I’m a writer. I don’t mean that I write for the public, though obviously I do. I mean that I express myself through the written word. I love the way words come together to depict complex ideas and emotions, the beauty in the way they flow. With my pen, I can think. Except when I can’t.
For a person with neurodiverse brains, self-expression is a constant challenge. When left alone, expression finds outlet in natural ways: sounds, movements, sensations, hyperfocused interests. But other people expect words. Not just any words, but specific combinations of words delivered in specific ways. There are no official rules, and different people expect different combinations. Different situations require different combinations.
You try to translate all your natural self-expression into words, but things don’t match. You can’t find a word that describes the feeling relieved by cocooning in a heavy blanket in ninety degree weather, or the surge of undirected energy prompting the need to hum a set musical phrase on repeat. The words other people direct toward you don’t make sense either; they are too flat somehow, or the sounds making up the words trigger responses that confuse and anger the speakers.
Living in a household full of neurodivergent brains has taught me a lot about communication. While words are still a huge part of our lives (seriously, they never seem to stop talking), we have to listen beneath the words to understand. Because sometimes there are no words, not for the real things we need to say.
As a word person in a non-word house, I have discovered a strange empathy with that deeper, wordless self-expression. The strength of it overwhelms until I must share it or drown, yet all I have is words. I try to write the feelings and ideas down in ways that other people can see their beauty. I try again and again, writing and erasing until my mind is as full of rips as the paper, but I cannot find the combination that others will understand. Suddenly there are no words left.
Listen to the notes. Dance with the motions. Oggle at the skill produced from hyperfocus. Buy the heavy blankets. Share the smiles and the tears and the squeals. Maybe you’ll find no words are needed.
To be clear, I am the abnormal one in my family. No, not the “neurodivergent” one. That’s the other six people in the house. I’m the round peg. All my life decisions were something I took for granted. What will I eat for breakfast? Which TV show do I feel like watching? What job will I apply for? Which chore will I tackle first today? Even more stressful decisions merely took more time; I thought about them carefully, eventually made one, and life moved on.
For square pegs, decisions are something else entirely. The extra space in those corners reflects variables that simply do not exist for circle pegs. Some decisions careen off into empty space, out of the realm of conscious thought, rather like Dug’s attention in the movie _Up_ whenever he sees a squirrel. Some get jammed into the corners like the dust in the cranny where two walls meet that neither a broom or a vacuum cleaner can reach. Some jump from corner to corner and side to side like the old Windows screensaver, skating away in a new direction whenever almost within reach.
In a world requiring fast-paced decision making, square pegs stay in a state of agonized malfunction. Squirrels might become amazing adventures, but who can enjoy adventure with the decision posse riding around every corner? The posse is sure that square pegs can be reformed, that a decision can be forced with enough pressure, but all they accomplish is driving their prey into hiding, jamming that dust deeper and deeper into corners. No one gets anything, not decision or adventure.
As the circle peg, learning to appreciate the corners was a challenge. I was sure that love or responsibility or both would ensure efficient decisions in matters that affected all of us. That is, I was sure about that until I decided to go on the adventure too. When I did, I discovered a different kind of decision making, the decisions of imagination and possibility. A process independent of time or expectations, intuitively reacting to every new idea. A process that, rather than preventing functionality or progress as perceived, provided new solutions to problems, new paths to expected decisions.
My expectations about decisions were quite right for circle pegs, but entirely wrong for square ones. The pressure of rapid decisions polished my curves but scarred their corners. Their decisions weren’t “efficient” in a circle world, but when given time to sharpen the corners were often richer and more complex, adding variety, beauty, and excitement that as a circle I would never have otherwise experienced.
He sat down across from old Fred, legs dangling even in the spindly little chair, and watched the old man with owlish eyes. As if his gaze exerted some sort of force, Fred raised his hat brim enough to peer under it at the boy. “Well?”
“How ’bout a game?” The boy leaned back and hooked his fingers through his overalls the way he’d seen the grizzled hangers-on at the store do many times.
