Podcast episodes about neurodivergence and the Christian life

I recently listened to a three-episode podcast series about "Neurodivergence and the Christian Life". You can find them here: https://ccl.moore.edu.au/podcasts/

I am not a big podcast listener, but this subject matter is close to my heart, so I gave it a go. Actually, I found it a little academic and stiff, especially at the start of the first one, but it was worth sticking with. It's a huge topic and what they've done only barely touches some of it. But there were also sparkly moments, especially when they talked directly to neurodivergent adults and parents of neurodivergent kids.

Us and church and neurodivergence

Our family has managed fairly well over the years to be present and somewhat involved in church, but sometimes at a cost. 

Most of the church services I've been part of in the last 25 years have been in Japanese, and the truth is that my Japanese comprehension is not great, certainly not for a lengthy monologue that is a sermon. Add on to that the neurodivergence that our family carried with us, and I can't say that church has been a place that I got much nourishment for my soul. Our kids are not so disordered that they couldn't sit in through most services, but I was always on alert to help them stay settled or, in latter years, encourage one of them to leave the service when he was too disturbed by the sounds coming through the loudspeaker. 

We visited a lot of churches whenever we were in Australia, often as guest speakers. Getting our family seated in places so that everyone was content was hard, and (often at the same time) fending off offers for the kids to join the Sunday School as visitors. Our kids put up with a lot as we were often one of the last to leave after these visits because we were there for "work" and spent a lot of time talking to people afterwards. I have to say that the last two home assignments we have done ('18 and '23/'24) have been easier because we haven't had to take our kids around with us.

Back to the podcast

But back to the podcast, the third one includes a section about dealing with meltdowns and discipline that triggered in me a bunch of emotions:

"And if you can notice—as a parent, if we can notice these things in our child and identify some ways to comfort them, then sometimes you can actually release the pressure without a meltdown. And so a loving thing to do as a parent is actually to be on the lookout for these and to be on the lookout for ways to help them." (From the transcript here.)

This type of proactive parenting is exhausting. I clearly remember being at a small New Years Eve party at a friends house with our teenage sons and being unable to enjoy the evening. It was a familiar place with familiar people and we had all chosen to be there, but I was on edge much of the evening as I watched one of our sons struggle with the social gathering. Church is more predictable, yet a worship service has very little latitude for behaviour deviation and none for noise. Years and years of this wears on you. In some weird way I'm grateful for the pandemic because we had fewer social gatherings to deal with in those years!

Overall, the podcast was both encouraging and frustrating. I heard neurodivergent adults talking about their struggles and also about ways they've been helped and encouraged in their faith. I'm glad it's being talked about, but also longing for change to already have happened! I don't know what part I can play in that, but can at least continue to pray for the neurodivergent people in my life who are struggling and, when opportunity arises, to talk about our experience. This month I have been asked to give my testimony at our English-speaking service. I'm planning to share just a little bit of our walk with neurodivergence and the challenges I've had trusting God through it all.

A new layer of being settled

On Monday I went to our organisation's monthly regional gathering on the other side of Tokyo. It was, as usual, a huge day. But also a really good one. In particular I was able to have four longer conversations with old friends and new. I'm an extrovert with a strong introvert shadow (at least that's what I was told 25 years ago). I love time alone, as well as spending time with people, but most value deeper conversations. Random memory: no one told me that on your wedding day that you shouldn't expect to have deep conversations with anyone of these precious people who you invite to share your special day, it was very disappointing.

Some of the conversations on Monday included questions about how well we were setting back into life in Japan. It's over four months since we returned now, and you might think that is a long time, but in fact we've been in transition for much of the last two years, and some of those changes were massive, so it takes time to resettle and adjust.

I was surprised to realise that during November I'd hit another level of "settledness". And I think that is mostly related to connectedness. During November several things happened. 

We also had time to set up our
Christmas decorations and tree
on Saturday. Doing that for the first
time in a new house is always
significant. We're particularly
enjoying the fairy lights in the
lounge room.

School

I've been able to be a useful part of several events at school, a place where I no longer hold the role of "mother of student" and wondered if I'd find a way to be part of the community.

1. School bazaar where we rented a table and not just sold stuff to happy customers, but got to catch up with old (and new) friends.

