It's hard sometimes for me to explain myself.
Depending on the situation, I can talk up a storm. Even writing things down, like this blog, I can get to the nitty-gritty and sound perfectly intelligent and witty and urbane and all the other fun exciting things a good blogger is supposed to sound like.
And then my overactive brain starts to get distracted, and I wander off-topic, or I have so many things to say all at once that I don't know what to say next. Like this blog. I fear I've confused some people.
Sometimes I have no filters.
Because it's very important to me that people understand. Unfortunately, that will never be the case. Some people understand because they know me - family (sometimes), intimate friends (I have about three of those since David's death), and possibly other people who might come across me and get my - quirks - foibles - idiosyncrasies - weirdness - from either experiencing them or it's their professional opinion.
Meanwhile, I have so many things to share that sometimes it all just comes out a jumble.
I am an explosion in a paint box.
That's what David used to say. I miss him. He was a master of linear thinking - he could take everything I spewed forth and make it sound like I was a genius. I have no doubt that I'm extremely intelligent - I just need someone to help me sound like it.
David used to also tell me it was his job to take all the random post-it notes in my head that I've tossed into a cardboard box, and turn it upside-down on the table and organize it for me. You can't imagine what it was like to finally have someone who not only understood but celebrated my short attention span.
I am not trying to excuse who I am.
But I wish I was brave enough to ask for accommodation from the people around me. To me, if I try to explain that large crowds are scary, even if it's meet-and-greet every Sunday morning at church - it comes out sounding like an excuse for being anti-social and arrogant.
There are so many things I know about myself that come across as arrogant or silly or selfish or pathetic, when they aren't really. They're just who I am, and I need to remember that God made me this way and I don't have to make excuses.
There is nothing more frustrating than knowing exactly what needs to be done and being incapable of doing it.
The Apostle Paul said something similar in Romans 7:15 - "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but do the very thing I hate." RSV. He was talking about sin, and sometimes I feel like all my quirkiness (and isn't that a nice word for it) is actually sinful because I'm not like "normal" Christians.
I see other people going through many of the same struggles, or even worse ones - and they seem to be able to keep believing, keep hoping, keep knowing that God is directing their lives. I want that.
I want to be like everyone else sometimes.
I'd love to be able to sit around a table with people at church at a Sunday luncheon and carry on a real conversation. I'd love to be able to make phone calls. I'd love to be able to interact casually with other people. I wish I could express my faith in such a way as people don't doubt God but see Him.
It's not going to happen. I'm over 50 years old and that's just not the way I'm wired.
But God . . .
"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." 1 Corinthians 15:10 ESV.
I-yam-what-I-yam sez Popeye the Sailor.
I wonder sometimes if Paul wasn't a bit on the Autistic side of things. Of all the Biblical people I want to meet when I get to heaven, Paul is the one I'd like to talk to first and longest. He's such a sympathetic personality. He seemed to have all the quirks I see in myself, plus the intelligence and wherewithal to commit his words to paper and have people understand him.
I long for that.
One body, but which part am I?
"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink. 14 Even so the body is not made up of one part but of many." 1 Corinthians 12:12-14 NIV.
The same God, everyone different. Not one part more important or smarter or quirkier than any other part. I wish I could explain it so people wouldn't think I was making excuses for my behavior. Sinful I am, but so are you. Quirky I am, but why be normal when quirky can be so much more fun? Full of doubts and crying out for mercy as I strive to be faithful - we are all that.
One body, many parts, God Almighty who perfectly loves us as individuals and as His people. It's never easy for me, but God never said easy - He said faithful.
Just as a P.S. to anyone interested . . .
Here is someone who is certainly better at expressing herself than I'll ever be:
http://thethirdglance.wordpress.com/2014/07/26/undercover-autistic-on-disclosing-autism-in-the-academic-workplace/
