wished she would serve as that person to tell me that everything was ok, that it was ok that I had these struggles, and that she had gone before me and would help me along if needed. Well, as we've never met, she can't do that, no matter how much I spent imagining that she could.

I allowed God into these thoughts much sooner than I had allowed Him into my thoughts the last time this happened. He was the One who comforted me where I felt that lack of someone being there. He reminded me that He is my Creator and knows my brain better than anyone else. He is also accessible 24/7 and can handle my most giddy giggly moments to my most extreme meltdowns better than any earthly parent or parent-like figure. In fact, He was present even in the midst of a really bad meltdown about a month ago. When I sang Give us Clean Hands, I cried because though God had to take me through this "Yes this professor is awesome and could possibly fill the parental void, he/she isn't supposed to. I am" process, He taught me more about Himself in deeper ways each time. Knowing that He is Father, Healer, Overcomer, the Ultimate Famous One, the best example, the ultimate strength in our weakness, and the ultimate Comforter was worth all the tears I have shed through both of these processes.

Multiply Your Life - Turn it up as a case study!

2010-08-20T09:40:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I was looking up some random stuff & found this article here about deep pressure as a therapy for people on the autism spectrum. The author, Dr. Grandin (yay CSU profs!) used her life as a case study and then incorporated other research to support her experiences in her literature review. After that, she wrote about an experiment she conducted with other college students using the same deep pressure techniques she used on herself. Research backing her experiences and the data from her experiment with college students verified that the technique she discovered is valid & works.

Something that hit me in the midst of me reading that like, "THIS IS SO NERDY BUT SO AWESOME!!!" is this: she opened her life up to help other people and she's used her strengths to improve life for animals. In her journal articles, she backs up her work with research, but there's a sense that she pours her life out on these pages because she wants others to benefit. Her life is a bit convicting because I have to ask myself: how much am I willing to pour out my life - both its weaknesses and its strengths for others? The apostle Paul admits that his life is poured out like a drink offering (2 Timothy 4:6) and in multiple places he speaks candidly about his weaknesses, the most famous being in 2 Cornithians 12. where he boasts about his weaknesses. In a way, Dr. Grandin does this by being up front with her sensory struggles or other issues related to autism and how she's used research to figure out how to cope.

I've struggled with attachment issues, low self-esteem, and other issues because of different things in my past. All this has been complicated by an ASD and I have had to learn how to cope as well. However, I have more than just research to lean on. I have the words of my Creator!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) :) :) He has seen me in my darkest moments. When I was crying too hard for words & was alone, He heard me when in my little heart I asked where He was. When I tried to get to Him by doing good, He showed me that all have sinned and fallen short of His glory, but I could be justified by His grace by Christ. As I let Him free me from the effects of my past & remove the shame of having multiple disabilities, I can share this experience with other people. If others learn from my life - not about what I did, but more about how God can help them, than this is pouring out my life in a similar way as Dr. Grandin has. Yet, that journal article focuses only at relieving physical/neurological sensory issues. God - when I allow Him to use my life - can change people's life here on earth, but also give them hope for eternity.

Worship in the Specialist Mind

2010-08-04T17:30:00.002-06:00

Several people think about a mind that is on the autism spectrum as being a specialist mind. In the DSM-IV, one of the main symptoms of classic Autism, atypical Autism, or Aspergers Syndrome is that someone has a special interest in a select few topics to the point where he or she has difficulty talking or thinking about other things. That was pretty much my life to a T in elementary school. I didn't get any sort of social skills training until junior high when my two aunts worked on it with me. With their help, I was able to talk with friends about more than my fixations. These fixations (or special interests as other people might call them) were mainly around people, places, natural science topics, or medical topics. Good things resulted from several fixations: My medicine fixation got me to premed, my science fixation got me into psychology / HDFS and fueled my interest in research and now I have a master's degree. When I listen to interviews by Temple Grandin, I can tell when she starts going into her fixations, even though she has had training on speaking as a professional. One thing that's nice is that others know her fixations so they generally keep things within those interests. She often starts to tangent into her cattle research or about stuff she's written about early intervention for children on the Autism spectrum whenever she's answering a question and something related to the question or her answer reminds her of those two topics.

When I was little, my special interests were not dealt with in the most adaptive way (more on that here if you really want to know). The only special interest that others tried to stop Dr. Grandin from having was her thing with the squeeze chute. They put a weird Freudian spin on it, and now all developmental psychologists know that Freud's theories are pretty whacked and the only reason we ever talk about him was because he knew early development was important. Erik Erickson straightened a lot of Freud's stuff out, so that's good. Anyway, Dr. Grandin still talk about how it was hard for her to explain to others that the squeeze chute met a sensory need she had, and no one got it until sensory dysfunction started to be researched. In fact, she used this fixation to advocate for research and intervention for sensory issues, especially for people on the Autism spectrum.

Wow... speaking about tangenting, I'll give people bonus points if they can figure out my current fixations... ahem.. anyway, how does all this back-story relate to worship in a specialist mind? As a Christian, I am to submit my mind to Christ. Yup. Even the not-normal parts because as Creator, He allowed my DNA to be sequenced to express all my neurotypical and autistic traits! Something I wondered was: How will God use any fixations I have or end up having for His glory? If God hard-wired my brain this way, it must be for a reason that He sees is good.

I got a glimpse of the answer during worship at church when the worship leader asked us to focus on one specific trait of God as we sang a song. It was one of those, "I GET IT!" moments. Paul often prayed for people to know more about one of God's attributes specifically. If someone has a specialist mind, he or she can take a particular aspect of God and dig deep for information about it and how other attributes of Him relate to it or how it is played out in the Bible. I've had this happen before :) During my premed days, God tackled me with His Truth that He is Creator and He did not create by evolution. He used our biology major pastor to do it :) I went from being the skeptic evolutionist girl to the girl everyone knew talked about Creation and God as Creator. I still do to some extent, but that really fit well with my special interest of medicine at the time, so I had a one track mind for both for a very long while. Did it help? Yes. No matter if I found the world confusing or painful, knowing there was a Person who created it and redeemed it was my comfort. It kept me humble because I didn't learn things only with the intent of puffing myself up. I knew that Someone had made the human body, chemistry, the physical laws, and He allowed me to learn them for His glory.

I think in heaven, we will have perfect brains that will be able to also be specialist brains. We will never stop learning about God, therefore, we would need a lot of storage room to learn about His many attributes. Yet we will not do it in isolation. We will do it in perfect community, extending perfect love to each other and being in perfect love and relationship with Jesus Christ who made us and redeemed us all!!!! :)

GOD IS THE FAMOUS ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

2010-08-03T08:08:00.004-06:00

I wrote something sort of similar in my other blog... Today I read the story of Hezekiah and I am always struck by how much he pursued God, yet pride was still his downfall. It started when he thought that God loved him more than most after he was miraculously healed. He got comfortable with his accomplishments and he showed them off to the Babylonians as 'his.' Nope. Not his. God's.

I think God is really ramming this idea down in my brain that HE is the FAMOUS ONE, not anyone else (ahem: Temple Grandin, Chris Tomlin, Mark Driscoll, John Piper, Beth Moore, Corrie Ten Boom, Tim Tebow, John Elway or anyone else that I think is pretty cool & the world sees as famous). By the way, wow, that's a decent list going... anyway, going off the song Famous One, it's interesting how God's fame is established as Creator. "YOU are the LORD / the Famous One, Famous one / Great is your name in all the earth / The heavens declare You're glorious, glorious / Great is your fame beyond the earth " The song goes into how Christ is sovereign and the desire of every heart & how He alone is God. Then it goes back to God as Creator

"The morning star is shining through / and every eye is watching you / REVEALED BY NATURE & MIRCALES /You are beautiful / YOU ARE BEAITUFUL! " :)

Yay! God as Creator is one fixation that definitely can go deeper & that is one that He definitely gave me because I initially denied His title as Creator to His FACE - even after I accepted Christ. Then God used John Meyer to slap me around some until I was running around as premed going, "God is Creator - EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!" He always brings me back to this Truth & then other Truth flows out of that :)

God alone

Is my Creator, Savior, Comfort, Example.

He lifts me up and brings me down.

He has formed my brain with its weaknesses and talents.

And any accomplishments are for His glory.

May I walk humbly before my God

Repenting when I sin,

Running back to Him when I put my hope in another

And may He use my life to bring others to know Him

As Creator, Savior, Comfort, so they can sing along with me

That He is the Famous One, and His name is great beyond the earth

To answer a friend's question

2010-07-30T08:01:00.004-06:00

Click on this to make larger so you can actually read it!

There we go!!! In the world of academia, this concept map would be called a model! These are great ways to put really nebulous concepts into more concrete and/or visual terms for those of us that need it. In academese, we'd say that character produces hope when mediated by the degree to which one is conformed to the image of Christ & the degree to which said person understand more of God's character. (Yes, I am a nerd. WOO!)

