This is a real child

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!!!!

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?

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

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

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

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

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.