Living with Autism
The average person starts talking at around 1–2 years old. When I was 3 years old, my parents noticed I hadn’t said a single word. They found out the root cause after a specialist gave them the diagnosis.
I found out when I was 7. By then, I had some idea that I was different from most people. I had to attend a lot of appointments and see multiple therapists. I vaguely remember one of the sessions had something to do with speech therapy. Another one was learning to interact in social settings. In the elementary school I attended, I was placed in additional “special education classes”. There was always an additional teacher/caregiver that was assigned to take care of me during normal class times and make sure my behavior didn’t spiral out of control.
I was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
I always found it difficult communicating my thoughts and my emotions to people. There was (and still is to an extent) a barrier separating the transformation of my thoughts into my speech. At times this barrier can be very difficult to overcome to the point where I cannot process my thoughts into speech. My head can feel like a very fast merry-go-round at this point – it is hard to even function in a social environment. For me, being around people can be like being in a different country — it’s as if they are talking in a different language than me. I suck at understanding social cues; almost every situation I would take literally when there was a hidden meaning behind it. As a result of the gap in understanding, I made few, if any friends in my childhood. It was to the point where people made fun of me because of the way I acted around others. Oftentimes, I was perceived as the weird, clueless person with the unusual behavior and the quirky remarks that no one wanted to befriend. There were also phrases I found hard to pronounce (such as my own name!) and I stuttered a lot in my speech.
I recall coming home from school and complaining to my parents a lot about how these people made fun of me. Why could I not make friends? Why didn’t people understand things from my perspective? Why could I not simply say what’s on my mind? In my Christian household where I constantly learned about the Bible and Jesus Christ every day, I was highly skeptical that He existed. It seemed a lot like a ridiculous and abstract idea at the time. Logically, this concept didn’t make sense. A God who’s not even tangible and visible that loves me as His child? How can He call himself the Father if He can’t be there in person to counsel me like a normal dad would? If He truly existed, why did He not take away my autism so I could be normal and just interact like most people? Why couldn’t He be there for me in my hurt and comfort me? It was so confusing at the time to reconcile my faith with my condition, if God really wanted the best for me.
Before I dive deeper into my story, I’d like to clarify that autism is a spectrum. This means that every person that has this condition exhibits it differently — it’s like a color wheel with varying saturation and hue. Each person on the spectrum may exhibit different gifts and abilities, but not everyone is a savant like Shaun Murphy from the Good Doctor. On the other hand, not everyone that is autistic is nonverbal — in fact some people on the spectrum may not even stand out with their shortcomings in communication. They could even be one of your friends. To give you an insight of what having autism is like from my perspective, I’ll present my thought process when I’m talking with someone:
I’m trying to listen to their dialogue and make sure that it’s what they’re actually saying or if I have to read between the lines with their response. I struggle with the latter because I take people’s responses quite literally; so there’s going to be misunderstanding between me and the others. Then, I am interpreting their body and facial language (arms, eyes, head for starters), formulating a response, making sure it’s the proper response which means trying to filter out some things and actually saying my response the way I intended to convey it to that person. Did I also mention trying to maintain eye contact? That is so difficult for me; I remember getting called out so many times for not doing that. It takes a lot of concentration to look straight into someone’s eyes and it is straight up weird! In addition, I’m also constantly monitoring my surroundings. Is there anything (ex. noises, movements) that I need to be prepared to properly respond and adapt to?
There’s a lot of information I have to process in a social setting and it can overwhelm me in certain settings, especially at unfamiliar parties or places. Social situations are not intuitive for me. That’s why there’s this fear and anxiety I had growing up when it came to being in social situations. How many times will I say the wrong thing this time which result in arguments, misunderstanding and even broken friendships? Would it build and solidify the bond that was forming? That’s why I’ll just resort to not saying anything — maybe better to just be by myself! Better to err on the side of caution, right?
Talking with people can be like traversing a minefield. The very thought of it has scared me to the point that I’m trying to prepare for days in advance. You could think of it as preparing a social script. There are a list of responses, questions, stories, jokes and topics I craft and compile in my head before I can have conversations with people. Once I have exhausted these options, or if the conversation’s flow changes such that I cannot talk about them, I get overwhelmed with uncertainty. At that point I’m improvising with my words and my body language. “What do I say? How I can contribute to the conversation? How do I make sure I don’t give them the wrong impression?”. This fear can paralyze me easily in such a setting. And I’m relieved when it’s all done because I can retreat into the sandbox that is myself and the internal dialogue that goes on in my head.