2. Wrestling. It's been a few minutes since I mentioned this here! And no, we no longer have a wrestler at school, but it turns out that I can still participate. Our school team has had several matches "at home" over the last few weeks and it's been fun to wander down (just 5 minutes on my bike), to cheer, and also catch up with old and new friends in the bleachers. This Saturday CAJ is hosting several schools at an all day tournament. David's running the event for the first time and I'm his assistant! I'm looking forward to working with him again these next couple of days.

3. Christmas concert. Last Thursday we went to the Christmas instrumental concert at school (yep, they have a choral one too). I love orchestral music, it was fun being part of the audience. But I unexpectedly found myself getting sentimental as I sat in the school gym. It's a place where so many of our family's important events have happened. Sporting events, yes, but also three high school graduations, and various other events. So many memories (am I getting old?). I ended up sitting next to someone else who has many memories. She worked with our eldest son when he was in Grades 3 and 4, in a period of life when he definitely was struggling. She was so happy to hear how things are for him now.

Church

Since we came back to Japan we've also been searching for a new church home and during November we found one. It's so good to be settled, not just in that decision, but also week-to-week knowing where we'd be attending the next Sunday. 2024 has been very unsettled. We've worshipped in 16 different churches this year, five of those were churches we visited to speak about our work, seven were churches we've visited in Japan in the last four months, and we also spent two months early in the year travelling on long-service-leave and at different localities each weekend.

This new church includes a number of people from some of our Japan "circles": school, parents of kids who were classmates of our boys, and missionaries I've met via my magazine work and retreats I've been on. David has a couple of the youth under his care this year at school and one of them is also on the wrestling team, so we've been able to get to know them a little there. This church has a tradition (as many churches in Japan do) of eating lunch together after worship. It's a BYO situation and we've been enjoying "breaking bread" with church members and gradually meeting more people. Sundays are becoming a big blessing.

We've also been riding to church, which is potentially good for our health, as it's further than we usually ride each week: about 18 km round trip. But that's a story for another day (navigation in Tokyo isn't easy on a bike).

So, in answer to the question: How are you settling? I think we've hit another level and are feeling pretty settled. Something I read today reminded me of the "Maslow's hierarchy of needs", a psychological theory that organised human needs into five categories in a triangle figure. The base level is physical needs like food, shelter, and rest; after that is safety needs; then love and belonging needs; esteem needs (need for respect, recognition and status); and finally self-actualization needs (to achieve one's full potential and be creative).

There is some truth to this. The basic idea is that the "lower" needs need to be fulfilled before the higher one's can be, however it's also true that people are usually partially satisfied and unsatisfied at any one time. And of course it doesn't factor faith in there, although you could say that trusting God for all your needs changes all this. However, it did strike me that some of my unsettledness could be related to struggling with belonging as well as changes in "status". Just something to mull over.

We're flying to Australia again in a month, so that's probably going to destabilise me again, but it's just a short visit (for our son's wedding, but hopefully include many more opportunities for deeper conversations with those we meet than ours did), and then we'll come back to our new home.

The Psalmist says it well:

Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;
    you make my lot secure.
6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
    surely I have a delightful inheritance.
7 I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;
    even at night my heart instructs me. (Psalm 16:5–7 NIV)

 

Day 47: Copping with family

This Sunday we didn't drive anywhere, we barely set foot in the motorhome! I also took very few photos.

After breakfast we set off on foot for Copping Christian Fellowship and enjoyed a few hours with them: two hours of worship, then a couple of hours of chatting and eating afterwards. It was their monthly shared lunch and in typical country fashion put on a huge spread! A friend of David's cousin invited us and it was a delight to meet her and her son, so much so that we ended up staying with them in Hobart a couple of days later . . . but I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Sunset from the property

Just like the previous Sunday, we worshipped in a style that's a little different to our usual, but it was good, nonetheless. Their sheer friendliness and amazing welcoming style was very special. They were interested enough in us for several of them to find out that we are missionaries in Japan (not something we tell everyone we meet).

Our our way back up to our lodging, we stopped by David's aunt and uncle's place (they all live on one large property, but in separate houses). I'd never met his uncle and can't remember that I had actually met his aunt. Even though we'd just had a large lunch, we stopped for afternoon tea and cake!