This is my attempt to answer a dear sister in Christ's question, "How does character produce hope?" based off of Romans 5:4 which states "and endurance produces character, and character produces hope." (ESV)

Character is produced via conforming to Christ's image usually through suffering. OUCH. No DOUBT that I know this. When hope in everything else is stripped away, I am left with only one option: entrusting myself to a faithful Creator (1 Peter 4:19). The degree that I entrust myself to God as my faithful Creator is highly correlated to my knowledge of Him & how much I really want that relationship. This degree of trust is also dependent (or moderated) by how much I really want to seek God. This may be why God chooses to sanctify His children by suffering. If life is good, we might be tempted to not really seek God, thus our trust in Him and knowledge of Him may not grow as fast. Though even in suffering, I've been prone to turn toward other things than God. Yes, here's another nerdy graph to illustrate my point :)

This is why we need God's grace to grow. This is why Paul covered grace by faith & justification before this point, because if we tried to work through this logic model & graph on our own, there would be no forward motion. We wouldn't even get to the mediating factors. It is Christ who is our comforter & all in all & here in the love & power of Christ we stand :) :) Woot to Stuart Townsend who wrote In Christ Alone in 2002 because that song is pretty awesome :) Anyway, Christ makes it possible for character to produce hope because is the Triune God that is the driving force behind conforming us to His image & behind us learning more about the character of God through the Word :)

So in sum, yes character does produce hope - in a very complicated way and all by God's grace!!!!!!! :)

My Example

2010-07-24T09:10:00.001-06:00

Since I've realized that I have this new challenge of an ASD and how it plays out in the way I live, I have had to reconfigure and rework my life - the way I see my past, present, and future. How exactly does this recently discovered (or diagnosed) piece of my identity into my life overall and how do I live knowing that it influences what I do without it controlling me and how I think of my identity overall? How much influence does this have on my decision making about my career and other aspects of my future? How do I tell others? Why does God have me in this position? How does this affect my continued healing from my past?

To answer these questions, I've longed for a role-model, an example. Someone who's been there that I can ask these questions to. I wish I could spend a day or several days just talking to a specific person about this who's been there and see where she's been in life, not just what she has written down, but to really understand what her life has been like. I wish she could be there to walk down at least the first part of this 'new path' with me so if I needed anything - an encouraging word, an 'I understand, I've been there, here's how to handle it' piece of advice.

However, this person has limitations. Any person I would pick to be my role-model would have limitations. There's no possible way to learn all the research around ASD. And every person with ASD has it affect him or her differently. Therefore, there could be things she struggles with that I don't and vice versa. This person can't always be there 24/7 and even if there was a decent friendship there, friendships aren't always perfect.

Then who is my example? Who do I really really want to be with me down my path of life as I go with this new challenge? Who do I really want to be there when things get rough or when I achieve something that I didn't think was possible? Who do I really want there when I get in a funk and completely loose it? I know the answer. His name is Jesus. We as believers are called to imitate His life, follow His example, and thus be an example to those around us. Christ gave of Himself at The Cross. Christ has felt abandoned. Christ has felt rejected by the world. Christ is my Creator. He ordained my days before they were ever written. He knew exactly what I would face as I went through life. He knows every single piece of research, every discovery about the brain & human development that we will ever discover, and He knows all the secret nuggets of nerdy awesomeness that we will never ever be able in our limited human knowledge & technology (in a fallen world) to discover because He is Creator.

God, Savor, Creator,

I need You as I walk down this path. I know I don't physically see You, but I see Your hand in Creation, in Your Word, in the lives of other people, even those that I want to be my role-models that I don't know if they know You yet. When I am sad, when I am frustrated, when You allow me to have victory, may I come to You with all of it. You are there when I can't sleep. You are there when I have a melt-down and seem all alone. You have seen my life- all my life, every happy moment, every painful moment, You've heard every encouraging word that's been said to me and every time someone has snapped at me out of frustration or anger because she couldn't understand what was wrong with me or how to fix it. You know my path. You have ordained my days. You are my example in humility, service, love, and compassion. You give me empathy beyond what I have ever been able to feel. You offer unconditional forgiveness because You died for all my sins on the Cross. You sustain the relationship when I withdraw into my own world and want to shut You out. You see those moments anyway and are there with compassion and no condemnation when I come to You. You take away my shame.

Come Thou fount of every blessing

Tune my heart to sing Thy grace

Streams of mercy never ceasing

Call for songs of loudest praise

Teach me some melodious sonnet

Sung by flaming tounges above

Praise this mount I'm fixed upon it

Mount of Thy redeeming love!

Here's my life and Here am I to lead. Amen :)

I still taste & see that He is good

2010-07-21T15:09:00.004-06:00

Psalm 34 is really awesome. I think I might've done a verse-by-verse study on it at one point, but with a more general theme woven through. However, I wanted to focus on how this verse applies to my dealings with adjusting to life knowing that I'm on the autism spectrum. Throughout this process, there have been times where I've focused more on gathering information and looking at how other people lived life on the spectrum than going to God for direction. I've also wanted to talk to others on the spectrum (especially one particular person who has achieved great worldly success even while being autistic) about issues that were coming up rather than going to God. These things are not wrong in themselves, but in absence of God, they can only give me so much hope.

Psalm 34 (ESV)	My thoughts
I will bless the Lord at all times; his praise shall continually be in my mouth.	All times means all times. Philippians 4:4 says "Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again, rejoice." This is only possible when I realize that
My soul makes its boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. (NIV says: Let the afflicted hear and rejoice).	My soul was prone to boasting in my master's degree, in other things, but again, like Paul, I must boast in the Lord. That is the gist of 2 Cor 12:9-10. I don't just boast in the Lord in my weaknesses to make myself feel better, but so others in similar situations or with other weaknesses can be encouraged. Affliction also leads to humility which leads to dependence in and eventually joy in God.
Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together!	For everyone that has dealt with disabilities & illness, there is hope! I have found Jesus! Come with me, see who He is, exalt Him together!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK J
I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears. Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.	Yup! This is the line in Taste & See (lyrical adaptation to this song) that made me cry really hard. My shame is gone as You draw near!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Growing up, no one realized that I was on the mild end of the autism spectrum. Therefore, all my behaviors that fell in that category were often corrected in a negative way (see my blog post on that). I was pushed to be normal and now knowing that I'm not still hurts. Growing up, I feared that I would be less of a person if I didn't achieve that sense of normal. However, God intervened, saving me just as I am. He is my Creator and knows my limitations better than I do and better than any assessment can measure. Because Christ took away any impurities standing between me and God, I can stand before my Creator without shame.
This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.	In times when I was alone in my room as a child, I would pray and ask God to help me get through life. I knew I needed Him, even though I was operating on a works-based gospel for a while. God answered with the ultimate solution to my problems: Jesus Christ, and also allowing me to get tools such as early interventions & really amazing teachers to help me as I developed. God protected me throughout my childhood by allowing me to be in an over-sheltered environment so I didn't get into bad situations with peers that, in retrospect, I probably wouldn't have been able to handle with my ASD.
Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!	EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEK J If David had my manerisms, I'm guessing he would've paused while writing this and maybe jumped around in his room and eeeked and then thought, "Hm, I should verbalize that – like THAT!!!!!" I have tangiblely tasted & seen that God is good even in this 'discovering' my ASD experience. God used me to share the Gospel with my evaluator, and He has given me amazing friends at Summitview to help me J
Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints, for those who fear him have no lack! The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing.	So I might lack certain social skills & cognitive stuff, but eternally, I lack no good thing. I have full access to my Creator & the securest attachment ever because God made it possible not me. I have the hope that in eternity with God, all the ASD stuff will fall away and I will live with God and others that He has redeemed in perfect relationship which btw NO ONE has experienced, forever! Even the most accomplished HDFS interventionists with amazing families and even those that have overcome insurmountable odds may still feel like they lack something at times. But those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. That's how I understand the verse in my head.
Come, O children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.	Statistically (and yes, I know God doesn't operate according to statistics), people with diagnoses on the autism spectrum marry less. However, this doesn't mean that God can't use me to impact the next generation. In fact, He has used me in various classroom & babysitting capacities, even if it was for short periods of time. My prayer is for the next generation to see God working through my life.
What man is there who desires life and loves many days, that he may see good? Keep your tongue from evil and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.	I'm thankful that I grew up in a family that knew right & wrong and had a pretty solid Biblical worldview. Temple Grandin often talks about growing up in the 1950's where most families followed standard social conventions that she had to learn (though her parents & teachers had to be more patient to teach her). This training in childhood helped me seek God, even if it was trying to please Him by doing good rather than seeking Him alone for salvation. That part came eventually because His kindness led me to repentance and ultimately salvation through faith in Christ alone. This strong moral understanding & training is a very strong protective factor in both our lives.
The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.	I am righteous because Christ imputed that on me (2 cor 5:21). Thus, He hears my prayers because they are not hindered by my sin (Is 59:2). J This is not true for those that ultimately do not accept Christ as their Savior L
When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.	How has the Lord already delivered me from the challenges of having an ASD? By being my ultimate source of comfort because He knows what it's like not to fit in, and He has overcome the world & all its imperfections. He is my hope.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken.	Another EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK verse J I have definitely had a lot of afflictions developmentally: attachment issues, early trauma, secondary PTSD from my mom's experience with my early medical issues, clinical depression and body image issues in adolescence, and all with the thread of autistic tendancies running through my development. Wow. And yet God preserved my intellect so I could go to school & eventually Colorado State University where I accepted Him as Savior. He has healed me from a lot of the trauma, though there's still yet to heal. He has allowed me to get a Master's in Human Development & Family studies to help others have a better developmental outcome than I had. These things have scarred me, but not crushed me. And that is all by God's grace.
Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.	Those who do not ultimately accept Christ will be eternally condemmed (2 Thes 1:8-9). THE LORD HAS REDEEMED MY LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have taken refuge in Him. Yes, interventions that I can use on this earth are good, but my ultimate hope is God. He works all things, including this, for the good of those who love Him & for His purposes (Romans 8:28-9) so that others may see Christ. In this, I know that God has a purpose for my life, even though it's not – nor will it ever be - a typical life. Therefore, I know that wherever God leads me and whatever challenges I face due to ASD or other things, He will use them for His kingdom if I give them to Him.

