30 Days of Lent Down, A Lifetime to Go...
As Lent continues, I have had time to reflect on how I and my brain were finally welcomed into a faith community.
I am approaching Lent in a way that works better for me as an adult dealing with ADHD. As the days have gone by, I realized I had a bit more to say about being myself in church.
In 2017, I was diagnosed with ADHD. Finally, so many parts of my life made sense! My therapist urged me to start taking medication. He said my perimenopause had obviously drained enough estrogen for all hell to break loose–and oh, it had.1 My usual struggles to stay on task ramped up to a storm and I was left an emotional mess. Every part of my life had suffered.
I balked at his suggestion about treatment. Throughout my life, people have told me to behave in very certain ways. In order to fit in, I dutifully took prescribed medications (and, later, used alcohol)2 to control my behavior. I now think I am better off working with what I have through lifestyle changes, unless I face an intractable situation like my allergies or eyesight.
I read all the studies I could find, trying to find a way to not start meds. My wife begged me to try as my symptoms were a cause of anguish for us both at the time. Finally, I gave in. I found a psychiatrist. After a long interview, I started taking the Adderall he prescribed.
I found it horrifying—the world went almost completely quiet. I normally hear everything around me at the same level of importance, life’s noise my constant companion. It can be tiring, but I am used to sifting the sounds as needed. With the pills, an oddly sanitized centrality pulled me out of my sea of sound. How lonely the normies must be, I thought. And how did anyone manage to finish a book without being utterly consumed by the act of reading? I learned terms like hyperfocus, emotional disregulation, and time blindness as I began to map my experience to what I was learning about the ADHD brain.
I could focus somewhat better on the medication, which I appreciated. I decided to try it for a year, hoping that finally I could get out of the deep funk which started in my early 40s. Alas, I did not find a new level of existence. I still had the same messy life to sort out. The only difference now was I felt I was alone in a racquetball court for a few hours a day. I fretted more than ever and I had a terrible time sleeping.
Two months in, I noticed the Adderall stopped being as effective. My doctor informed me this is typical—I would have to keep raising my dosage, adding mood stabilizers and maybe one or two other meds in what he felt would be a workable regimen.
I reeled back. As a child, I was given Benadryl and Prednisone for severe allergies—and then my doctor left me on them for over a year. The side effects were unbearable until my 6th grade teacher looked them up in a pharmaceutical dictionary. She called my mom, who took me off of them immediately in shock. She had trusted the doctor. I felt better quickly, but our relationship was impacted by months of my meds-induced rages. I was again medicated in high school due to an incorrect diagnosis of depression. I spent over 3 years with constant cotton mouth and dizziness. Yes, I had been able to settle into my studies and left high school on a high note. I felt at the time it was a small price to pay for all I gained. Later still, I handled my stress and anxiety with alcohol abuse. Starting my recovery from that in my 30s was when I started to inhabit my brain without judgement.
I just was not willing to just leap into the arms of more medication now. I asked for a safe off-ramping protocol and stopped taking the pills over time. Back in my own familiar mind, I worked to move forward. (Please note: I am only speaking of my experience and you need to do what is right for you.)
Church as Part of My Brain’s Life
Just before the truncated Year of Adderall, I joined a church choir. My dear friend Cynthia was in one near my home. When she left the workplace we shared, she told me she had signed me up, knowing I was too much a loner to come on my own. I showed up that first night and tried to keep up. I have always struggled to read music; it seems to tangle up in my eyes when I get nervous. I gratefully received a warm welcome from a group of longtime choir members. We met Wednesday nights and Sundays before services, and to my surprise I fell into place easily. It was a sudden return to church I had not planned on. I had determined years before that I was not welcome or fit to go to services and all of a sudden, that just was not true.
I worked to understand what I was learning about my mind. The regularity of choir and church formed a framework I found grounding. If I skipped, my choir friends noticed. If I was ever fraught, someone always reached out and checked in. Cynthia and the choir gave me room to figure out how I belonged. I fidgeted all I needed3 in practices but was able to stay still while we sang on Sundays. I got over my fear of speaking in front of the congregation. I figured out how to read scripture aloud.4 I started taking on committee work, although I did it imperfectly. After years of struggling with procrastination, I began to show up happily. Belonging gave everything that little added meaning to help me.