But he [God] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ is upon me. — 2 Cor 12:9
Through this struggle, God showed me how much I needed Him.
One of my deepest longings growing up was to have a community where I felt loved and desired for who I am. Due to this desire, there were many things I tried to accomplish in order to fit in with the people I desired to build friendships with. It certainly didn’t work for me as I often made the wrong impressions on them, thus leading them to exclude me from their group and even make fun of me for my antics. Trying to attain a certain social status as a goal usually never works out for anyone — the satisfaction attained is only fleeting before they desire more in their ideal community. As I attempted and failed many times to make the friendships I wanted, I came to the realization that friendships cannot be my source of comfort and worth as I endured a lot of exclusion and loneliness during my childhood.
Friends are not perfect people — we are all sinners. We deceive, tease and even hurt each other. It’s certainly happened to me despite the high amount of trust I had in some of these people I called my friends. As a result, I accumulated a lot of bitterness and resentment towards them. I found it difficult to put my trust in new friends and I often was suspicious of them, wondering if they’d hurt me once again. In the past, I sometimes lashed out in anger over little misunderstandings and jokes made by my friends that I took offensively. I never realized that in actuality, God was always with me — I was never alone in the struggle.
The Gospel showed me how much Christ loved me as the broken sinner and flawed person I am. By His infinite grace, he loved me to the point of dying for me (1 John 3:16). This was so I could not only have new life and begin a relationship with him, but so He could supply me with His strength to overcome the misconceptions I had about people and forgive them. Moreover, Christ understands my every thought when I cannot express them to people and empowers me with the strength, wisdom and words to do so. As an example, I am able to hold conversations and have small talk with people with ease. The person I was ten years would have massively struggled with this technique. This improvement was definitely something Christ worked in me so I could show His love to people around me. It is a work in progress, but Christ definitely has started a good work in me and will continue it on to the day when I go back to heaven and meet my Father.
God showed me how I needed other believers in my life.
It’s very easy to adopt a isolationist mindset when you’re struggling with a sin, an illness or a disorder none of your friends understand or have experienced. As I was growing up, I cultivated this mentality due to the constant misunderstanding and friction that happened between the people I conversed with regularly. It certainly was difficult to make this paradigm shift as I realized the value of trusting Christians with your struggles. When you try to communicate said struggle to them, there inevitably will be things they do not understand. It certainly happened to me when I’ve first shared my condition with some of my friends. And that’s okay.
Christians were not called to live this life on Earth alone (Genesis 2:18). God designed every Christian to have community and enjoy life with fellow believers. Moreover, Christians are called to “bear each other’s struggles, and so fulfill the law of Christ”(Galatians 6:2). My Christian brothers and sisters can at the very least pray for me to support me in my struggle. Moreover, they can journey with me and show me the infinite grace of God in my social missteps. Even today, there are still some times where I doubt the community of Christian believers around me. Will they really pray for me, walk with me and take their time to understand me? However, this is when I have to trust the power that the Holy Spirit has in my fellow Christian brothers and sisters. The Holy Spirit produces in them the wisdom to provide me guidance, grace and correction in all my missteps and mistakes. Although I’ve had to be reminded on this truth time and time again, it is reassuring to me that I am not walking through life alone.
For those of you that have prayed for me or shown me Christ’s grace in my mistakes, I sincerely thank you. God has definitely shown me His favor and mercy in the many mistakes and blunders I’ve made over the years (some of them make for funny stories!). I hope that this story would encourage you to do this all the more!
As I reflect over the past 20+ years of my life, I’m quite amazed to see how far Christ has developed me into the man of God according to His design. There are still many concepts the typical person does in a social setting that I struggle to understand and apply, such as using a social filter to strain out inappropriate phrases in a conversation. At the same time, Christ’s grace enabled me to overcome a lot of significant barriers with regards to my disorder (especially with communication). These seemingly small acts are just some reasons in which I praise God for His power and providence.
Autism is the thorn in my side that is never going away. I’ve accepted it as part of who I am — it is by God’s design! I am His masterpiece, crafted and designed for a purpose, the Gospel that shines through my story (Ephesians 2:8–10). The way He designed me is perfect and good for me. I pray that if you are reading this post that you would be encouraged that not only God is real, but that He is working in ways you and I can barely fathom. His grace is real in my life and I hope you can see it in your life as well.
“For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.” — Psalm 139:13–14
