I'm Different

Learning to See and Celebrate God's Fingerprints in Our Lives

NATHAN

I've always known I was different. It wasn't something I chose or an identity I one day decided to wear. Being different is woven into the very fabric of who I am. Part of it comes from the various "disorders" that have challenged me and my family, and part of it simply comes from the outside-the-box personality God decided to give me.

Being different has made itself evident in every corner of my life, peeking out and reminding me whenever I start to think I might be normal.

I know I'm different because when other children were content with walking on the sidewalk, I felt the need to climb the rails. Because when others' questions would stop, mine seemed to go on without end, often frustrating those who ran out of answers.

I know I'm different because when I was fifteen I began taking six showers a day and washing my hands until they bled.

I know I'm different because my mind seems to change channels at will, making it nearly impossible to focus on any one thing for more than a few minutes.

I know I'm different because no matter how hard I looked at the math problem or how many times my tutor explained it, my mind simply couldn't grasp the simple numerical basics that seemed to come so easy to my friends and siblings.

I know I'm different because while I long for affection, I am often scared to touch the ones I love for fear of contaminating them.

I know I'm different because even now as a twenty-seven-year-old adult, there are times when the weight of the world seems so heavy I don't feel able to leave my apartment.

I know I'm different because I've been told so by every important person in my life.

Sally

"Do you just try to be different?" That was one of the most familiar phrases of my childhood and youth and even into my adulthood — though I was not consciously aware of this until I pondered my life while trying to figure out Nathan's.

The message wasn't I love your uniqueness, your individualism.

It was Why cant you just fit in?

"Since you are so pale and blond, you will have to try harder to have color in your face. You will need to wear mascara and lipstick every day to look beautiful."

"Are you watching your weight? And when was your last haircut?"

"That's a strange thing to say. Why would you even think that?"

"You try to think up every weird ideal and decision to pursue — just to embarrass our family."

These messages and others like them were the foundation of my psyche as a girl growing up. After I became an adult, the criticism was more often implied than spoken, but I heard it loud and clear: "Please don't tell my friends about the books you have written. Your values are a little bit 'out there,' and we wouldn't want to give anyone the wrong impression."

And the theme of all this communication was You're different — and that's not okay.

I was not trying to be different. I just was. I thought differently. I questioned things as they were. School bored me. I bounced my foot nervously during church and probably talked too much. I was definitely a little wild and dramatically idealistic in my values and dreams. And that made some of my family uncomfortable. They wanted me to fit in.

I realize now that I was probably one of those children who today would be diagnosed with an alphabet's worth of letters — ADHD, OCD, perhaps a couple of other Ds. Those terms are part of my daily vocabulary now, but that wasn't true back then. My parents certainly weren't informed of such things. There were fewer resources and less understanding of learning issues and mental illness. And of course I had no idea these issues framed my life. I only knew that I frustrated others from time to time by just being myself.

So I just muddled through. Because of training and peer pressure to conform, I managed (mostly) to hide my differences. Looking back through the corridors of my life, I now realize that I "stuffed" and suppressed my feelings and learned how to pull back so other people would accept me. I learned to avoid the conflict of being misunderstood again. Only much later, through time and experience and especially Nathan, would I come to a different understanding about being different.

I am writing this from the haven of my small, covered deck, sipping my cup of hot tea as I gaze out at tall pines swaying in the whispering wind. Yes, I'm out here again. Being outdoors is one of the best ways I know to find peace for my always active mind. And life is good, because finally I feel at ease in my own skin. I have come to actually like who I am, at least most of the time. But the journey of liking who I am, as I am, with all my strengths, passions, flaws, and imperfections, has been a long journey. It has taken most of my life.

I have always had secret dreams, pleasures, and ideas bubbling inside me as well as an adventuresome spirit — a willingness to take risks, to experience life at its fullest, to question hypocrisy, and to point it out when others kept silent. All this plus a larger-than-life personality type meant I was often just too much for some of my family, though others in my world of friends loved the "bigness" of who I was.

My sweet mama, especially, struggled to cope with what I was like. She was a devoted and loving mama, but it took me years to understand that she was probably insecure and terrified that I might do something that would bring her criticism from her family or friends. I wasn't the one with a problem, in other words. She was. She had no idea how to accept me and to validate the person I was on a daily basis.