After that we returned to our room and chatted for a little while with our sons, as is our usual habit on a Sunday afternoon. The difference while we're travelling is that our guys are using our house in Ipswich as a meeting spot for a few hours and we call them there. It's a little odd, but works. Unfortunately we haven't had much luck at getting WiFi on a Sunday, so our chats have often been short, without the usual playing of games.

We ate dinner with David's cousin and his partner, who we'd just met. Turns out she grew up in Toowoomba, just like me, and later on had studied in a similar field to me, so we had quite a bit in common to fuel conversation. 

It was lovely to spend the day out of the motorhome in real, solid buildings. And dare I mention showering in a shower in a private home?

Overall it was a delightful weekend. Enjoying the hospitality of strangers or distant relatives we hardly know always makes me feel a little nervous beforehand, but it worked out well and I'm thankful for this time to connect with three people David knew fairly well as a child.

Day 40: Coles Bay to Sorell

Swansea Anglican Church, est. 1871

We did finally get to a church on our journey. This morning we drove about 45 min off the Freycinet Peninsula to Swansea and worshipped at Swansea Anglican today, there were less than 10 people in the building. David's sharp eyes saw a plaque on the wall commemorating Rev. Joseph Mayson, whose name also graces a local mountain on the peninsula.

Then, morning tea happened and numbers at least doubled, which we did not expect. There are interesting dynamics in Christian circles in this town. The Anglicans meet weekly and the Uniting Church meets fortnightly and some go to the Anglican Church on the Sundays the Uniting Church doesn't meet. But it seems they usually share morning tea each week.

View down the road from the church
across Great Oyster Bay to Freycinet Peninsula

We kept driving south after our substantial morning tea. We had lunch at Triabunna, yet another small town. Tasmania abounds with towns between 500 and 1,000 people!

Dead Island at Triabunna. There are some graves
there, but the origin of the name is unclear.

We weren't sure exactly where we were stopping that night, but ended up at a free camp in the town of Sorell, only 30 minutes from the centre of Hobart. It was very suburban after all the places we’d been recently (about 2,500 people). This town is one of Australia’s oldest towns, first established in 1808. We didn’t do any tourism here, though, as we had arranged to see some friends the next morning in eastern Hobart.

The good and the bad, and joy in the midst of it all

I have a lot to be thankful for this week . . . maybe I'm learning how to have joy in the midst of pain?

On the one hand, I've been weary and overwhelmed, and I've struggled with headaches all week. 

Playing French cricket with our UK friends on Saturday was fun.
And the sky was magnificent viewing: all day! It's not often you
get so far from other people and buildings in the greater Tokyo area.

But on the other hand, we've had some great things happening. Last Saturday, despite being unable to do our planned camping trip, and having some last-minute hiccups, we were able to spend the day with friends/colleagues. I was able to have a long weekend—a quiet day of just relaxing at home on Tuesday was very unusual, but matched with my family's schedule (school's Fall Break) and was needed. 

And, after months of waiting, we're seeing some positive changes in the local situation. The number of new COVID-19 infections is the lowest it's been all year. This week three meetings that have been online for many months have been, or will be, in person: a prayer and fellowship meeting with our mission, a prayer meeting at school, and worship on Sunday at church. 

All good, but also a tad overwhelming in the suddenness that it's all changed. We've also seen forward movement on a couple of fronts for one of our guys, which is very encouraging, but has made my schedule next week a bit busier than I'd like.

Another unexpected thing I've been doing this month is a daily photo challenge with Taking Route, an online community for expat women. The challenge is #thisglobalwalkoutside. Using daily photo prompts, expat women around the world are taking photos outside and sharing them. I've not been interacting much with the community, but been simply enjoying taking the simple prompt and searching each day for a photo to take (or one that was taken earlier) and post, plus something to write about the prompt (I can't resist the writer-side of me). It was something I stumbled upon at the start of the month and I have to say the results have been unexpected. My reflections have surprised me (as have some of my photos).

I have to say also, that despite all that I've had going on, plus a headache, I've been remarkably productive in even this short week . . . but that reminds me that I must get back to my To Do list before this working week is over.

Japan family fun night

On Saturday night we ran a Japan-themed family fun night at our home church. Of all the various up-front things we do, it's one of our favourites. Alas not many churches take us up on the offer to do it. Over the years we've done them in about six different churches.

The principle is simple: introduce people to Japan and mission in a fun way, with lots of interaction and activity.