Wow. Seriously. Wow. God is pretty awesome! J

I will love You Lord forever

My lips will always sing Your praise

From deep inside I feel it rising

Come glorify the Lord with me

Come glorify the Lord with me

I taste & see that You are good

I hide myself within Your love

In your presence I lack nothing

You're all I want and You are here with me

Yes You're here with me J

I looked for You and Lord You found me

Delivered me from all my fears

With hearts wide open faces shining

My shame is gone as You draw near

My shame is gone as You draw near

I taste & see that You are good

I hide myself within Your love

In your presence I lack nothing

You're all I want and You are here with me

Jesus, Oh You're glorious

In Your presence I lack nothing

In Your presence I lack nothing

In Your presence I lack nothing

In Your presence I lack nothing.

Fate (more accurately Grace) Smiled at Destiny

2010-07-20T11:18:00.000-06:00

Wonder by Natalie Merchant

Fate smiled at destiny

Laughed as she came to my cradle

Know this child will be able

Laughed as my body she lifted

Know this child will be gifted

With love, with patience and with faith

She'll make her way

People see me

I'm a challenge to your balance

I'm over your heads

How I confound you and astound you

To know I must be one of the wonders

Of God's own creation

And as far as you can see you can offer me

No explanation

Fate smiled at destiny

Laughed as she came to my cradle

Know this child will be able

Laughed as she came to my mother

Know this child will not suffer

Laughed as my body she lifted

Know this child will be gifted

With love, with patience and with faith
She'll make her way

full lyrics here

Natalie Merchant's song Wonder was inspired by a woman with a disability. When I first listened to it, I sort of knew what it was about, but not really. I always liked the part of the song that I posted here. It's taken on a new meaning as I've had to deal with my limitations in a new way.

I was listening to this song again today and suddenly I realized, "This song is really fitting for Temple Grandin and Helen Keller.". For both, the world would've looked at them in their early lives and just pushed them aside. Experts in the medical and psychological fields at the time would've said that they were destined to have a really poor outcome and a life largely cut off from the world. Yet God graciously provided both of them with advocates that helped them to communicate with the world and achieve what many would consider greatness. Helen Keller became a writer & speaker as well as an advocate for the blind & deaf. Temple Grandin is currently a professor & an advocate for those of us on the autism spectrum.

Why did I focus on these two people when I listened to this song? During my elementary school years, I looked up to Helen Keller & became slightly fixated on her life because I was becoming more aware of how my severe nearsightedness limited me & I also dealt with multiple installments of ear-tubes, so I had ear problems as well. Helen Keller was that person that 'went before me' in some respects to show that even if I had multiple sensory limitations, I could still adapt to my environment, and accomplish something.

Recently, I was diagnosed as having PPD-NOS otherwise known as atypical autism. However, I was SUPER-CLOSE to being diagnosed with High Functioning Autism. Even as someone who studied Human Development & Family Studies, facing life lived on the autism spectrum still seems like a very daunting task. One of the first things I thought of was this documentary I watched in one of my HDFS classes about early interventions for children on the spectrum. Temple Grandin was the person that narrated that documentary, thus I began to read more of her work. I guess you could say that I am borderline fixated on her life as well, but here's the reason: She is paving the way of how to cope with life on the spectrum, and she knows that her life is being used this way.

It's like God sees that there are certain disabilities that are very difficult to live with, so He - in His timing - puts these people that live out a certain disability very publicly and in so doing, pave the way for others as a way to inspire and provide hope. It's His grace that people marvel at and cause wonder that Natalie Merchant writes about. Helen Keller & Temple Grandin's stories remind me that it's grace that we see in our own lives & others that gives us hope that He will help us make our way.

Grace smiled at destiny

No this child will be able

Laughed as my body she lifted

No this child will be gifted

she'll make her way
(lyrics adapted)

PS: Here's a video that explains the story of Wonder:

Spiritual Head-Injuries during Childhood

2010-07-09T22:04:00.003-06:00

Jen Smith has a really great blogpost on her blog about the Helmet of Salvation: here in reference to how the spiritual helmet guards one's thoughts. My dear roommate sent me some reading about how the helmet in the Roman soldier's armor was a key life-saving piece of armor. If the soldier sustained a head-injury there was no MRI, no neuro-surgeon standing by to care for his injury in a sterile environment. The soldier could bleed out from an open wound, sustain a stroke, have pressure build inside his skull, contract an infection after a few days, etc. Basically, head-injuries pretty much meant death back in the day. Even now, brain-trauma from open or closed head wounds can be debilitating. Depending on the nature and location of the injury, different and/or multiple functions can be damaged.

So why am I bringing this up? I had this thought after something happened with me this morning that made me react really badly in a situation where I didn't give anyone including myself grace for messing up. God informed me that I was getting spiritually attacked, thus I needed my armor on pronto. I indignantly asked Him, "Why do I need the helmet of salvation when my BRAIN'S MESSED UP ANYWAY!?!?!" (thanks to a mixture of genetics + early development btw). Then God gave me this word-picture that He knew only a nerdy HDFS / formerly premed person would understand.

He gave me this picture of a child being hit on the head repeatedly & throughout his/her early development. Blows could come from a parental figure, circumstances, lies from the world, or several of those sources. What I was reminded was that spiritually, I was that kid. I took repeated head-trauma to my soul with people & the world saying "I was not normal enough, I was too medically/developmentally difficult to be worthy of true unconditional love, I couldn't do enough to fill a void in someone's life." This damaged the function in my soul that connected to God rightly. You could say that I formed an avoidant attachment to God through this. I wanted to know God, but I felt like He was always mad at me & that He didn't really care because I felt like I was an inconvenience. I also felt a stronger pull than the normal population to pay for what I did wrong by beating myself up both mentally & physically. Therefore, I learned enough theology in Sunday school to get by, but I never praised Him as Creator, and only prayed during crisis moments. Even then I doubted that He would truly listen & come through.

Then in college someone explained to me: Yes, you are sinful. Yes, God is perfect. But God sent His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. God saves us not on our own merit, but because Christ paid our penalty for our sins. I accepted that because it made perfect sense. I couldn't try on my own to be perfect. I needed Christ.

On an eternal-security level, God has secured this attachment. I have His Spirit in me as a deposit as a guarantee (Ephesians 1). On an emotional level, sometimes I feel like I still have a disorganized attachment to God. This is when the head-injured part of my soul still feels the blows from my past. The old injuries are re-opened and God is always in the process of healing them. Will my walk with God be marked by my past soul-injuries for the rest of my earthly life? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe the wounds are so deep that God will be there to intervene to keep them from getting worse, but they may still be there. Maybe He will heal them completely. I know for certain that in Heaven, God will make my soul new, thus healing my wounds once and for eternity.

Like a child that might have had a head-injury & needs extra protection, I must always remember to keep the helmet of salvation on. I must always remind myself that I am saved & allow God to protect my thoughts, especially in crisis situations. I must allow God to keep hold of me in case I loose my step and fall, or something tries to hit me in the head & re-damage me. God, like a good therapeutic professional, knows exactly what I need, is there in a crisis when my wounds flare up & cause me to think or act out of the hurt rather than Truth, and He soothes those wounds & improves my functioning toward Him & the world. Clinging to Him also gives me hope & reassurance that because of His grace, I will walk around feeling the hurt & damage from my spiritual wounds only for this world, and will walk around in perfect relationship with Him forever.

Perservate / Perservation as well as Israel's history and Temple Grandin

2010-06-28T21:27:00.001-06:00

Random title from the randomness of my mind

Perseveration: Uncontrollable repetition of a particular response, such as a word, phrase, or gesture, despite the absence or cessation of a stimulus, usually caused by brain injury or other organic disorder.(cited within an ASD forum 2010)

Yup. I'm currently doing that. As you can probably tell from looking at my posts, I cycle through topics. They do link rather well to circumstances I'm facing at the time, so this whole blog is an interesting look at the history of my life. I guess that's what personal blogs are for. Anyway, my latest fixation or object of my perservating is Temple Grandin. I watched the movie trailer of the HBO movie that bears her name several times tonight. I've also watched some of her speeches and interviews over the last few weeks for educational purposes. I've thumbed through the Animals Make us Human book and read her book Emergence: Labeled Autistic. There's something about someone else walking down the path of a certain disability that gives me hope. Looking back, I was fixated on Helen Keller for the longest time. Other fixations would override that, but I would always gravitate to the movie The Miracle Worker and had parts of it burnt into my brain.

With this fixation, I'm letting God into the crazy world of Katie's brain. I haven't done that before. Some of my fixations have resulted from my need to escape the reality I was living in. The Helen Keller fixation partially arose because I would dream about running away to my favorite teacher (of that year)'s house or at least getting more one on one time with her if I couldn't handle being at home. God has revealed to me that this latest fixation results from these things: I wanted her mother who still spoke of her lovingly in spite of her behaviors & autism. I sympathized with Temple with living in the dark-ages of development (For me, they hadn't figured out some of the sensory deprivation issues kids face coming out of orphanages. For her, it was the unknown of what caused and how to treat autism.), and I long for a future where God will use my weaknesses and shine through them. I know it's promised in the Bible, but I need a tangible example: someone I can see and read about that has gone before me. The downsides of this fixation is that I can compare my life too much to Temple's life. I can think of her as the ultimate authority on autism and what to do with related issues rather than seek God.

