A few months back I started writing blogs about my ADHD. And, like all blogs, I hope some of you found it interesting, amusing, or revelatory. Perhaps some of you wonder if there was a further point.
I am a verbal processor (and an extrovert), meaning that the process of talking about issues helps me organize my thoughts and come up with insights, solutions, explanations or creative ideas (depending on the issue). Since (of course) I am married to a mental processor (who is an introvert), and am in a ministry context where I have few people to easily ‘bounce ideas off of’, I have discovered that writing, and sometimes posting on our blog, has become a form of verbal processing for me. Dear reader, I thank you. So does my husband, I am sure.
As I began writing about my ADHD, I actually had a point I wanted to make about how ADHD and a few comments have affected my spiritual growth. But in my true Alice-in-Wonderland fashion, we have had to take a few detours to get to this.
In my training as a teacher (getting to 4 decades ago, as I am getting ancient) diagnoses and teaching strategies for learning disabilities were only just appearing on the horizon. As I began to teach, I encountered students with FAS, ADHD/ADD, oppositional- defiance disorder, dyslexia, PDP NOS/Autism, etc, mostly without any formal diagnosis. And as I struggled to help those students, I discovered, often by talking with parents, or by trial and error, that most of those students benefited from these strategies:
- Shorter series of instructions, reinforced by a list, (usually on the board)
- Homework books (now more trendily named journals)
- A modicum of flexibility in choosing when and how to do some work
- Regular communication with parents
- Repetition
- Consistency in expectations, discipline and schedule.
I hope you are not be surprised to know that most of my ‘regular’ students also benefited from these strategies, and I tried to make them a hallmark of my classroom. As I did so, I began to realize that while creativity is a powerful tool for a teacher, being steady was a major force for good for most of my students.
Eventually I have recognized that having order and routine are also important coping mechanisms for me. Having a routine in the morning, regular days for laundry, or grocery shopping, regular days for meetings with certain people, being able to plan my life a few days or weeks ahead, having a Bible reading plan for my devotions, putting my keys in the same place (OK- that one I never mastered) – all of these contribute to my getting through a day with a modicum of efficiency, even while my brain may be busy firing off in multitudinous different directions. And of course- my lists.
As a child and a young person, my spiritual and biblical growth were shaped thru a lot of exposure to the Word of God. I had the privilege of family Bible reading, Scripture memory in the Christian schools I attended, etc. When as a family we left a life of nominal faith, experienced what it meant to be born again, and changed to a church full of energetic radical ‘Jesus people’, we added dozens (hundreds?) of Scripture songs, and church three times a week instead of once. During the two years of public schooling I had, my parents embarked on a family scripture memory program to make up for that loss in our life. My parents made their own times of personal devotion a priority and I often could hear them praying, or my mom worshipping God on her own with her guitar.
They encouraged us to do likewise, encouraged us to try follow the Bible reading plan most of our church was using. In spite of my ‘non-morning person’ reality, I did my best to read and pray each morning. Those disciplines made it possible for me to read thru the whole Bible multiple times by the time I was in University. OK- I dealt with guilt about not being able to keep up with the reading plan. And in some parts my eyes were probably glazed over, especially trying to read books like Leviticus in the early hours(!) But as a result, I have a pretty good grasp of the Word of God, even if my prayer life was never particularly robust.
Then one day at church, when I was in university, a well-meaning speaker was talking about our personal devotions, and they said pointedly that you shouldn’t put that on your to-do list, because it shouldn’t be something you just want to do and check off. It should be something you WANT to do, and then it will be a priority that you will take care of. Now I sincerely wanted to please God, and I wanted my motivations to be pure.
So- you guessed it- I stopped putting devotions on my to-do list.
This has to single handedly be the biggest mistake I made in my adult spiritual life. Every time my life’s routine changes, I struggle to establish new routines, and without putting my personal devotions on my priority list, my time with God and his Word was completely haphazard.
University life vs summer jobs.
Teaching hours vs vacation and PD days.
Being married to an eternal student whose schedule changed every few months
Nursing babies and toddlers with ever changing schedules
Part time work with a different routine almost every day of the week.
And so on. Every life change sent me scrambling to try to figure out how to get things done. And things that were written down often just didn’t make the grade. I spent the first 10 years as a pastor’s wife feeling embarrassed and guilty about the lack of quality of my own times with God. But every time I put ‘Devotions’ or ‘Bible study’ on my to-do list, I had a twinge of guilt, so I rarely did so. This meant I would not be in the word of God on my own, which in turn, led to more guilt. And so on.
It’s hard to believe that I was well into my 40’s, after my ADHD self-diagnosis, that I was able to recognize the role that lists play in providing structure to my life, and to set aside the foolish guilt I dealt with for over 2 decades.
I want, at times, to just scream when I read books or listen to speakers who make such unequivocal statements. God has made all of us different. We have different gifts, different challenges, different perspectives, different ways of processing information, different things that motivate us.
When we tell people how you SHOULD be doing this or that particular Christian thing, and how easy it will be when you get it ‘right’, we are often speaking from our own strength or a discovery the Holy Spirit has led US to. And it is NOT the same for everyone. (Unity and Diversity is the great heading on the passage about the church as a body, from Ephesians 4:12-31)
For example, while I appreciate training I have received on how to share the gospel with people, when a person with the spiritual gift of evangelism tries to tell me how sharing the gospel should be effortless and part of my everyday life, (as it is for them) I feel guilty, and know many other people who feel guilty as well, because it is just NOT that way for us. And never will be, as we are gifted differently. When I hear things like that now, I feel like standing up and pointing out that by that logic, perhaps it should also be as enjoyable and effortless for him to organize the church calendar, or plan a creative church or children’s event, or to lead worship, as it for me.
We need to be very careful about expounding on our spiritual discoveries and extrapolating how they should also apply to everyone else. I have no idea WHAT that speaker in my university years had experienced, that made him feel that putting personal devotions on a list was a bad idea, but I am pretty sure his brain functioned differently from mine, and his blanket statement (and that at a critical time in my spiritual development), had a detrimental effect on my spiritual life for over 20 years.
But I am pretty sure that I have also made sweeping statements about the Christian life, to others that I have taught or discipled, that I would dearly like to take back. And I pray for anyone who I may have sent spirally down some crazy path because of me ‘should-ing’ them. I pray that they will be able to untangle themselves from any of my misrepresentations of how to live a life of following Jesus, but instead to allow the Holy Spirit to lead them to be changed into the image of Christ Jesus.
With, or without, using a list.
J & S on Mission 