Let me add that I am long past blaming my parents and especially my mother. She did the best she could within the limits of her own perspective. She was a generous person, and she gave me a love for life in many areas where she felt comfortable. She also (inadvertently) taught me a valuable lesson that has served me well as a mama — that it is easy for parents to pass on unnecessary guilt, shame, and insecurity to their children because we fear the rejection of critical and judgmental people in our lives. So if I can help other parents understand the profound importance of accepting children as they are, perhaps I can save those children from some of the anguish I felt for many years.

There are an infinite number of ways to be different and to feel like one doesn't fit in. The difference can be personality driven. It can involve physiological issues, mental illness, or emotional issues, and can be shaped by experience. (Nathan's case, it turned out, did involve several clinical disorders as well as a number of personality quirks that set him apart from the crowd.) And feeling different — being different — is something our culture, especially our Christian culture, does not talk about much. People often turn their heads away from people and situations they don't understand and pretend they do not exist. And the words "mental illness" can make them positively squirm.

But the truth is, all of us are a little bit quirky in some way or another. All of us have Achilles' heels, uniquely vulnerable areas of our bodies, minds, and personalities. And some of us, to be honest, are a little quirkier than others — which is why we struggle so much and why other people — especially parents, teachers, and authority figures — have a hard time dealing with us. We are not convenient to their expectations of how life ought to play itself out.

But these personality differences, these outside-the-box preferences and approaches to life, don't have to be liabilities. Or they don't have to be only liabilities. They can actually be a gift to us and to others who are willing to look at life through our unique lenses.

Through my years I have discovered that most of us hide a great deal of who we are deep inside, fearing to reveal our flaws, our failures, our weaknesses, our wildness, and especially our "craziness," because we do not want to be rejected by others. Peer pressure and the voices of authority teach us that we should conform to the boxes of cultural expectations because it will save us from criticism.

Yet psychologists know that "stuffing" our real feelings and thoughts only produces havoc in our bodies, hearts, and minds. Learning to love ourselves, to be humble enough to admit our limitations, to truly appreciate the gifts our differences bring while also being willing to accept help and healing for the most painful ones, gives us greater mental, emotional, and spiritual health.

God made each of us with a unique set of "fingerprints" — our basic personality, physical makeup, and mental capacity, not to mention our God-given spirit. And we each face a unique set of life circumstances — health issues, teaching and modeling, experiences such as success and failure, nurture and abuse. All of these shape our unique story, which often defines our external behavior. But even in this broken world, where our differences often come with burdensome baggage, the imprint of God on our lives still gives value to each one of us as we are.

We are so often encouraged to fit into the boxes of academic achievement, intellectual prowess, recognizable achievements, personality profiles, status, money, power, external significance — to perform, to fit in the box, to be acceptable. Yet our wonderful God loves us unconditionally, now and forever. We do not have to work to please Him. He values us for what is inside our hearts — our character and integrity, our ability to love, to be faithful, to help others, and to show compassion. Our individual personalities are a gift of His design so that we might add color and variety to the world. And He can use our unique combination of circumstances — even the painful ones like mental illness — for our good and His glory.

Perhaps my own background of feeling inadequate for being "me" prepared me, at least a little, for the gift of my own outside-the-box boy, Nathan. Because I always wanted someone to know me and still love me — to actually like me as I was — I was predisposed to champion him with all of his differences.

But that doesn't mean it was easy! Far from it.

In fact, God must have a sense of humor because he gave me the gift of a little boy who was really different. A boy whose outsized needs and over-the-top behavior would test the far limits of my love, challenge my desire to have a heart of compassion, force my ability to live slowly and patiently, and defy my ability to tame or control my circumstances.

Nathan's differences stretched me and challenged my own limits of wanting to fit in, to not bring more criticism and judgment, and my deep desire to have life be controllable. By loving him through the peaks and valleys of his own life journey in our home, I learned even more the meaning of the preciousness and value of each human being, who is crafted mysteriously by the hands of God. I learned to appreciate and celebrate difference (not just "cope with it") because all human beings are a work of the Artist and have infinite value to the One who made them.