Tonight I read the story of Joseph's journey to Egypt that ultimately preserved the nation of Israel during the famine. I was reminded that God's people look at examples of the faith. In the psalms, God is often the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob or any variant of that title. The history of Israel is repeated over and over in the Bible. When the Israelites put their hope in history alone, battles were lost, eventually they took God for granted and got punished for not following Him. However, when David was in a bind, he repeated Israel's history over and over in his head and in the psalms to remind himself of who was behind it. That's what I must do when Temple's story gets repeated over and over in my head. I must not cling to her or to her story too tightly. If my life doesn't follow her script, it will let me down. But if I cling to God who has given her and I life and use this opportunity to pray for her to come to know Christ as her His salvation and His hope, He will not disappoint. He will walk me down the path of my own story, He will show Himself as Savior to her, and both of our lives will be a reflection of His power.

He is Exalted

2010-06-26T08:31:00.002-06:00

Exalt: to raise in rank, power, or character; to elevate by praise or in estimation (glorify)

Througout Israel's history kings and rulers are described as being exalted – raised up by God usually by being appointed king or by having some sort of victory. The Word is clear when a king's exaltation was from God. Whenever a king exalted himself outside of God's will, dire consequences resulted. David laments that his enemies exalt over him, thus they view themselves as having a greater power or character than David. This exaltation of kings culminates in the exaltation of the King of Kings – Jesus. The Father appointed Him over all things (Col 1) and He humbled Himself to die on the cross to redeem Creation which He will rule over when it's His time.

In a fallen world, we exalt ourselves by our accomplishments. We also condone sin (exalt or praise it). Certain sins are especially esteemed in certain cultures and sub-cultures that take pride in going against tradition or God's Word. For example, in this culture relativism is prized above someone saying that he/she has absolute Truth. Even in academia where the scientific method is still based in the philosophy that there is a Truth that we must find, relativism is valued as a concept to be taught to students.

All this background on exaltation validates my thoughts that I've had about the Shane & Shane song "He is Exalted." I've been listening to this song repeatedly as I've undergone my recent assessment. God has made it clear that He is to be elevated above my accomplishments and strengths that are shown through this process as well as be the power that drives me in spite of the weaknesses that I have. He has used me to speak Truth to my evaluator and He is reminding me that my worth is not in falling somewhere in the bounds or normal or near-normal, but my worth is in Christ alone. Any accomplishments I have in spite of my limitations are from Christ, and it is Christ who will use my limitations to help or inspire other people. This indeed is humbling, and I pray that He always reminds me of this Truth.

He is exalted / The King is exalted on high

And I will praise Him

He is exalted / Forever exalted

And I will praise His name

For He is the Lord

Forever His Truth shall reign

Heaven and earth

Rejoice in His holy name

He is exalted / the King is exalted on high

Jesus Your Love has No Bounds II: ASD and Compassion in Christ (my thoughts)

2010-06-23T22:04:00.003-06:00

Thanks to writing academic journal articles, my titles can get lengthy. I mean, some titles take up two whole lines of text when cited in APA format... anyway, grad school musings aside, I was thinking about the ability to have compassion versus the ability to express compassion, especially for people on the autism spectrum or have autistic-like traits.

Why do I bring this up? Recently, it's been pointed out that I do possess some autistic-like traits. Whether they are enough to warrant a diagnosis on the spectrum, or they are remnants of deprivation and trauma in my early-development is yet to be seen. At any rate, I've been thinking about this a lot since a roommate is dealing with a serious illness in her family, and I am helping a single-mother headed family in my church with babysitting. In both these cases, I do feel compassion for both parties. I want to help and be useful to them. However, I know that I may not always show compassion the way others do, or I may not show it in as elaborate ways as I think others show. For example, I might be able to cry along with a friend in some cases, in other cases, I might clam up if I can't think of anything to say. In other cases, I might over-analyze a situation thinking that I'm being helpful when I may just have needed to listen. I may listen, but I might not make eye-contact or seem as attentive as others.

There is this article written by author A.J. Mahari who is a mental health professional and advocate for people with ASD that addresses her observations that people, especially women on the autism spectrum do in fact feel empathy and have noticed improvement in their ways of expressing it. I agree with her that the impairment in compassion can be more in the expression of compassion and love than in the feeling. However, I think that if someone is truly much more impaired in the basic theory-of-mind functions of: Others have emotions, Emotions in others are a consequence of their circumstances, than maybe their sense of compassion may be diminished. I think about what Temple Grandin has described in her writing in wanting to be loved, but unable to express it. She writes about having an aunt that would hug her in a way that would overwhelm her in a sensory way, but yet she longed for her aunt to express love to her in a way that she could handle. Especially after the use of her squeeze machine, she began improving in her ability to express emotions and compassion to both people and animals. Being a master's graduate, I will probably have to hit the academic journals just to see what they say (expect part III of Jesus' Love has no bounds).

Apart from Mahari and Grandin's writings, I think of the line in Phil Whickham's song "Jesus Your Love has no bounds." I was reminded of that tonight as I prayed for the single-parent family. Did I know exactly what they needed? No. But I knew that God did. I know that He gives love and compassion beyond what I can do. Therefore, the most loving thing I could do is pray. And when the mom came home, I was able to chat with her to the best of my ability. She cried just having someone there, and it struck me that I was able to give to her. I am not suddenly devoid of being able to share love and concern just because I'm realizing that I might not always do it the typical way. This is 2 Corinthians 4:7. I am a broken jar in which God has filled with compassion and love beyond what I can hold. He tips me over, and it pours over and out - through the cracks also - but the promise is that God and not this little broken jar will be seen.

Jesus Your Love has no Bounds

2010-06-11T23:04:00.001-06:00

Blogger notes: You know you're getting into some serious blogging when you realize, "Hey I have another blog! I have to update it." and you filter which thoughts go into which blog. Also note, I am updating these from 2 email addresses, hence why there seems to be two authors. Nope. Just me & myself haha! ;)

My roommate and I were blasting some worship music while we were cleaning and we were listening to Phil Whickham's "Jesus Lord of Heaven."

Your love is deeper / than any ocean
Higher / than the heavens
Reaches / beyond the stars in the sky

Jesus Your love has no bounds / Jesus Your love has no bounds

Oh yes, I wrote about this in my journal :)

from my journal
Jesus' love has no bounds. Even when we can't feel it perfectly - when sin gets in the way or our own development gets in the way.

These thoughts continued
When we study emotional availability, a lot of kids with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) have difficulty responding to parents' love. But does that mean they can still feel love? Temple Grandin has written about how her difficulties in expressing love had caused others to withdraw from her, so she had that drive to feel that closeness somehow. After calming some of her sensory issues, she was more able to express / receive physical affection, and thus emotional affection.

Recently, I have wondered how to share the Gospel with people affected with ASD. I am growing in showing and receiving love and affection, but because of my past attachment and developmental history, I struggled in that area. Sometimes I find it is still hard to love a God that's both imminent and transcendent, yet has only appeared in physical form from 0 - 33AD. Yet, this song shows that it is Jesus who first shows His love to everyone - those with typical struggles and those with a bit more challenges. While we were all sinners He died for us. One of my dear friends compared trusting in Jesus to getting up out of what we were trusting in and sitting in His lap. What a cool analogy to share that is concrete and speaks to physical tactile needs! I must always trust in my own life and in others' that Jesus' love has no bounds!

Hope of a job, though not my ultimate hope

2010-05-10T15:17:00.003-06:00

So, there might be a possibility of me getting a job working with adults with disabilities. I have to be careful though, that I do not make this my ultimate hope. Do I wait for the phone to ring for the formal interview? Yes. Do I get crushed if I don't get that call? No.

In the past, I have. My hope has jumped from job to job to job. However, now I am realizing that a job is a tool God uses to provide for me and for sending me into a mission field of the people that I interact with in that particular environment. This is probably the greatest paradigm shift that I have experienced during this lengthy job searching process. However, coming to the realization that my ultimate hope is not a title or place of employment, but in my Provider has refined and grown my faith in God and thus worth it.

Another year of His faithfulness

2010-04-25T07:27:00.001-06:00

There's a Vicky Beeching song entitled Twenty-Six summers that speaks about God's faithfulness in her life. I'm 26 now (haha, old for The Rock, not so old everywhere else ;) ) I woke up hearing the birds chirping after 2 days of rain/cooler weather. It got me thinking: How has God been faithful to me in this past year of me being 25? I also asked that question because on my 25th birthday Mom came to celebrate my birthday with my team at The Quad :) I spoke of how God was faithful to me thus far in my life and I am trusting His faithfulness for that next year. Also, I have struggled with God's faithfulness as I discovered how walking in Luke 9 type obedience challenged me in where I held my security: in God or in the Creation.

So here goes my list of ways in which God has been faithful.