On Saturday, we knew that people would probably wouldn't all arrive at 5pm when it began. So during the first hour we had a variety of individual activities for people to get into the theme: from origami to Japanese-themed colouring-in and worksheets to dress-up in Japanese clothes. The kids really got into the origami, but there were quite a few takers at the photo booth too.

Then we had a bring-and-share dinner, to which we contributed rice balls (onigiri) and coffee jelly.

After dinner the main programme began.

We divided the group into teams by playing "happy families" where people were given a card with a Japanese surname on it and they had to find the rest of their family.

Then we ran a slipper-chopsticks relay (pictured). They had to change out of their shoes into Japanese slippers, run up to the bowls and move five sultanas from one bowl to the next with chopsticks and then reverse the journey back to tag the next team member.

Chopsticks proved harder than the slippers, though David did advise them not to run in the slippers!

The next activity we started moving towards our theme for the evening: support. Each team got a bag with 45 plastic blocks and had to create a tower that would support this "Japanese missionary" (aka wooden doll). They did really well at this!

The main element of the evening is pictured below. One volunteer (a young girl) was our "missionary" who was first given a box representing "ministry". She was then given a lot of other boxes representing other things missionaries have to do, or need in order to function healthily, eg. visa help, language and culture learning, education of their kids, spiritual growth. Needless to say, she looked rather overwhelmed after being loaded with all that.

So we got more volunteers to take some of the load off her (I've blanked out faces for privacy reasons). It was quite a powerful demonstration of how missionaries involved on the "coal face" of evangelism and church planting, can be mightily helped by having others around them to help. It was pretty obvious that without all those other tasks, the missionary would have a lot more time to do ministry.

The analogy was continued when David asked everyone else to form a circle around the kids. We represented those who remain in the sending country and we support the missionaries by praying, giving, etc.

It was a fairly small group but we were hopeful that those who did come would not forget what they learned there. As our home church, it hopefully helped them to understand why we're doing what we're doing as support workers.

Speaking at churches when you're a support worker in mission isn't the easiest thing. People like to hear conversion stories, news about people being baptised. Teaching science and editing a magazine doesn't have quite the same impact. So we've been trying our best to raise awareness of how important what we do is to those who are evangelists and church planters. That what we do will help those who do those things stay longer and be more effective.

We have one other opportunity to present this to a church group this home assignment. Though if you're reading this and would like us to do this in your church (and you are in SE Qld), then do get in contact with us as we've still got some Fri/Sat nights free (or even mid-week nights).

Serving Japan together

Yesterday I spent the afternoon at the annual meeting for the Japan Evangelical Missionary Association (JEMA), the organisation that publishes the magazine that I manage. I've not heard of another country that has a group quite like this, but I'd be happy to be proved wrong. It is a voluntary fellowship of missionary groups and independent missionaries who join together to network, support, and encourage one another in their work in Japan. They represent around 1,000 missionaries. I wrote a little bit about this group back here. The group is about 50 years old and does remarkable things. 

In a country as hard as Japan is for missionary work, I'm sure that JEMA has helped more than a few people remain serving in Japan. I'm glad to be a part of that effort by publishing Japan Harvest magazine as well as attending many of the women's fellowship times that they organise.

I mostly go to get a feel for how the organisation is working and also for networking, it is one of the few times I get to meet some of the people who write for the magazine. I'm not someone who enjoys meetings, but I find this one surprisingly encouraging.

The most memorable thing I learned was that a group of Japanese churches (Japanese Evangelical Association) has done an estimate of the number of foreign Christians in Japan: it is similar to the number of Japanese Christians who live here! Imagine that? 

International churches are quite a thing here, but I know that there are a number of "ethnic" churches too. I also know that OMF is starting to think about how that impacts the Japanese church. It is one of the prayer points in the OMF International February prayer focus on Japan: 

"Lord, as you bring more non-Japanese people to live and work in Japan, may the church be one which welcomes those who are already Christians and may these Christians bring encouragement and blessing to the churches." (From here.)

But today I'm back to the nitty gritty of putting a magazine together, creating social media content, writing a prayer letter, uploading omf.org/japan website content, and editing articles. Oh, not to mention managing the food-side of our household (grocery shopping, bread making, and cooking dinner).