“Aren’t you a mite young, Squirt?” Fred surveyed him as if he were a used car on the lot next door. “Yore head barely tops the table sittin’ up straight.”
‘Squirt’ merely shrugged and crossed his legs, staring off into nothing. He picked up a checker and spun it between his thumb and finger, shifting the gum in his mouth from one cheek to the other with his tongue and mock spitting into the dust by the porch.
Fred chuckled and sat up, adjusting his hat. “Well, might as well see what you’re made of, at that.” He cleared the board. “Don’t you be thinkin’ I’ll go easy on you, though. Man acts like a player he’s gotta prove his worth.”
The boy sat up and propped both elbows on the table, slapping his checker against the squares with a loud clack. His face serious, he adjusted the ball cap on his own towhead. “Black or white?”
Most of us played with shape sorters as children. As part of learning the different shapes and creating the proper connections, we tried fitting shapes into holes they didn’t match. Some of those mismatches didn’t fit at all; the shape simply would not pass through the hole. The corners of a square, for example, will never fit inside the curves of a circle. Others, however, would sometimes slide through, or could be forced through, certain incorrect holes. A circle could actually fit through the square hole, even though its curves did not fill out the square’s corners.
From the time we are very small, our society pushes patterns of behavior on us. “Be normal,” we’re told. If we don’t fit the shape expected, we are labeled, separated, and therapied to death until we meet expectations or break. But who decided which shape is normal? When we played with the shape sorters, we might have begun by trying to fit everything into the same shape because we liked something about that shape, but eventually we learned that each shape had its own place. Can you imagine someone saying, “The only shape allowed in the world anymore is the square? Circles, triangles, stars – they are all wrong and must be redesigned into squares.”
Two terms that have become popular in recent years are neurotypical and neurodivergent. I understand the intent behind the use of these words, and occasionally use them myself in order to frame concepts in a way people can understand them. Unfortunately, these terms also reinforce the idea that only one shape is normal. Labels are created, therapies are invented, medications are prescribed. All of these have the purpose of making people with different shapes appear to be the preferred one. The focus is always placed on what is “wrong,” what is “abnormal,” that makes a person different then eliminating it.
But again I ask, what is normal? Just as every shape is unique and has its own place on the shape sorter (and it’s own mathematical purpose), every human is unique and has place and purpose. What is normal for one is abnormal for another. What one is capable of doing another is not. What one cannot accomplish another can. Corners and curves are both necessary; elimination of one or the other creates a world that cannot function.
What if, instead of looking for “normal” we strove to celebrate individuality? What if, instead of trying to shave off corners or flatten curves, we recognized the needed functions of both? It’s true that circles can fit within the square, but they don’t belong. Circles will never be able to reach into the corners and fulfill the purpose of squares. If forced to pretend to be squares, circles will always feel inadequate, and will never experience or even know their full potential as circles. Squares, on the other hand, can never fit in the circles as they are. They will either try to shave off parts of themselves leaving raw, gaping wounds in order to squeeze in, or they will be smashed against edges again and again until they break. Either way they lose their identity and their purpose and, like the ill-fitting circle, will never experience or recognize their potential as squares.
Our society has become adept at forcing round pegs into square holes. We admire the work and contributions of those circles who managed to find their circle holes and give us great discoveries or achievements, as long as we don’t have to acknowledge that they were circles in the first place. Because we carefully avoid recognizing the ill-fitting circles, we also prevent ourselves from seeing the broken squares. We have decided to be the infant trying to smash all the shapes into the hole that pleases us best, but unlike the infant, we don’t learn from our failures. We just keep smashing and screaming in frustration until everything is broken.
What if, instead of breaking others to look like ourselves, or breaking ourselves to look like others, we all found our own purpose as who we are? God doesn’t make mistakes. He made each of us exactly the way we are. He has purpose, specific and absolute purpose, for each and every individual exactly the way He created us. Imagine what we could all be together if every single one of us found our own.