The supreme way He has been faithful is while I was still a sinner He died for me (Romans 5:8). I like a sheep had gone astray and sinned, but God took the punishment for that sin (Isaiah 53:5-6). I believed that Jesus was Lord and God raised Him from the dead, trusted in His sacrifice alone to remove my sin, and thus became new (Romans 10:8-9, Romans 4:5, 2 Corinthians 5:17)

1. Allowing me to finish my Master's thesis
2. Having my Team be there for me and allowing me to spend the night at Chelsea's instead of alone after my graduation night meltdown.
3. Giving me grace when I still had some internship coordination to do after Finals week since I somehow forgot some things :(
4. Allowing me to go on a last Summer Infusion to EL Paso, TX
5. Allowing me to lead a giant group of 6-7 year olds around at Sports Camp and providing another adult to help me :) :) :) :)
6. Providing TONS of examples of Godly families and changing my heart toward motherhood and having large families courtesy of the Nelson and Everhart families :) :) :)
7. Also providing numerous times to go swimming a) to get away from the 100+ degree heat and to swim with cute little people and my crazy Infusion Team people :)
8. Providing housing in the form of The Quad (4-plex where 12 Rock / Symbio women live)
9. PROVIDING AWESOME ROOMMATES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) :) :) :) :) :)
10. Providing a free bed in my room :)
11. Providing a desk for 2 DOLLARS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
12. Providing an example for me to follow in making my decision to go to Symbio.
13. Helping me grow more in contentment as a single person and trust in Him for marriage if that's His will :)
14. Allowing me to go through the Truth Project again so Truth sinks in this time.
15. Oh yes, and back to El Paso, allowing me to 'run away to Fort Collins' for a few days but then providing a way back thus helping me to see that where He wants me is where He wants me. End of discussion. Oh yes, and He used the Captured by Grace by Steele Croswhite CD to speak to me a lot :)
16. Providing an outreach opportunity even during those few days with a girl living in The Quad that I stayed with :)
17. Allowing me to nanny for a single-mom when I got back from El Paso
18. Allowing me to help a friend with her Thesis & share the Gospel with her before she went back to Thailand :)
19. Allowing me to help with babysitting for a women's Bible study at Summitview.
20. Providing for me in all 3 of those avenues :)
21. Also providing the Research Assistant and Call Center jobs.
22. Allowing me to grow closer to older women in Summitview through a Bible study and doing more for Biblical Femininity. Luke 9 really came true. Though in some ways I had to forsake my mom: her fears and her expectations (though I still do love her and we talk lots :) ), God has given me so many women to look up to :) Yay for my "Summitview moms" :)
23. Allowing me to be a coach in the Outreach Class :)
24. Preserving friendships even though my yuck in the flesh gets in the way
25. Providing interviews for jobs even though I haven't found where He wants me, He keeps on opening doors :)
26. Has allowed me to truly experience growing closer to Him through trials and as I give parts of my life that hurt to Him so He can be victorious.

:)
Psalm 145 by Shane and Shane: Sums up a lot of this year for me :) I am striving by God's grace to live it more :)

"One generation shall commend your works to another,
and shall declare your mighty acts.
On the glorious splendor of your majesty,
and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds,
and I will declare your greatness.
They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness
and shall sing aloud of your righteousness."

Psalm 145:4-7

Obedience through the generations (Jeremiah 35)

2010-04-03T18:01:00.003-06:00

God is impressing upon me that my obedience now and trust in Him now affects not just me but the next generations. This often makes me go "!?!?!" in my head because so often I think of my own life and relationships in the present and do not have a long-term outlook on generations after me. That seems odd for someone involved in Children's Ministry, but mankind is still egocentric in varying degrees after the fall (Romans 3:23) I am no exception.

A while back I read Psalm 48. It is about God's protection over Zion. Verses 12 - 14 really hit me:Walk about Zion, go around her, number her towers, consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever.

God gave me that verse to remind me that as I trust Him for provision and continued protection, this lays the foundation for me to tell the next generation - my children if that is God's will, or children He places in my care at Summitview or elsewhere - that God is real. Allowing God to use me to instill trust in Him as provider in their little hearts will keep them trusting in Christ no matter what happens. It will be easier for them to face trials because they would know in Whom they trust, they will not be like me who is still prone to going to deep despair. Will they doubt or worry? Sure. It's human nature, but I pray they will be prone to doing that less often as I have. Furthermore, they will have confidence not in circumstance or even in parents or other supportive adults as much as they will have trust in the Everlasting God.

I was reminded of that yet again in Jeremiah 35. The Rechabites helped turn a temple of Baal into a toilet (not kidding check out 2 Kings 10:18-25. I laughed super-hard when I read that.) Their descendants were nomads outside Jerusalem and came into the city when they were threatened by the Babylonian army. Jeremiah used them as an example of a people who were loyal to God generation after generation. Therefore he told them that God promised that someone from their line would always be in the service of God. Wow. That's like God promising Spurgeon that someone in the next generation would always be in ministry or be a pastor forever and ever and ever and... etc. That also struck me like, "What!?! That's sooooooooo coooooooool!!!!!!!!"

"... to the house of the Rechabites Jeremiah said, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Because you have obeyed the command of Jonadab your father and kept all his precepts and done all that he commanded you, therefore thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Jonadab the son of Rechab shall never lack a man to stand before me.” Jeremiah 35:18-19 God saves by grace alone and what I firstly have to do is pray for God to grow my children / the future generations' faith so that they accept Christ since it is by faith alone that they are saved (Ephesians 2:8-9). God also reminded me that one way He would grow the next generation is by the example of the current one.

Lord help me obey You. Complete the good work in which You started. Help me remain in You so that You can bear much fruit and be an example to the next generation. I can't do it myself, but Your spirit can. Thank You for grace when I can't obey and the sure reward for when I do. Thank You for giving me a heart for the next generation to praise Your name so that they would be under Your protection for more of their development.

God is DA MAN! Habbakuk 3

2010-03-26T07:44:00.004-06:00

I did another 'not-so-random open the Bible to this point and have a quiet time.' today. I appreciate Habbakuk's prayer in chapter 3, especially 3b-4: "his glory covered the heavens and his praise filled the earth. his splendor was like the sunrise; rays flashed from His hand where His power was hidden." I LOVE FINDING CREATION VERSES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) :)

He begins like most psalmists stating that the Lord's fame and power are known first in what He has done and in Creation. :) What is also cool is verses 6-10 could be references to the Flood. "The ancient mountains crumbled and the age-old hills collapsed" Tetonic activity might have leveled older mountain ranges and made new ones. "You split the earth with rivers, the mountains saw You and writhed torrents of water swept by; the deep roared and lifted the waves on high" Ok, that is definitelya reference to the Flood, and taking the previous verses in context what that, it is interesting that Habbakuk points to the Flood as evidence of God's power and judgement because he is writing this to warn the Israelites of the impending captivity.

Verses 11 - 16 could talk about the end-times. "You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness, you stripped him from head to foot." That could refer to the time Nebuchadnezzar was owned by God and made to EAT GRASS or could refer to God's ultimate defeat of Satan, of whom God says will get his FACE CRUSHED. The threshing of the nations indicates end times because God would separate His people from the ones that didn't call upon Him for salvation.

Then we get to verses 17-19 which people quote all the time. "Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to go on the heights." Knowing that God is powerful enough to create the whole Earth and flood it; Knowing God will crush Satan and the nations and save His people is security enough for Habbakuk. Though every main source of revenue in his country is ruined, he doesn't panic because God is on his side and is in control of all of it.

Do I believe that? Haha... sometimes. I get the theological significance, but the times when I'm not offered a job and feel powerless and feel like I'm abandoned, I tend to say some not-so-nice things to God and come very close to slamming the door in His face and give up. These are the times when I realize that I have a 1/10th of mustard-seed faith in this area. It's there. I know it's there, but I still get shaken when stuff doesn't work out.

What do I need to do? Realize God has me where He has me both in circumstance and geographical location for His reasons. If I need to leave Fort Collins and go elsewhere, He will work in it. Even if I leave with the attitude of, "Whatever. I'm done trying to fight to stay in Fort Collins. I'm outta here. I'm using my degree in a career-type job and that's my life." God is still sovereign. I might have to eat grass at some point (figuratively speaking) if I held onto that attitude long enough. Or If I leave trusting God has finished the work He has me here in Fort Collins to do and trust He has something for me closer to Mom / Grandma / and my other relatives, I can believe God is sovereign and that His plan will work out. Keeping in mind that God is powerful over His creation ( me included), and all governmental, corporate, economic powers helps me understand that He is ultimately in control and can be trusted with any economic /political /other factors affect my circumstances. Thus, I can say with more and more confidence (as I learn this in a deeper way), "Though the currency devalues, though employment rates do not rise, though economic power shifts from my nation, and the people are overwhelmed with taxes, though our debt to other nations increases, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength and my ultimate worth and value; He makes me feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to continue climbing on the heights." Altered version of Habbakuk 3:17-19.

Endurance

2010-03-14T09:22:00.002-06:00

Romans 5:3-5 discusses suffering as it produces endurance, character, and hope in that order because it forces us to cling to the Holy Spirit more. Elsewhere Hebrews 12:1-2 calls us to endure (or persevere in other translations) the race that God has marked out for us and that endurance comes from fixing our eyes on Christ.

I think of endurance a lot with my continued search for full-time work. I would lie if I said that I was unemployed, and at times I am not grateful for the research assistant and call center jobs that I do have. I just want something more. Something in my field that would help me pay off my loans faster, give me full benefits, and be something of a professional job.

It can be easy to fix my eyes on that goal and put my hope in that goal. It can be tempting. I could easily move to Denver after I leave The Rock and join the GCM church there. I could even go to another city and join a church there. But God has called me to be part of the Summitview family. Fixing my eyes on him, arranges my priorities. Yes, I should continue to strive to find a job that will meet my needs, but my focus shouldn't be there. My focus should be on my Provider. He knows my needs and my abilities. He also knows my limitations with my eyes and transportation. I must trust Him first.

