The Truth about Mental Health: Worship and Neurodiverse Kids

At the tender age of three, children can be a bit of a challenge. And “a bit” might also be short hand for “Lord have mercy on this house.”

When a child has a diagnosis, any diagnosis, parents and our communities have to learn to enter their world if we want them to see that Jesus enters their world. One of our kids is diagnosed with high functioning autism spectrum, made up by an overactive sensory system, a different vantage point of thought and communication, and a little bit of a heavy soul.

Church was a struggle for him to say the least. The side conversations and congregational singing got him every time. I recently read an article about quiet services for autistic children, with less singing and no instruments. Genius. This is the kind of thing that would have appealed to us most certainly. Kids often have solutions of their own, however. When the organ started playing, reverberating in every cell of their being, my child would lay their entire body on the floor of the church aisle or under a pew. This made the noise bearable. People at our church seemed unconcerned, flexible enough to let a small child have the space they needed to join in the community in the way they needed.

I, however, also wanted desperately for my child to find tiny sparks of joy in this place, with god, with these people, not just survival.

How was I going to convince him God was enamored with them, available to them, if each and every Sunday it was literal misery for their poor little soul. The Good News is that God does His work and children will find joy often on their own when we let them.

One day, our family walked up to take communion. I lined up the troops and we waited calmly for our turn. We reached the altar and kneeled. We took the body and blood, the forgiveness shared with us, and the blessings given on each and every head. We stood up and we marched five feet to the left and out the side door to go back to our seat.

In our church at the time, there were two steps down from the altar area before you got to the aisle leading to your seat. On this particular Sunday, our youngest slowed down and stopped on the top step. He turned back and looked at me, broke into a smile and jumped with all his might off both steps. With that jump he burst into the sweetest, quiet little giggles the world has even known.

After that day, they continued to muscle through worship every Sunday, but when it came time for that step each week, he jumped off of it wholeheartedly. They would giggle and walk on. I gave thanks for creators of steps and The Creator of ideas, for giving my child a little joy through something as mundane as a step.

One day, after the time of the step in worship, one of the elders asked me nicely, “Can you ask him to stop jumping off that step?”

Ah, people mean well, they really do. I mean, the noise, the exuberance of jumping full force near the front of the church. So much in life and in church can be taken as inconsiderate and disrespectful. All of us, you and I included, have ideas about what worship should look like.

With that in mind, my answer in this instance was respectful, “No.”

Later I explained, “That step is worship joy for this child. That moment is the one they look forward to every Sunday morning. I can’t, I won’t, take that from them.”

A missionary friend of mine said it best, “Shouldn’t we all be jumping off the communion step anyway?” And she’s right. Maybe we have too low of expectations of worship at times, or too tight of expectations is possibly more true.

Do you have a metaphoric step? A place where God comes and says, “this tiny joy is for you, because I like that you are here”? We all need places we know it’s safe to jump, to show our whole selves, unabashed, vulnerable joy?

Our elder nodded his understanding, which gave it’s own grace-filled moment to me. Sometimes church communities can be challenging, but this moment, there was understanding. I’ll take that. I need that.

May your own communities be filled with understanding and when it is absent, may God bring light. Maybe that’s part of the work of neurodiversity and diagnoses of any kind, a little light where we least expect it.