Shara peered through the nearest window as she worked the complicated controls. Jumping onto the long crank shaft to add her full weight to the effort, she grumbled under her breath. The thing creaked louder than a banshee shriek, and moved about as fast as old Piet dozing in his armchair. She heaved a sigh of relief when the shaft suddenly dropped and a thudding jolt confirmed a successful landing.
“Cam! Jolie! Are the booths packed?” She hurried into the other room, pulling her carefully brushed market coat over her shoulders. Her siblings waited near the door, the double tongues of their rolling booths locked into their hip implants.
Cam grimaced from his cycle. “We’re ready, but one of my gears has a nick in it. Makes the tongue jump. My hip is already sore just cycling in here from the storeroom.”
Shara grimaced. The twins shouldn’t even be cycling heavy machinery yet, but since Piet had weakened and Mam succumbed to cloud sickness, there was no one else. “We’ll just have to make enough to replace it today.” So much for fixing the crank shaft.
She stuffed the leather pouch holding their permits and a few stray chits into her coat and locked her own booth into her sockets. “Watch out for dracs; the young ones can survive above the miasma for a while, and sometimes even make it up here over the cloud line. We don’t need radiation burns on top of everything else.”
The mustard tree is a fascinating plant. Its tiny seed is one of the smallest in the world, and must be collected by soaking the pit of the mustard fruit for several days and then straining the resulting pulp through a cloth. The seed germinates quickly but grows incredibly slowly. Its most rapid growth occurs when planted near a water source; its roots seek out water, sensing it and growing toward any source, even breaking through pipes or well walls to access it. However, the tree can live and thrive on less than 8 inches of rainfall per year in some of the hottest, driest climates on Earth. The hotter and more consistent the sunlight, the healthier the tree, and clay that grows little else nourishes it. The leaves resemble those of succulents, and are often consumed for their moisture by desert animals and people. When in dryer conditions the mustard tree may only grow to about six feet tall, but in wet environments will grow up to 25 feet, an imposing sight.
On three separate occasions Jesus explained the power of faith using the image of the mustard seed. He said that even faith as small as a mustard seed could do such impossible things as moving a mountain from one place to another or uprooting a mature tree to plant it in the sea. I have known the analogy all my life, but grasping such a thing is difficult when we tend to think of big and small as opposite limits of size.
God doesn’t think in limits. Just as a day and a thousand years are the same to Him, big and small hold no meaning in a physical sense. Instead, he sees potential. The tiny mustard seed has no strength of its own, no power to impress our human sensibilities, yet in the harshest, most unexpected conditions, life can be induced to spark within it. The germs of faith wake under similar circumstances. Like the mustard tree, faith does not become full overnight. It grows, millimeter by millimeter, over a lifetime. It can outlast some of the hardest circumstances life can throw at it, although often in hard times it merely exists, eking out drops in desperation but not finding enough to grow any larger. When the nourishing rain of an answered prayer, an encouraging word, a relief from a trial arrives, it grows again and fills new leaves with nourishment to hold in reserve for the next difficulty.
Also like the mustard tree, the roots of faith reach out endlessly with insatiable need. Faith knows its source, and will move in that direction only no matter what gets in the way. It cannot be stopped; even when we feel like we are barely hanging on, faith looks for any sign of God in the darkness and dirt of life and drinks it thirstily. If there were no water to be found, the tree would die – it cannot manufacture its own nutrition – but those roots can find and use any trace of moisture. Faith without nourishment would be nothing -a shriveled, rotten trunk – but unlike water God is always there to be found.
When Jesus’ disciples woke Him in the storm, He told them their faith was weak and small but He still stopped the storm. When they failed to cast out demons in His name He told them their faith was weak and small but He still cast out the demons. When a man begged for healing for his son and said he wanted to believe but needed help making faith stronger, Jesus healed the man’s son. When Moses hid in the wilderness for forty years because what he thought he was supposed to do for God failed, God became fire in a bush and told him he was chosen for a purpose because of his faith. How many more have been planted while tiny and insignificant, then nourished by God’s eager help into trees of faith to feed and harbor weak and searching souls?