If I relied on my own self for endurance and focused on that perfect job for my hope, I would have given up a long time ago. Focusing on God helps me keep on going because I am living in His plan, and ultimately knowing Him better is the prize for finishing.

Walking by faith, not by sight of my or others' lives

2010-02-01T18:50:00.000-07:00

I woke up discouraged at another week on the job search. I have had to break through on God's goodness and really trusting that it is real and thus acting on that belief. For most of this day, that was a challenge because I was on the money chase (mentally) as I went on the job hunt. God helped me perservere through my time at the call center and that helped. I kept on switching between asking Him for help and being miffed at Him. Finally when I was walking home, He asked me if finding out that Matt Chandler had Stage III cancer had anything to do with my attitude. Jen & Eddie Smith had put a link on that on Twitter. Yup. Actually, that it did, and I went to bed right after I read it, so I didn't really get to process it.

So, I wrestled God with it: Ok, God, what did Chandler do wrong? Nothing. I do not treat My elect as their sins deserve. Ok. Well, why is there a chance that he will be taken away from his family & church? Why would you play someone like that to give them all this and then take it away? What is more important to Me? What will last forever? Matt's body or Matt's soul? Um.... soul. God showed me that this trial was refining Chandler's faith and also now he can sympathize with people in his congregation that are dealing with illnesses in a way that he couldn't previously. That's making him a better shepherd of his flock. Not that he wouldn't be a good resource for someone previous to this. But somehow, God has decided he is more effective for the Gospel in walking through this sickness, and if he lives or dies depends on how much glory God will get. I realized that though this is causing Matt's family a lot of discomfort and himself a lot of discomfort, one day he will be in heaven due to this or something else and won't be worried about it anymore. He will be with God.

Therefore, is God good? yes. Even when a young pastor and father of 3 gets a rather aggressive form of cancer? Yes. Matt Chandler was on MSNBC telling literally millions of viewers that God is still good and soveriegn. Dude, that's outreach for REAL. Everyone can look at his church before than and say, "That's Matt Chandler's church and God is good because he has this." Now he is saying, "Matt Chandler has cancer. But I can look at God for who He is and walk in it through the pain. God is good."

Ok, how does this apply to my own life? Because God is good not because Katie has even 2 part-time jobs. But because of His character, because He does not treat me as my sins deserve, because He sent Christ to die for me, because He cares for my co-workers to send little me to work through so He can reach them. Even though I can stress about work or lack of a full-time job with benefits in my field, I can worship God and say He is good because I rest on who He is, not merely what He has or hasn't done.

An eternal perspective on answered prayer

2010-01-17T10:13:00.002-07:00

So, I not-so-randomly opened the Bible to Daniel 9 and read it. His prayer focused on the immediate situation of the Israelites in exile. He was wondering when God would restore Jerusalem. He understood that God was disciplining the nation for its sin and that the exile was done for them to turn back to Him.

The answer God gave Daniel surprised me a lot. God told him about the coming Messiah, the end times, and how Jesus would defeat the Antichrist. If I was Daniel, I would be looking for a type of answer that went like this: "Ok, here's how this works. You'll be in exile until such and such king gives the decree for you to go back, you'll fix up the downtown / business / Temple district by such and such time and get your main sources of commerce up by this time." However, God gave none of those specifics. In essence God said "Daniel, your hope is in Jesus coming back and how He will ultimately restore Israel."

That made me think a lot. When I pray, do I look for immediate or eternal answers? Earlier this week I had somewhat of a breakdown because the immediate answers to prayer seemed to be no due to some limitations I face. However, my Summitview pastor helped me see that my prayers had to be focused on eternal things and not solely on immediate answers. Like Daniel, I could focus on immediate results such as getting a stable job, marriage etc, just like he was focusing on having the nation of Israel back in the land and Jerusalem as the capital re-established. However, God tells both of us that Jesus is the ultimate answer to all our prayers.

God I pray You help me focus on the eternal ultimate answer to my prayers who is Christ and may I ask for You to show Your character in the situation, not just fix the circumstance. Daniel had to wait - actually, I think he lived the rest of his life in Babylon. He didn't get to see the Israelites go back into Jerusalem. But he held onto the knowledge that You would bring your Messiah into the land to ultimately restore Your people. I pray that I focus on how my Messiah can be my ultimate source of security, trust, love, and provision. He, my atonement propitiation for my sins, so that my hope can be going to You and being there in glory. Amen

God as my Guardian

2010-01-04T17:46:00.003-07:00

"I don't want money / I don't want silver or gold / I don't want glory/ I don't want things I can't hold / I don't want ashes / and I don't want time / I just want Jesus to hold me close and / be my guardian / be mine be mine ." Jeremy Darling & band in The Rock Church Minneapolis

I cried a lot at Faithwalkers during this song. God is teaching me that He is my guardian, not a husband, not my friends, not my bank accounts, but He is. He is removing the idols, and I am cutting them down when I see them so I can worship Him. He does not treat me as my sins deserve, but treats me with grace. Therefore, I respond in increasing measures of love, trust, and obedience.

Today, this theology got real practical. Mom and I had a yummy lunch at the Olive Garden for her late birthday present :) We started talking about my student loans and Mom was talking about some drastic measures to help me pay them off. God made me realize that Mom was trying to play God and fix all my problems in my life.

I told her that yes I was working hard at finding a job & being wise with money, but ultimately God is my provider and the one I trust for all this. She was like, "God doesn't physically provide. He just provides wisdom & strength." Umm... no, God does provide." She changed the subject, but I thought, "Well, God will change Mom on that once she reads the BIBLE." Anyway, just the fact that I could look her in the face and say, I trust a God for real tangible results is an amazing testament about how God is the author of my faith :)

Anyway, that's really cool how God is using Faithwalkers to change not only my but Mom's life as well in growing in ever increasing trust in God!

An Increasingly Biblically Feminine Reaction to Matt Chandler

2009-12-18T09:08:00.004-07:00

Posted on my D-Team blog:

Many leaders at Summitview have been keeping up with the health of Matt Chandler, pastor at The Village. Yesterday Mitch posted this on Twitter: http://fm.thevillagechurch.net/blog/pastors/ Matt Chandler has a malignant tumor in his brain. He will consult with his doctors about treatment.

True to Katie fashion, I cried. True to my new identity in Christ, I praised God because He is good and He will take care of the family no matter what. I could cry for them, but I did not despair completely. I wondered how Mrs. Chandler and the children were doing, but I didn’t say: ”Now where is God, why did He allow this for this family? What will Mrs. Chandler & children do if Matt dies?”

This reaction is definitely fruit of God’s progressive sanctification. Even a month ago, I couldn’t have taken the news that way. If this had happened earlier, I probably would’ve cried, been angry at God, and filled my prayers and mind with doubts about God and His goodness. Yet this is not so.

Today I was listening to Natalie Grant’s song “I will not be moved.” The second verse of this song captures where I have been previous to this: Bitterness has plagued my heart / Many times before / My life has been like broken glass / And I have kept the score / Of all my shattered dreams and though it seemed / That I was far too gone My brokenness helped me to see / It’s grace I’m standing on In my head, I have a record of where I thought God had withheld His goodness or had given me cause not to trust Him. In this mindset, I would have added Chandler’s health situation to that tally of keeping score of reasons why God can’t be trusted. His situation reminds me of the time when my uncle got cancer. I was alone in that struggle because I was helping Mom, and I watched as my aunt went from caregiver to widow. This reopened these wounds, and I could nurse bitterness toward God in this situation.

However, I latched onto the truth repeated in the chorus of the song: I will stumble / I will fall down / But I will not be moved / I will make mistakes / I will face heartaches / But I will not be moved / On Christ the Solid Rock I stand / All other ground is sinking sand / I will not be moved [emphasis mine on both parts of the song]. The basis for my trust in God through all this is His character: As Savior, as Lord, as Holy, Good, True, Faithful, Just, Powerful, Provider, etc. The more I learn about and meditate on God’s character, the more I realize I can trust Him. As I choose to replace lies about security from the world with Truth, I more readily default to seeing things in view of who God is. I am not perfect in this, but God is bearing fruit in my faith.

How is this reaction Biblically feminine as the title states? Well, Mitch pulled what Biblical Femininity was from the Bible which is an ever-increasing trust in and submission to God in all areas of our lives. Trusting God with Chandler’s health, Mrs. Chandler and their children’s provision instead of worrying about them is a way I can honor God and see Him as their ultimate Husband / Father. This is something God wants out of all His daughters.

In sum, I still shed tears over hard circumstances in my or others’ lives. I still ache for women that loose husbands and children that loose fathers. However, God is changing my worry over the situation to worship of Him because He can be trusted. Though I will not achieve perfection in this area while on earth, I am reacting less like the world and more like a woman who knows her eternal Father and Husband can be trusted through anything.

Understanding Faith & Fear and then Walking in Truth

2009-12-07T11:51:00.003-07:00

Thanks to Mitch Majeski's "What Biblical Femininity is Not" talk, I am renewed in thinking about whether I do things out of fear or faith. So often, I have done things out of fear: If I don't do this, such-and-such will happen or If I do this, it will keep such and such from happening. This mindset came from the notions I had grown up seeing modeled and thus picked up into my own world-view that God is there but He is not really close, He sporadically gives good things and often with-holds without reason. I grew up thinking God could not be depended upon for practicals in life. I also grew up with a parent that struggled with insecurity and anxiety, thus that has manifested itself in worry and underlying anxiety. I had thought this was a normal way to live for a long time.

