My other children have never invited their friends to my home.
Autism. A mysterious spectrum of certain capacities. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), where the brain locks you up until you perform certain tasks or arrange things a certain way. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), where your mind is constantly changing channels on you.
Having a child like mine brings you to a breaking point. There is the feeling of absolute failure when nothing you do works. My time and emotions go to one child, and in between, I am exhausted, and my other children do not get as much of Dad as they sometimes need. Then there is the grief of watching your other children carry constant embarrassment, wanting nothing more than to get as far away as possible from their brother.
People just can’t be in our house.
I have pulled my son off the edge of balconies on vacation as he stood there, distraught, threatening to jump, because he decided he had ruined everything. I have repaired cupboards that he ripped off their hinges because I had locked up food he wanted. I have calmly taken kitchen knives from his hands—knives he was pressing into himself because I wouldn’t give him what he wanted. I have also followed him in my car at midnight as he lugged a roller suitcase a half mile from our house, telling me he was leaving. His logic makes perfect sense to him, and to no one else.
I am not alone in this. My wife carries an enormous weight—and in many ways, a heavier one. The relentless daily management, the school calls, the meltdowns she absorbs while I am away, the grief she carries quietly so the other children don’t see it. The pain this has inflicted on our marriage is real. I have watched the effect of her feelings of failure because of how relentless the care is.
We have to make a hundred decisions a day that very few parents have to make, and we are often unsure we are making the right ones. But she is not a failure. She is a woman doing something most people will never be asked to do, with a love that is pushed to the limits as it tries not to keep a record of wrongs, all while scouring for resources to help a child who sometimes hurts her. To parent a child like ours is to carry a grief that has no clean ending, with a love that is deeper still.
Almost everything is always hard.
One Who Sees
In John’s Gospel, the apostle includes a seemingly throwaway line as he describes Jesus walking down the road: “He saw a man blind from birth” (John 9:1). Jesus saw him. We don’t always see what is right in front of us.
The story of Ruth is the story of a migrant. An Old Testament professor once told me he hadn’t realized Ruth was a migrant until eight years into teaching at the graduate level. We skim past the ideas and people we aren’t trained to see.
Look again at John 9:1. It’s not the disciples who see the man. It’s Jesus. The disciples are only engaged because Jesus first engages. Consider the story Jesus tells of the religious leaders who pass by a man bleeding at the roadside (Luke 10:25–37). They certainly see him. But they do not see him the way Jesus sees this blind man.
Do you see people with cognitive and neurological differences? Not see them and dismiss them. Not see them and recoil. I mean, see them the way Jesus sees them.
Online culture sees kids like mine primarily in two ways. There is the viral celebration—the autistic child allowed to shoot in a varsity basketball game or the child whose unusual gift suddenly makes him charming and his video shareable. These stories are moving, and we beckon people to watch or read, as they are easy to celebrate. It’s easy to cheer for a child who has never disrupted your Sunday or exhausted your patience.
Then there are the other videos: a child in full meltdown, usually at school, while strangers in the comments wonder what is wrong with the parents. I have read those comments. Whether right or wrong, I feel shame.
The disciples show us exactly what not to do. Jesus sees the man, and they immediately ask, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?” (John 9:2). That’s the move, isn’t it? We reach for a simple answer and quickly move on. It costs us nothing.
If we can establish blame or cause, then surely, we can avoid such challenges. It is easy to dismiss things as sin and judgment on one’s choices or character because it’s self-protective. If we can find something or someone to blame, we don’t have to fear that same thing happening to us.
If we can find something or someone to blame, we don’t have to fear that same thing happening to us.
The disciples were right that sin and suffering are connected. But they were reaching for that truth as a way to categorize the man rather than care for him.
And so here comes a child with OCD, autism, or ADHD. She makes unusual sounds. She is socially awkward. She stands in the corner counting ceiling tiles, so flooded with anxiety that she cannot move. She comes into worship, and the sensory overload makes her scream and cry.
It’s all too easy to assume the outbursts are simply the result of a bad attitude, poor discipline, or weak parenting. We often prefer trite answers because trite answers cost us nothing. They allow us to give advice without bearing any responsibility. But Jesus doesn’t offer the disciples a cause. He offers them a purpose.
“Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him’” (v. 3).
Read that slowly. God knows the wiring of every brain. He knows when chromosomes are irregular. He knows all of it—and over every human life, including the ones that perplex and exhaust us, he says, This person exists so that the works of God might be displayed in him.
There is a purpose that precedes our diagnosis.
Church Who Needs to See
The social elite in Corinth considered themselves the inner circle on whom the whole church depended. The most prized gifts were knowledge, wisdom, and rhetorical skill. Paul’s letter to them dismantles this entirely.
“The parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable” (1 Cor. 12:22). The parts we think are less honorable are treated with special honor (v. 23). Every person is necessary. A church that excludes people who are different does not merely miss out; it harms itself. If one part suffers, all suffer (v. 26).
So let’s diagnose our own church culture honestly. Would someone with Tourette’s be welcomed? Would a teenager wracked with anxiety because the chairs are in the wrong order be told to get over it—or met with grace? Would your church build spaces for people who want to worship but are overwhelmed by sensory input?
I have often wondered if it would be easier for my son if his disability were more visible. People more readily see and show compassion toward what they can recognize. My son’s suffering is just as real—it is simply harder to understand and therefore easier to dismiss.
Churches pray for growth, and sometimes the implicit prayer is for young families, college students, and generous givers. But what if a disruptive child with autism starts showing up? Is God answering our prayers? The current buzzwords are “diverse,” “multiethnic,” and “missional.” But even the unbelieving world cares about them. People like my son are isolated before they ever reach the door. Are they welcome here?
A church that excludes people who are different does not merely miss out; it harms itself.
Very few people in our churches are cruel. Many genuinely want to reach out but don’t know how. They hesitate to approach a child mid-meltdown for fear of making things worse, or they hold back when he seems fine, unsure whether engagement will trigger distress. Ignorance and awkwardness are not the same as malice. But good intentions without action still leave my son standing alone.
My church built a sensory room. Also, an older couple down the road opens their home to him every day at 3:30 p.m. He once looked at a clock at 3:31 and started crying and screaming because he truly believed he could no longer go. He calls them the best thing in his life. They are his only friends.
What might you do?
Pastor Who Needs to Be Seen
I am a pastor. Paul teaches that an elder must lead his household well so that his children are not known for chaos (1 Tim. 3:4–5; Titus 1:6). Paul isn’t saying that an elder is disqualified if his children ever sin. He’s saying that the elder must demonstrate he can shepherd those failures in a way that inspires confidence he can shepherd the larger family, the church.
So what does this mean for Christian leaders with neurodivergent children? The child will so expose the pastor’s heart and break him of all image management and feelings of control, that he will become a kind and patient shepherd. Or the child will expose the pastor’s heart, and out will pour the bitterness of a man who believes his life has been stolen from him by the child placed in his care.
Son Who Is Seen by the Father
On a particularly hard Sunday, my wife left church early without our son. He was just too much. She was in tears, feeling like a failure, as she often does on Sundays because, well, he is impossible. So he rode home with me, his pastor.
Like with every hard thing or hard feeling that passes through him, he had already moved on. And at the top of his lungs, he was singing,
He will hold me fast,
He will hold me fast;
For my Savior loves me so,
He will hold me fast.
Tears ran down my face. Do you see me?