“It’s like a mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his garden. It grew and became a tree, and the birds of the sky nested in its branches.” Luke 13:19 CSB
God will feed any faith we are capable of placing on Him, including the mere desire to have faith. Are you a mustard seed? How high will you grow?
Hera’s hands rested on her trembling knees, breath coming in deep gasps. The bowl perched on a rock nearby, but her head swam, threatening to make her black out. She knew why the Wise Ones required this journey. She did know. But the sick trying to force its way up her throat questioned.
The bowl was old, older than even the oldest Wise One. And ugly. Hera thought it looked like a rotten orange, which churned her stomach even more. It had been found long ago by a boy on the cusp of manhood, drunk from out of need and carried home out of curiosity. Not until the boy failed to age for years after did the ancestors learn its nature. And its danger.
So many had died for the bowl in those days. So many twisted by its gift, a curse to the undeserving. So those who were left set it here, to be retrieved only by one with great strength of character. At the coming of age, every boy and girl set out to climb the mountain between sun up and sun down. Once up for the bowl, once down to drink, then back up to replace the bowl. Few succeeded.
Everyone believed Hera would fail. The smallest and weakest of those born in her name year, she stood small chance at physical prowess. She smiled at the secret she knew. To use the bowl, strength of will mattered most. She stood on the mountain, where many turned back too soon.
She forced a deep, ragged breath and reached for the bowl. With the first step down her legs threatened to give way, but she took another step anyway. The hardest challenge was yet to come; few made it up the mountain, but fewer still could bring themselves to return the bowl after drinking. Only the wise ones knew the fate of those without honor. Hera would not fail. She would be a Wise One. She must be a Wise One.
The street was empty, oddly so. That squirmy feeling was back between my shoulder blades, and I scowled at the too bright clouds overhead. Why on earth had Lakra sent me here? Cryptic to a fault, that one. Trustworthy? I still wasn’t sure.
I knocked on the wooden door set deep in the stone, my other hand rubbing the filigree of my sword grip. The door flew open and a wrinkled hand shoved a scroll into my chest before it slammed shut again. I scrabbled to hang onto the rolled paper, staring at the worn boards as if they might bite me at any moment. “Hello? Nice to meet you too?”
Nothing but silence answered me, and I stepped back into the street to examine the scroll. “This better be worth it!” I yelled at no one in particular as I unrolled it. Inside were two lines of angular marks and a sketch of a river basin. “Seriously? Hell runes?” I was going to kill Lakra when I saw him again. A simple quest, that’s what I told him. Just for a few golds. And he sent me for hell runes. I made a fist around the scroll, crumpling it irredeemably, and stomped back down the still empty street.
My favorite story is the Tolkien’s _Lord of the Rings_. In that story, the ring possesses power to change and shape the world to the will of its maker, appealing to the deepest desires or fears of whoever holds it. At one point, Frodo tries to rid himself of that responsibility by offering it to the most powerful being remaining in Middle-earth, Galadriel the elf queen.
At the time, all Galadriel longed for was an end to evil in Middle-earth. The ring’s power whispered to her promises of success. All she had to do was wear it, become a goddess able to banish Sauron and shape the world with her own ideals. All would bow before her, it promised, following her command, and the world would be only good. For a moment she faltered, everything she had ever truly wanted seemingly at her fingertips. There would be no more war and suffering; life would be perfect and effortless. Easy.
The problem was that all the promises were a lie. The ring’s creator was entirely evil, and the power within the ring came from the depths of his own wicked heart. Indeed, that power could not be separated from him; it was his voice that spoke through it, and he that wielded it regardless of who held it. Galadriel’s vision could never have been accomplished, and in trying to achieve it her own heart would have been irrevocably twisted into Sauron’s image.
Galadriel’s desire was natural. She and others like her were embroiled in a war against apparently impossible odds. Fear, pain, sorrow, and death covered the world as completely as the clouds of smoke and ash belched into the sky by the enemy’s forges. Any with the courage to stand against evil found themselves beleaguered from every side.
