Friday, September 5, 2014

A Personal Reflection About "When Church Hurts," Because Often It Does

A good friend, who knows our family's fierce battle to survive Sunday morning church amidst the angst of autism, recently shared a blog article entitled "When Church Hurts." You can read it here and it would be well worth your time to do so. 

Being autistic, I regularly receive messages from families who are literally warring their way through the issues of church attendance and autism. Many of those families finally just give up and quit going to church all together. They're tired - really tired. I understand their exhaustion and I can sympathize with the things that have driven them to eventually cave in to quitting.  

The things that this blogger/mother references are very real for those of us who live life on the spectrum, and it would seem that these church challenges are pretty stinkin' pandemic. It grieves my heart. (By the way - before any of you jump my ecclesiastical jugular, let me say that I don't agree with everything that the blogger says in her post, but I do understand the struggles her family faces. Please don't throw the baby out with the bathwater for perhaps through her post you will begin to understand as well.) 

Our son Josh has made great strides where worship is concerned, even in the past few months. But, church is still terribly trying for him - it's terribly trying even in spite of the fact that we have a very low sensory stressing service at Redeemer.  Many of the issues raised and most of the examples given in the article have been our reality every single week since our son was 2 1/2 years old - many years before we knew autism to be the driving force behind his struggle (as well as behind my own).