Reflections of a Variant

“ For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.” – Ephesians 2:8-9

Living at Capital Mountain Christian Camp as six year old was like living in a fantasy world. The sprawling forested grounds nestled in the Sierra Nevada foothills was the perfect playground for the children of the camp workers. I may have slept in a trailer, but my yard was a thousand acres of trails, cliffs, fields, and all the amenities available to the campers. Still, I usually found myself alone, wandering the camp, keeping myself occupied and out of trouble. And while I walked I talked to God, and God talked back to me.

Losing the camp was one of the most painful experiences of my life. In an effort to protect the reputation of the church, my parents were dismissed as directors when a young woman was injured on the zipline after breaking in and using it without authorization while my parents were away. With our home and work gone in an instant, we had to move close to relatives in the Pacific Northwest and landed in Battle Ground, WA. Just like that, I was ripped from my free-range fantasy world and tossed into real life, at a real school, with real peers. I was seven.

It didn’t take long for me to realize I was different than everyone else. I tried to make friends, but my best efforts always failed and I just came off as annoying. I was behind academically. I was relentlessly bullied. I couldn’t hold a pencil, couldn’t spell, couldn’t focus, had “poor clothes”, no lunch money, and spent the entirety of the instructional time in my the refuge of my imagination. Recess was a double-edged sword as it brought momentary escape from the reality of my learning shortcomings, but also the anxiety of trying to navigate the social hellscape of the playground.

I don’t blame my parents. They parented they best way they knew how. But their solution to my elementary woes was a change of scenery every time I began to struggle. I didn’t complete an entire school year at one school until I reached 7th grade. Minihaha to homeschool, homeschool to Yacolt, Yacolt to Pleasant Valley, Pleasant valley to Amboy, Amboy to homeschool, homeschool to Mt. View Christian, Mt. View Christian to La Center. With every new beginning came a promise to myself: This time is going to be different. This time I am going to try harder. This time I am not going to be weird. This time I am going to do my work. This time. Again, and again, and again.

My 7th grade year at La Center went about as well as all the rest. While I didn’t have a lot going for me in the classwork or personality department, I did make a friend: Jenni. I was also starting to enjoy the validation that came with the male gaze. If the saying, “It’s a good thing you’re pretty” was a person, I was it. I coupled up with any boy who would look my way and the attention made me feel like I was finally worth something to somebody. But it was always short lived. When my looks couldn’t outlast my insufferable personality I would get dumped and cling to the next person who looked my way: boy at school, stranger at a roller rink, anything.

In 8th grade, I decided I was going to try harder socially. I made a list in my private journal of steps I could take to become popular, which was found by a less than kind boy who thought it hilarious and shared it with his friends who would say, “Hey, popular!” and laugh every time they saw me. I traveled with the football team as the statistician. Yes, it was to be closer to the boys, but it still wounded me deeply when the football coach called me a slut. I was failing all my classes except choir and I couldn’t figure out how to succeed at being a human.

Something unexpected

Jenni’s parents made her go to church, which I found hilarious considering how much trouble the two of us caused. Half way through our 8th grade year, she went to a youth group retreat and returned unrecognizable. She suddenly wasn’t up for our normal antics, she prayed before lunch, and talked a lot about Jesus all. the. time. Her church was in the next town over, so when she invited me to youth group one Wednesday night, I delighted in the idea of getting to meet boys from other schools.

February 25th, 1999, I got ready for my first youth group. I put extra care into getting my makeup just right, applying a double coat of my Victoria Secret lipgloss (that I definitely didn’t shoplift), and tried on half a dozen outfits before deciding on the perfect one, then got dropped off at Jenni’s house for the final check of hair and makeup before heading to the church. I will never forget taking that first step inside the door. There was this feeling of electric anticipation mixed with safe familiarity; a combination of destiny and home.

As the music began and kids around me closed their eyes and started singing, a familiar, forgotten presence took me back to a moment a time when we would walk and talk together on trails through the woods, the comfort of warm sunshine all around me completely enveloped in perfect peace. I remembered. Just a girl and her God. I wept so profusely that the meticulously placed mascara was streaked across my face in a mixture of tears and snot. When the pastor asked if anyone wanted to come forward and give their lives to Jesus, I’m certain I was at the alter before he could finish the invitation. One of the youth leaders prayed with me a prayer that changed my life forever. I went to church in hopes of meeting boys who would fill the emptiness in my heart and met the creator of that heart instead.

Like only He could…

“Do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” – Romans 12:2

Call it a fixation, but I couldn’t get enough of Jesus. I devoured my Bible, surprising everyone by… actually reading! I never slept anyway, so I would read all night. Read, pray, journal, worship, repeat. I read 1st and 2nd Samuel in one night and decided then that Samuel would be my first son’s name. Since my youth group was only on Wednesdays, I found other local churches that held their meetings on different nights, and I tried to be wherever and whenever church was happening. The more time I spent with Jesus, the less I cared about what my peers thought of me. Becoming popular became the least of my concerns as I began to notice people around me who were also on the social outs.

I would read a verse like Philippians 2:3, “Do not act out of selfish ambition or empty pride but with humility count others more significant than yourselves…”, and ask God to help me see others the way He saw them, and suddenly felt something I had never felt before: genuine compassion. Jenni and I would invite other students to church and our coffee-shop bible study before school which grew so quickly we had to move it to the campus. It didn’t take long before I had another new thing: friends. Lots of them.

My grades never improved, but by the time I entered High School, I stopped looking for reasons to stay home. I wasn’t stressed at the idea of going every day because I had a mission. Every morning I prayed for God to use me to show His love to someone who needed it, and I did: students, staff it didn’t matter. My goal was for everyone I met to walk away feeling better about themselves than they did before. I was even voted “friendliest” in my senior hall of fame. Only God could do that.

Gratitude in diagnosis

I recently did something 30 years overdue and got a complete neuropsychological evaluation. The results were what I suspected: high-functioning autism and inattentive ADHD. The light this diagnosis sheds on so many traumatic experiences in my childhood also sheds new light on just how much Jesus saved me from. The statistics on untreated ADHD in children regarding substance abuse, criminal behavior, job/relationship failure is absolutely heartbreaking. The fact that I am not just standing on two feet today, but flourishing is nothing short of a miracle.

Because of Jesus, I am happily married to my kind, patient, golden retriever husband who actually finds my quirks adorable. Because of Jesus, I am a mom to three amazing children: two grown and one teen. Because of Jesus I am surrounded by incredible friends and am part of a welcoming church family. Because of Jesus I have a purpose and a calling, and see how He created my mind to work according to the things He has for me to do and the people He has for me to love. Because of Jesus, I am pursuing my dream and recently started the very loooooooooong journey of pursing a PhD in theology (One semester down, 16 to go!), and because of Jesus, and praying for the Holy Spirit’s help with each assignment, am doing so with a 4.0.

If following Jesus with such voracity at such a young age was just an autistic hyper-fixation, then good! Thank God! Everything I have I owe to Jesus. Likely my very life.