In similar fashion, followers of Christ in the first century A.D. faced the greatest hardship they could have imagined. Choosing a life that reflected God’s character brought opposition at every turn. Confused rumors led to accusations of treason. Rejection of religious traditions drove wedges in formerly peaceful relationships, even between parents and children, husbands and wives. Refusal to follow societal customs and disapproval of pagan practices often meant businesses failed, jobs were lost, families were hungry. Punishments for standing out were often harsh, as citizenship was a privilege granted to few and without citizenship few human rights were respected.
Under such circumstances, it would have been hard to resist the urge to compromise. After all, they truly wanted to change the world into God’s image. Why not punish those who rejected Him as harshly as they had been? Why not force God’s ideals on the world instead? Why not use the tools of idolatry and materialism to become accepted back into society and make life, and teaching, easier?
The problem was that being different, living that harder life, was God’s image. Everything done to them, all the power leveraged against them, was the power and mindset of evil. Satan whispered through society just as surely as Sauron used the ring in the story. Using his tools might have felt easier, but the price would have been the destruction of everything they sought to build, would have been the loss of their very identity. Sauron could not produce anything good or beautiful because he himself was terrible. Satan cannot build anything worthwhile because he himself has rejected the source of all worth. “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17)
Galadriel resisted the ring’s call, saying that instead of embracing power she would diminish. God’s people who resisted society’s pressure for an easy life and earthly influence apparently experienced a similar sensation of collapse as more and more landed in prison or were executed, and those who remained became outcasts. In reality, Galadriel’s act of humility regained her true greatness, the glory that had been lost in banishment from the presence of the gods. Her banishment was ended, and she returned home to the throne that should have been hers all along. God’s people who surrender control and remain content with the battle in which they are placed will also receive a greater glory than any they could seek here on earth.
James 1:11–12 (CSB): Blessed is the one who endures trials, because when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.
When Moses was called to release God’s people from Egyptian servitude, he feared to obey, and the first results of his efforts seemed to justify his fear. Pharaoh was so incensed by the challenge to his perceived authority that he responded with harsh punishment. Beatings, killings, and impossible expectations made the Israelites utterly wretched. Moses, who himself remained untouched, was forced to watch these consequences of standing for God, feel the pain his people endured. In addition, he became a pariah to those God sent him to rescue; the familiarity of slave life, of being treated as inferior or as beasts of burden, was more palatable than the cost of freedom.
What would have happened if Moses had told God His freedom was too hard? Had returned to shepherding in the wilderness and left the Israelites to their familiar drudgery?
Because Moses faithfully walked through the shadow of suffering with his people, eventually even Pharaoh suffered enough from his behavior that he granted freedom, at least temporarily. Like all egomaniacs, however, as those who had been under his thumb stood on the brink of escape, he reached out to trap them again. Once again, Moses had to watch the darkness of evil falling around the people he loved, and endure their panicked blame. It seemed that every action taken in the direction God sent put them all in a deeper valley of hopelessness.
What would have happened if Moses had told the people to give themselves up? If he had decided the assignment was impossible and that life in slavery was better than promises that came with fear?
When Pharaoh’s army had been drowned and the Sea had been crossed, Moses faced the task of leading a nation through cultivated lands populated by military powers who would not share, through wild lands where no food could be found, and through deserts that parched throats without relief. Over and over he watched his charges face death on the path God had chosen for them, wept for their suffering, and endured accusations from people who found dehumanization and subjugation more palatable than scrabbling for their own necessities in freedom.
What would have happened if Moses had bowed in defeat in the desert? If he had decided the hunger and thirat and recriminations were too much to bear and left the Israelites to throw themselves on the mercy of their enemies?
“Even when I go through the darkest valley, I fear no danger, for you are with me;… you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…” Psalm 23:4,5
What would happen if, when threatened for following the path God set, we kept walking? What would happen if, when punished for speaking God’s challenge to evil, we kept talking? What would happen if, when hardship and death loomed because we stepped out in faith, we trusted Him to give us life? What would happen if, when in our darkest valleys, we chose to look at the Son?
The Word Worker 