All that changed after I accepted Christ and began (and continue) learning about His character. Now I have the Word to listen to, His promises off of which to base decisions. I can choose to be anxious or trust God. As I learn more about my Creator who is my good Father and perfect Husband, I begin to trust Him more.

This is a good start to walking in faith, however, I can listen to my old worries / fears while simultaneously listening to Truth. This pulls me to a standstill. Both mindsets can't be right; they in fact contradict each other. Trust God or not believe He is good?Rely on myself first or rely on my sovereign Father? Believe what God has called me to do and walk in it or forsake that and do the most practical thing for myself instead?

This conflict came to a head when God wanted me to make some phone calls regarding jobs. I had to make one particular call about a job I had applied to quite a few months ago which I haven't heard back from. Would I live in fear and assume the job had been taken and not call, or would I make the call and trust that God will have the job for me if it is His will? Was I making the job an idol? If so, would God withhold it because I had? Had God abandoned me, or does He have something for me that I have yet to see? I put all these questions to rest by re-reading Philippians 4:6-7 and praying about all these things. In the peace of Christ, I made the call. I chose to put my faith in God instead of let fear take over. I had to leave a message, but I indicated my interest in the position and for someone to let me know if it was filled or not.

Whether I get the position or not is honestly secondary when I think of this phone call. This call stands as God's victory over my fears, and I know that will resonate into eternity. That is what ultimately matters.

A Post for a Snowy Day

2009-10-29T19:57:00.005-06:00

Sigh.... it's snowing :) Not the sigh of "Dang. It's snowing." Ok, there are some downsides such as being cold and having snow come up to your knees at points being a mere 5 feet tall... Anyway I'm learning to enjoy God's blessings of whatever He throws at me, be it a sunny day or a snowy one. I really like what CS Lewis said: That kids like Weather, and adults are the ones grumbling at the rain, but the kids love to jump in puddles. They learn to hate rain etc. from the adults. I just finished reading "That Hideous Strength" by CS Lewis which is basically his rendition of academia attempting to take over the world and then the higher powers that be intervening in CRAZY WAYS! YEAH! Heads most definitely roll.

New Developments in life:

I have a part time job (WOOT!) It's at a phone bank. Sometimes it's discouraging, but it is definitely an exercise of not taking circumstances (people hanging up on you, etc.) personally, which is something I need to grow in greatly. I am still trusting God for a job at CSU since that is the thing that still seems to have not closed yet. I had a French Toast with the girls in the Quad and that was way fun :) I enjoy the time God is giving me to hang out with my fellow sisters :)

Lessons God is teaching me

I can't predict mine or other people's life. I'll leave it at that for now. God is also teaching me about Him being my Father and getting to the bottom of my heart for raising a Christian family. Sometimes I can be tempted to take that on as a fig leaf to hide my past, but more and more, my motives are purer, more God focused. I am putting Him first rather than any future husband or children first, because sometimes I say, "I want to be a helpmate and help someone to greatness for the Lord." or "I want to be a Godly mother to raise kids who are crazy for Jesus." Well, those are good motives, but if that's where it ends, it is for these unnamed people's glory. My hope is in them. Not in God. If I say, "If it is for God's will and purpose that I should do this." then I am not crushed if He never allows me to have this family I pray about.

He is rewarding me for putting Him first in my mind and heart, and I know I stumble, and He is gracious when I repent :) I am praying the more I let Him capture mind & heart, the more it is manifested to encourage the believers around me and to show Christ to nonbelievers :) Because it is God's work that does that in me and how He shows Himself to others. I do not do this on my own strength.

Random thoughts from That Hideous Strength (THS)

So, one crazy thing I noticed the second time around reading THS is the protagonista... I so made that up, but female protagonist has some pretty serious misconceptions of marriage and femininity. She wants to be married, but she wants to keep herself too. She doesn't understand servant-helpmateship and her husband doesn't understand servant-leadership. This is why they get into the issues they do, and why they begin thinking more about themselves than about each other. I was really amused when the mythical character of awesomeness (sorry for any reader who has read THS, I'm trying not give anything away) wants to beat the protagonista and her husband down for not being fruitful & multiplying. He is basically like, "Dude! That's the whole point of you two getting married! What the..."

So that made me think: What in this world am I still not believing about femininity? What lies do I have to guard against if God does have me enter academia for a full time job? I have to trust that He will go before and behind me, but I have to use Him as the Rock. Sometimes I want someone else to help me fight these lies, but again, I have to realize my God is enough! That's what happened to the protagonista in the story. She had no protector in her circumstances for a while, but God provided the leader of their little "Let's stop certain people in academia from destroying the world" movement to teach her truth, and ultimately, she had to embrace God's truths on her own. That is what I must do as well, and keep doing until my faith becomes sight.

Learning the Impossible

2009-10-06T15:28:00.002-06:00

I am learning the impossible. That is, to have joy even though I do not have full-time work.

This morning I was reminded how easy it is to be derailed. I was doing well for a while to place my joy in Christ during this time, but I had a stressing-out attack last night which resulted in me feeling crappy this morning which resulted in me not being able to hang out with some little Summitview people whom I'm getting to know and like :)

I just had an interview. Did forget to read the job description prior to coming (WHOOPS!) and I looked back at the CSU jobs I have applied for, and one starts in November. I am somewhat qualified and could probably do it, but I know that there are others who could do a better job. Another is my mystery job. As in, I have not gotten a call and they were still looking through things a month ago.

I was tempted to start focusing on job stuff right after my interview, but God wanted me to take time and write my thoughts, lest I get all pent up and have another stressing-out moment. Headaches remind me that a job is not worth getting an aneurysm over it.

Here are my thoughts:
If I do not believe God is good and perfectly sovereign, I can think He is holding out on me, I am somehow being punished by being without a full-time job, and I think that He made a mistake by having me stay in Fort Collins.

If I do believe He is sovereign and good, I know He has a job out there somewhere for me. I know He will use my gifts in the arena He chooses. I know this waiting time is for a purpose of growing closer to Him. I know that every interview, even if it fails, is for a purpose. I know He rewards my faith, I know that this life is not the end, and any disappointment I experience through this pales in comparison to the glory of seeing Him and having Him tell this story from His end in heaven.

Where do I choose? If God is not good it manifests in my staying up and can't sleep, getting irritated, stressed out, and moody. If I believe God is good, I feel peace. The trick is coming close to God first when I deal with my job stuff.

I know that. Theologically. I know that. However, I have 23 years of someone else and the world teaching me otherwise. God undoes all that slowly. Every time I come to Him, I feel more peace, less anxious. God began this in El Paso, and I do believe He wants to see this until completion. When I can truly say 'This job is not my god because I trust fully in God as my God and provider.' God has victory and I have victory over this fear. Theologically, and now in my heart, I can say that is worth it. I pray that it continues, because only He can make this state of my heart continue.l

Babies = EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!

2009-09-10T17:00:00.000-06:00

My friend just had a BABY EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK! I got a chance to see her today at the hospital!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) It was a long time coming and I got to watch my friend's process of waiting on God and her faith that He is good and His plan is the best one! Today as I looked at her chubby-cheeked daughter, I was renewed in my own faith in waiting on God for things I have asked Him for, and praised Him for His amazing creation. When a child is born, he/she recognizes the parents' voices & is ready for reacting to the world with a set of reflexes. My friend's daughter's brain is still in the process of maturing and there is an amazing process of laying down sensory pathways as she explores the world around her.

More importantly, God has chosen the place, time, and family that she is born into so He can reach her and show her Himself most fully (Acts 17). She is born into a Christian family so she may have a chance at coming to faith in childhood and being an example of faith to other children she meets as she grows. She has a church body that will help her parents raise her, and display Christ to her in other ways. I know that there are probably other babies that are being born today in very different circumstances than this baby girl. However, I know that they, too, are born in the places and times that God has decided are the best places for them to seek Him also.

Psalm 145

2009-08-18T08:51:00.003-06:00

Today I woke up with Shane & Shane's rendition of Psalm 145 in my head. That was good background music for my jog down Overland Trail to Southwest Community Park / Inspiration Playground. The sun was coming up (yes it was early; I heard one of my roomies waking up rather early) and the sunrise against the clouds & mountains was amazing!

My quiet time consisted of meditating on the verses, "The LORD is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.The LORD is good to all; He has compassion on all he has made. ." Ps 145:8-9.

He has made these amazing foothills that I, and all of Fort Collins sees every day, and the even more majestic mountains behind these hills that reflect His power and greatness. He is faithful to make the sun rise every morning, and reveal His beauty through the sunrises. He gives food to every creature. Even people who are starving, they still eat at least something. He provides shelter to us, and in Fort Collins, most people have fairly nice houses / apartments. He has provided open spaces within the city for us to enjoy, and for children to play in. He has allowed workers with talent to built playgrounds, especially Inspiration Playground to be accessible for children of all physical abilities.

For Israel, since I have been reading Deuteronomy and Isaiah, God pulled them out of slavery and out of captivity numerous times. He has brought forth the Savior from the nation of Israel, He has stopped 1 nation from eliminating the Jewish race from Europe, He has recently given them parts of the original promised land back, and for now, He has allowed relative peace to be in the region.

