My Identity

Because I am a Christian, my eternal identity is that I am a child of God. Nothing can change that, not even death. But my identity here on earth is more complex and includes things that make me unique. I am a Christian, American, Aspie, female, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, writer, babysitter, employee, pastor's kid, homeowner, and lots of other things. All of these things are part of what makes me who I am and who God created me to be. To say that being any of these things is my sole identity is wrong. God made each of us complex and each of us has a purpose that He created us for, and it is part of our job here on earth to find out that purpose that He created us for so that we can bring glory to Him in the best way that we can.

For several of us late identified Aspies, we have been told that we should find our identity in Christ, not in our Aspergers. Since we have very logical brains, this probably comes across differently than how you meant it, so I will try to explain to you what those words mean to us. I have recently been a part of a group discussion on this topic and so I know that I am not alone in feeling this way and there was no one in the group that voiced an opposing view. Some even had serious PTSD from this and were extremely triggered by the topic.

When you tell us to only find our identity in Christ and not our Aspergers/Autism, to us it means that you don't want to accept our differences and you don't support our journey of self-discovery and learn how God designed us uniquely. Your words insinuate that in your mind the identities can't coexist. We are either in Christ or we are autistic, we can't be both. In reality, God gave us all of the things that identify us and make us different from others around us. Your words tell us that you don't fully support us and we either have to go elsewhere for support and learning, or we try to abide by what you say and stay away from anything that would help us learn more about ourselves. These things can be detrimental to us because we already struggle so much in finding people to accept us for who we are and not change us to be more like them. We need all of the support that we can get.

I have also heard this compared to those in addiction recovery who are told to say that they are Christians who struggle with alcohol instead of saying that they are alcoholics. To compare alcoholism to autism is completely wrong and they should be treated completely differently. Alcoholism is a sin and people in addiction recovery are trying to leave that behind them and live a clean life free of alcohol. Aspergers/Autism is not a sin, and it is not something that we can get rid of or be cured from. There is no Aspergers/Autism Anonymous group.  It is a gift from God, and while we struggle with certain things, but we also have strengths that other people don't have, and we need to discover those strengths so that we can use them to the fullest, while also learning our weaknesses and how to manage them successfully like God intended.

When you tell us to not identify as autistics, it also makes us think that you are likely among those who believe that autism should be cured, and that God can cure us. We don't need cured because God designed us this way. We need help and support, just like every other Christian in the world. We just need a different type of help and support, one that lots of Christians seem to be unwilling to give because it includes learning about us and our differences. I have heard personal stories from lots of autistic people that their fellow church members and even Church leaders shunned them and made them outcasts from the church because of their autism and refused to even try to understand and help them. The same has even happened with their family members in a few instances. This behavior is extremely unbiblical and needs to be remedied immediately. Thankfully my church family has been very understanding and helpful once I knew about my Aspergers and how to explain myself so that others could understand me. This could be due to the fact that there are others like me in the church, but they are not all as vocal about it as I have been in my writings.

Several years ago, long before I learned that I am an Aspie, I was asked to do something in my church that was a ministry opportunity. It was something that I was good at and enjoyed, but I was doing it alone and there were people who depended on me to do it every week, twice a week. After a few months, I needed a break, but I felt trapped because I didn't know how to get a break. I didn't know who to ask for help and I didn't know how to explain why I needed a break. I ended up in a burnout and someone finally took that responsibility away from me. It took a while for me to recover from the burnout. I stayed in the church but didn't get involved in any ministries for a while. Even after recovering from the burnout, I was afraid of getting involved in something again and being trapped with no way out. The fear of the trapped feeling and my lack of knowledge about myself and how to communicate my needs, kept me from doing any kind of ministry in the church for several years. It took a long time before I was able to try a similar ministry again and I went in very hesitantly and was very thankful for someone who understood that I might need a break occasionally and they communicated this to me several times. They never tied me down to the ministry; they were just thankful when I could do it. This made me eager to help out and once again I was able to use my gifts to help someone. I was still very careful about getting into any other kind of ministry at church because I needed to be sure that I wasn't going to be trapped into something with no way out when I needed a break.

Then, I learned about my Aspergers, and it explained so many things about myself. It gave me ways to explain myself to other people and I learned why I struggle with burnout and feeling trapped in ministry situations. As I became more comfortable talking about it, I learned that there were people in the church who were very understanding about autism and had experience with family members on the spectrum, and a ministry opportunity opened up identical to the one that left me in burnout. But I would not be alone this time and the people that would be benefitting from my ministry were very understanding and were willing to give me a break whenever I needed it. This has allowed me to use my God-given gifts to the fullest and to help minister to people around me without damaging myself in the process. Knowing about my identity as an Aspie helped me to become a better person and a better Christian.

The previous true story from my life is to demonstrate the fact that we need to be able to learn about ourselves in order to use our God-given gifts to the fullest potential. If I had let people dissuade me from pursuing learning about myself and my Aspie traits, I would never be doing the ministry that I am doing now.  There are many things that identify us and help us be who God created us to be. Please encourage those around you, even those who are not on the spectrum, to fully explore themselves and learn how God made them unique. This could include learning about their personality traits and what their strengths and weaknesses are, among other things. God gave us lots of identities in our human lives and we need to explore them all in order to be able to bring God all of glory that He deserves from us.