I was sent to an Episcopal high school at the age of 12 by my great aunt.5 She sent all 3 of us kids to boarding schools after our family collapsed with our parents’ divorce. Although I flourished and found out I had actual academic ability, my behavior was again deemed a problem. From my current vantage point, I can see I was a child trying to work in a world with few allowances. My brain just did not work in the way the adults were trained to teach. I didn’t know how to deal with the swells of emotion coming over me. I was also navigating the baggage from my home life without much support. Luckily, the adults at the school assumed I could be helped, that I was not a bad kid. They persuaded my parents to find me therapy and gave me room to learn. I studied hard and grew close to the chaplain as I considered going to seminary, even after my rough introduction to faith communities.
I went to the local baptist church as a child of 6, hitching a ride with a neighbor. I loved it–the music, the people, the stories… Over my time there, I had church members tell me I was too twitchy, loud, opinionated, and “uppity.” Being a kid, I took it all to heart. Lo and behold, I BELIEVED. When I was told to leave at the age of 9,6 it broke me. I still get teary thinking about it. In my religious high school, I had to go to services. I loved the practice, but I realized that being a (at that time, closeted) lesbian was going to be a real problem in the southern Episcopal Church of the early 90s7. I gave up any thought of becoming a priest and drifted back out into the world, wading into adulthood alone.
Now in my late 40s, I made my way back into a dedicated faith practice because a few key people made sure I had room to do so. I would have met with familiar resistance had I first run into one of the stodgier members of my current congregation. It is never hard to get evidence of a negative experience because people are people—jackassery is always in play in all of us. One bad encounter and I would have left again, this time for good. Luckily, my choir formed a jovial phalanx around me and kept me engaged even when I was having a hard time. My membership in a group was assumed by the group for the first time in my life. They loved me as I was and in that space, my faith exploded.
Think of the possibilities! I know churches could actually fulfill their mission by just welcoming all the brains and bodies God has created. Let the twitches begin! Change the formatting to be more legible for a multitude of readers! Ramp the entrances! ACCESSIBILITY IS A SIGN OF A LOVING GOD! Oh, and while we’re at it, learn the pronouns! Let’s have renaming ceremonies and welcome our transgender members in full! Thank the peoples whose lands our buildings rest upon today! Make sure events and practices are welcoming to people from more socio-economic circumstances! Acknowledge and combat the impact of systemic and structural racism! Dissolve prejudicial barriers and be ever more representative of the teachings of Jesus!
My Way Forward
I am still very much myself, so I have had to forge an adaptive path back into faith. For Lent, I took what I learned about my brain and made a penitential practice of inviting my best self into my day instead of lamenting my worst impulses. Frankly, I live in a perpetual learned state of feeling bad for being made how I am; I do not need to pile on there. As Lent 2024 wraps up, I can say my approach has built a new set of lovely practices into my day. This is the approach I use to create a far more satisfying life for my family and my brain. I start with acceptance and work outwards in a flexible, educated way. I have loads to learn, but I am happier than I have been in years.
Churches can grow with this sort of intentional and radical welcome. Over years of teaching, I have met hundreds of students who were told how they were not acceptable, too. Just as I helped them find new ways to see themselves through art, I know we as a faith community can welcome so many into the circle of love we built. Our being adaptive is not selling out our faith–it is practicing it out loud. Traditional notions of sin and repentance can be redressed with what we know now of neurodiversity. The behaviors that earned me outright condemnation are NOT a sign of my being unworthy. God does not love me less.
As my welcome has blossomed and grown, I have begun the process to become an Episcopal priest. The impulse has built up to a roar from the tiny high school ember. I have found a place where I am able to welcome and be welcomed. It is a long and attenuated process, and I may in the end find the priesthood is not my calling. I have to try, though—I will find how to help throw open the doors to my church wider than ever. I can turn all of my experiences into a lived expression of God’s mercy. God loves each of us, so the least we can do is love each other all the more.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8385721/
I am certain that my ADHD and later substance use disorder are related. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6683828/
Well, almost. Early on, one particularly prickly person yelled at me about my twitchiness. I moved to the tenor section where they welcomed me whole-heartedly. I sing with them still!
Reading verses during services is hard! I struggle with long lines of text so I lay them out into short lines with breath marks. I think the typesetting of scripture could be far more inclusive.
Thank you, Auntie Laura! She saved me with this. I am so very lucky she had the means to do this for us.
I was told by a church elder that I was no longer welcome because my parents were getting divorced. I think it didn’t help that I was an unsupervised child who insisted on singing with the choir instead of going into Sunday school. Either way, the punch landed.
The Episcopal Church itself is a wildly welcoming communion, with female and LGBTQIA+ clergy, social justice as main tenets of the mission, and an abiding respect for science.