Flaky Church Girl

What does it look like to walk through the doors of a church when your brain is wired differently?

We demand so much of our brains. What would it look like instead to honor our own minds as the neurodivergent Body of Christ, treating them with care, compassion, and respect?

-in Blessed Minds by Sarah Griffith Lund

I smile and say hi to the person opening the door for me. I’ve been here many many times, and people know me. Or they at least think they do. In all my years here, I still have not been able to completely open up or unmask for fear of rejection.

There are people milling about, it’s about 10 minutes before church starts. I try to arrive with the perfect amount of time to spare. I really do enjoy catching up with people before the service starts.

Sometimes I find myself disappointed that I “need” to go sit down because I would rather continue in the conversation I’m having with someone I haven’t had a chance to talk to much recently.

Today I’m helping with the kids. It used to be that we would be in the Sunday school room the entire service, but recently we’ve been starting out with everyone else in the sanctuary, at the front.

This means everyone can see me. I can make easy eye contact with the praise team. This means that people watching the live stream can also see me, and not just right now but when it’s uploaded later I’m not sure I like that.

Besides this look into how Sunday morning at church would start, there are a myriad other things going through my head, especially as a layperson in leadership.

• Who haven’t I said hi to recently? I should make sure to say hi.
• What about the unhoused folks coming in for coffee? Did someone greet them? Do they feel welcome?
• I have a meeting for a committee tomorrow, did I get my task done for that? No? Maybe I can fit it in during my lunch at work tomorrow…
• Plus a billion other things…

For years I had a gnawing, inescapable anxiety on Sunday mornings. I often had meltdowns right before we had to leave the house due to what I now know was sensory overload of getting ready. While I know now I didn’t need to, I wanted to look “nice” and “presentable” and usually somewhat “feminine” for church, as much as I just wanted to be comfortable.

We often would run errands after, and executive functioning wouldn’t always quite capture the steps or lists for those tasks – grocery lists, bringing totes along – and I hate backtracking so I would want to do all errands in one fell swoop while we were out.

For years, nay decades, my husband and I have served faithfully in our church, the few we have called “home.” We have spent probably more Sunday mornings apart than not. For one reason or another, we would not be able to attend worship together. I’m tired; we are tired (if I could speak for him for a second).

Besides the busyness punctuated by an individualist, capitalistic tone, the church in general remains a very inaccessible space to folks with differences of all kinds – economic differences, hygiene differences, brain differences. Because many denominations are so steeped in tradition, many folks who have attended a long time take their tradition, rituals, and routines for granted.

We spend very little time in church saying the quiet parts out loud, which can vary within each church micro-culture.

• “When a meeting has a start time, most people tend to arrive about ten minutes early and might perceive you as late if you arrive exactly on time.”
• “We’re not always great at sticking to an agenda for some gatherings or meetings, so they could go long.”
• “If you commit to a committee or activity, it might be for years at a time.”
• “We are working on having a better growth mindset about change. We can be stuck in our ways.”
• “We’ve been looking for someone to lead this for awhile, and we’re kind of desperate.”

These unspoken rules stem from a lack of self-awareness of the congregation, and either lack of education about accessibility, or a willful ignorance of it. However, Sarah Griffith Lund in her book Blessed Minds: Breaking the Silence about Neurodiversity says:

Change can be difficult for all of us, perhaps especially for entrenched institutions like the church. Now is the time to be bold. Now is the time for community-building, truth-telling, and courageous action to bring about the changes needed for the church to flourish. Honoring and nurturing neurodiversity is part of God’s plan for creation.

I’m not sure 100% what embracing neurodiversity as a part of the church tapestry could look like, but I think for me as a neurodivergent person with privilege, I can begin to unmask and embrace what my experience could be in church.

Right now this looks like mostly saying “no.” I’m coming out of burnout. I need to be very careful with my time and energy. There are so many things I love to do outside of work and church, and I need to mindfully devote what energy I do have left to those things in order to regain my mental health.

This also looks like not going to church every Sunday, or even every month. I told my therapist I wanted to be the most Flaky Church Girl ever. (She had some questions about why I said “flaky,” but for me it’s working right now.)

If people forget my name or face until I re-introduce myself, then so be it. When I do attend, I want to be present and not just waiting for the service to be over so I can scurry out and get on with my day. We will all survive.

If I had every intention of getting up and heading to church one Sunday, and if for some reason I wake up and the vibe isn’t vibing, then I won’t go. And moreover, I won’t feel bad about it later. (I have tried instead to watch the livestream at home, but I don’t enjoy it.)

I’m not committing to weekly Bible studies or classes. As much as I want to participate, I know right now making commitments to having to attend something in person is not going to work. I would definitely advocate for an online option to attend. (And if we provide accommodations for one group, it’s actually better for all!)

I’m wearing only comfy sensory-friendly clothes. These days, it doesn’t seem churches expect people to dress up, at least with the services I’ve visited. Even so, today I wore leggings and a sweatshirt. And it was comfortable.

I’m going to fidget or stim as I need to. This morning there was a beautiful prelude that was a cello / piano duet. I swayed a little bit while changing seated positions multiple times. I also have my earplugs at the ready in case I need them.

So far at the church we’ve been attending, I haven’t experienced much dread or discomfort socially. Everyone I’ve encountered has been very friendly and introduced themselves by name.

All in all, what I need to remember is two-fold:

1. The way I engage with church now doesn’t have to look like it did in the past. It can be a completely renewed relationship. In fact, I believe that it has to be.
2. I cannot put enough emphasis on this: it was never a faith issue. Ever. Once I realized that, I could breath easy. There were many times when I was getting close to burnout, still not self-realized and definitely not diagnosed yet, that I truly thought there was something wrong with me that I just did not want to go to church. In truth, I was overstimulated and emotionally cut down from a very demanding job (teaching) and needed to rest. (I want to eventually write more about this point, especially when I tried the whole deconstruction thing and it just didn’t…. suit?)

So, if we know we need to make church more accessible, why aren’t we?

Can we embrace the Flaky Church Girls in our midst the same as folks who come week after week, lead committees, and stay involved?