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

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?

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

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!

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

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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

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!!!!!!! :)