All the Single Ladies

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

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

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!!!! :)