For myself, God has allowed me to return to Fort Collins, earn a Master's degree, influence students while in grad school, and influence the next generation of Christians in Children's Ministry / AWANA. He has grown me through two Infusion programs, and given me numerous sunsets/sunrises, friends, flowers, provided for my needs every day, allowed me to climb a 14er, and recently allowed me to live with 11 amazing Christian women :) :) :) among all little blessings that I might not even be aware of!

Focusing on God's blessings have helped me wait on the Lord for a job. I believe He has called me into academia (again), and I am waiting on that. Knowing He is good and knowing He grants desires to all things for His glory assures me that whatever He has in store for me is for my good and ultimately for His glory.

The hardest parenting class ever

2009-08-11T19:24:00.002-06:00

In undergrad, I slacked off during my HDFS parenting class in because I had the MCAT to study for. In graduate school, I took classes on parenting interventions and learned how parents (and society) can screw things up for kids, and how us interventionists were sent to fix them. Then during Infusion, I learned from amazing Christian parents how Christ can be their perfect interventionist so He flows out of their parenting in an imperfect world.

God decided that He would add a lab component to my "parenting classes." One of the single parents at church needed a nanny for 2 weeks before her two children (boy & girl, 6 & 5) went to school. My HDFS side began to start labelling them by socioeconimic status (SES), high or low risk, and began looking for possible defecits in the kids. This isn't necessarily wrong, but God reminded me to look at more than what my HDFS side could see, and view them not as 'cases' but as children in need of His care.

Thus has followed nearly 2 weeks of being their stand-in mom. I know I'm not perfect. More importantly, it's showing me how far my degree can go, and how much I need God's grace to cover the rest. For instance, today, the kids were tired and they wante to swim, and I wanted to wait until it was warmer outside. Thus tantruming more than usual ensued, and somewhat 'climaxed' into both kids getting sent to their room. I asked God what was the deal. What did He want to teach the kids and myself, and was I being power-hungry or really in the kids' best interest for not giving in. God revealed that they were learning patience and I was learning that even though I had to discipline and seemed mean, I could then give grace and repair the relationship. God gave me the verse from Hosea 6:1-2 where it basically says that God does tear down and injure temporarily, but in love because He is love (1 John 4:8) and that He repairs the relationship when His children come back. That is what happened. After the kids were done with time-out, I was able, through Christ, to love these kids and enjoy their company. I then prayed that the relationship was repaired.

However, the most important thing I have learned was that, unlike what the HDFS department teaches, I am not above the moms I serve. In fact, I still have a lot to learn. Just by serving me even though she can't pay for my services is teaching me about being creative with gratitude. And she has taught me that it's ok to be transparent about not having life or the Christian walk together, because it shows that God is truly active at the present. God has used the conversations before and after my hours to encourage me, and I pray to encourage her.

From this, I'm learning that parenting is rough. Laying in bed knowing another day is ahead of me, making the choice to parent in my flesh and HDFS knowledge or in Christ is one of the roughest decisions to make. However, God has shown me that loving the children through the love and grace He has first lavished on me and wishes to show these children is the best way. His love and grace will cover any of my mistakes, their times of disobedience, and hurts these children may experience in this world.

Why the Sick Need the Great Physician

2009-07-01T22:55:00.003-06:00

I haven't written in this blog since I have been busy in El Paso doing service projects, working, and sharing the Gospel for Christ.

Recently, one of our HDFS professors has fallen very ill. She is recovering, albeit slowly. Her family and friends in and out of the HDFS department have organized a website to record her progress and for her to read well-wishes people have sent to her once she is awake enough to stare at a computer monitor for decent amounts of time.

Most of the well-wishes were very characteristic of the HDFS department - wishing for general goodness to come her way, "Sending loving thoughts and healing energy / karma / positive feelings" your way. Those sentiments are not bad, and they can generally be encouraging.

However, they are not enough. One's thoughts cannot traverse time and space, they are confined to the cognitive pathways and neural circuits in our brains. The only Person who's words traversed space and time to create the darkness, light, and every living organism to the streptococcus bacterium, the amoeba, the diatom and to the enormity of galaxies is Yaweh, by His Son Jesus Christ and the Spirit of Life, the Holy Spirit.

This is what is missing from the guest book. From my friend's thoughts, and that is vexing me almost as much as the fact that my professor could still not make it out. The fact that God may allow this for this department to seek Him to find Him - the source of Truth, the source of all Good that He can truly give across space and time.

I plead with you, HDFS students, faculty, staff, in CSU, in VTech (where this professor got her degrees), and friends / family that know her: You need to pray to God. I plead for you to to acknowledge the supremacy of Christ - not just 'feel good' thoughts. I plead for you to understand that the God of this Universe is holding our professor in His sovereign hands that were pierced on Calvary for her and all of us. I pray earnestly that you understand that you need to encourage our professor with Truth from His lips, His Word, His healing Word. That is what is true hope. Not vauge notions of thoughts floating through space and time, of good karma, or positive energy, but the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord who has made her and us lovingly, atom by atom, DNA strand by DNA strand.

I pray this so that you will turn to Christ and accept His salvation and truly worship Him whether He heals this professor or takes her from this world, and I do earnestly pray, with tears at times, that He will preserve her life, lead her to the Cross, so at the end of her life, she may join worshippers - from our ranks and from every nation tribe and tounge to worship our true Lord in Spirit and Truth.

Jobless in El Paso

2009-06-04T14:18:00.002-06:00

So yes. Ye olde blogger is without a job. :( Been fishin' but nothin's bitin'. What's a grad student to do? I could despair easily: "Dang, I can't even get an interview at McD's and I went to grad school." But in El Paso, they look for more permanent people, and we're seasonal workers. So, therein lies much of our problems.

I've been on somewhat of a short circuit today. Kinda impatient & had to appologize several times for beginning to be snappy. However, I realize I have not reached melt-down stage because God and I have had a talk. Once I was upset and stuff and Indescribable came on the radio. God used that moment to calm me down by reminding me, "Katie, I am Creator. You are in the car with the guy who's dad talks about it every other day. Who am I in the midst of this job search?" I said, "Yes, God. Thank You for reminding me. You are I AM." Pause. I was open with the sisters I was job-searching with about my frustrations and a group hug was needed :)

I still struggle whether to stay or to go because all practical career-center, Mom, Zeynep advice would be to go back to FoCo and look for jobs there while searching out a permanant grad-school worthy job. However, I am invested here. To encourage the Believers and to be a 'coach' to the little kids in the Sports Camp we are running soon. I already signed up for dealing with the little people i.e. 1st graders. I have money in savings to tie me over until I get back to The Fort.

So, I walk this balance in being diligent with the job search and trusting in God and when I lean in God and He helps me, I stay calm. When I do not trust in God, I plan my going back and worry about stuff.

I know God is teaching me something. Just what exactly besides provision, I have ideas, but won't really know until it's over. What I do know is that I'm feeling like I'm walking on water, and no matter what happens, I can be caught by a God who's hands were pierced for my sins, Jesus, who is good.

Thesis Issues: For the Gospel of Christ!

2009-05-22T21:21:00.002-06:00

Yup! God is using my last week - my last few days in the Grad Student Housing for His glory!!! :) It started with my roommate being friends with our neighbor downstairs. Our neighbor is from Thailand and is a grad student in the Animal Sciences department. She came up to our apartment to ask my roommate to proofread her methods section of her thesis. My roommate, an English As a Second Language instructor from Russia looked at it and said, "Well, my roommmate Katie wrote a thesis. Maybe she can take a look at it." Dum dum dum!!!! :) In comes me. I asked our neighbor some questions about her stats and stuff, and she asked me if she could come to me with more of her thesis. I was wrapping up my grad student awesomeness, so I told her that she could.

This led to several email exchanges, and times where I was at her house or she at mine working on her thesis. Through these times, she began confiding in me about issues with her committee, her advisor, grad school life in general, and other things. God prompted me with 1 Peter 3:15 to show her how I handled it in light of the hope I had in Christ. Through God, I did :) EEEEEEEEK! :) My neighbor told me that she knew God was there, in a general sense, and that He had helped her through her first year here with all its stuff.

God prompted me this week to have tea with her and give her a Bible at the end of the tea time. That happened :) EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK :) :) :) All to God's glory, because it's actually harder for me to share my faith with friends because I have a fear that they won't be my friend if they disagree. Well, God is teaching me more and more and giving me more power to live out Romans 1:16.

ANWAY, something I realized was this: God uses everything, and I mean everything. Even writing my thesis. I thought that the Gospel going out with my thesis ended with me sharing with my committee (post-defense) that God helped calm me down during it. Nope. I mean, He used that, but I never dreamed that He would use my ordeal of editing, editing, and editing again (after Zeynep had looked over my thesis and edited it so much that every other word was in 'track changes') to help someone else, and to share with them the Gospel.

Lesson in point: God uses anything and everything for the Gospel if we let Him, and ask Him, "What do You want from this?" I could've just edited her thesis and wished her luck and went back to wrapping up the grad school life. But God wanted me to invest more time in her. He saw more than a fellow master's student needing a thesis looked over. He saw someone in need of Jesus. And He allowed me to see that.

As I go with my life, I can get consumed with this transition of moving into a job of some sort post-graduation. I need to continuously ask God to help me see things not just in light of my future job or what I am doing at the current time, but in light of the Gospel. I need His help because I don't normally see this naturally.

Praise God that the Gospel does not return void, and that God uses ordinary stuff in my grad school life & other things to reach His people whom He loves.