Yesterday's Global Hymn Sing

At the start of the month I wrote about the Global Hymn Sing that OMF and Keith and Kristen Getty were promoting. It was yesterday (in Japan time), the 25th of February. 

It seems that close to one million people participated across the world. But I suspect that there's a number of churches who participated and didn't get registered (there's still time to register, if your group sang, but aren't on this map).

Our church sang the hymn at all three of our services and then a special global praise and prayer time was held after lunch. We had 16 people there (plus children), which was a great encouragement. 

We aren't leaders in our church, so it was something I told our pastor about and he organised it, however he sought to involve the two OMF families who attend our church (us and another family). I didn't feel able to lead from the front (in Japanese), but unexpectedly I did get to help in that I played the piano for a couple of hymns that we sang at the prayer meeting. I had no warning that I was to play, so it was satisfying to know that I can still sightread hymns! Alas I had to decide on the spot that the designated hymn's arrangement was too tricky to sightread. Without a song leader, the new refrain was a bit tricky (the hymn is an old one, by Isaac Watts, but the Gettys wrote a new refrain for this event) and the piano arrangement didn't include the melody, which made it even trickier!

But as I said at the start of this post, it was an encouraging time. It's a mission-minded church and wonderful to see so many people turn out for a non-regular prayer meeting. Though it seems set to become an annual event!

A different week

This week has looked very different to last week. This week I've dedicated to catching up with certain special/key people/groups. 

I haven't seen my son at all, though we've had some video calls and I'm proud to report that he's doing really well and seems ready to take on the challenge of uni classes starting on Monday.

I'm feeling tired, but really happy. So excited by all the amazing people who still count me as a friend, though I'm not an ideal friend-choice in that I'm absent for years at a time. God has blessed me abundantly!

I said, "Say 'sushi'!" which really did get them smiling.

Today I spent several hours with a bunch of ladies from our home church who meet for Bible study on Friday mornings. I spent a year with them last time we were home and will be back there from July. It was great to be there again and feel loved. What I really love about this group, though, is not how they make me feel, but that there is no pretension.  They're very honest about the struggles they face. There is also a very down-to-earth Australian feel about it all—I'm not on any special pedestal, and I love that.

But I'm going to try to get to bed a bit earlier tonight. It's tempting to stay up later and chat online to my family in Australia (10pm here is 9pm there), but tonight they're at an event at school, so I'm going to try to catch some more Zzzzzs.

Encouragement from our local church

This was our pastor taking a photo of the congregation of the
9.15am congregation on the 56th anniversary early this year.

One thing I love about our Japanese home church is that it is balanced. It has a wide range of ages—from babes to elderly and most of what’s in-between (a thinning in the teen to young adult range, though). The other balance we’ve repeatedly seen demonstrated over the years is its view of its place in the world. It is not insular.

It is rooted in the local community which is demonstrated in events like the annual summer festival and weekly café. They’ve just started an afternoon homework-type club for local kids.

It’s a rooted in Japan, demonstrated by concern for ministries going on in various parts of Japan, we regularly have had speakers from various ministries like Bible translation into Japanese sign language, hiBA (a high school ministry), university campus ministries. For several years the church sent teams to the post-tsunami devastated area of Tohoku.

It’s got its eyes on the rest of the world too. The church supports ministry and missionaries in other countries. It supports a school for disabled and abandoned kids in the Philippines. Missionaries in countries such as Taiwan and Turkey have spoken at church and the church supports overseas missionaries. I’m not sure how many (to say I find reading the finance report a bit difficult is an understatement), but it seems that we often have a guest here saying thank you for supporting our ministry.

It does all of this, while at the same time working hard to pay off the debt of the small block of land next to it that it bought in the last couple of years. But that hasn’t stopped it looking outwards.

Yesterday we were blessed with a guest speaker from Wycliffe. The speaker was not a translator with Wycliffe, he was a teacher of the kids of missionaries in Papua New Guinea.

It was amazing to hear the parallels of this family’s story to ours. Actually, I have worked with the wife at CAJ’s Thrift Shop, but hadn’t heard much of their story. The husband was called to ministry when he did a short-term mission trip to Indonesia (we also did a trip there in our early 20s). He was felt specifically called to teach missionary kids, as was my husband. They first went to Papua New Guinea from Japan in 1999, just a year before we went from Australia to Japan. He still feels passionate about the education of missionary kids, despite being called back to Japan to head up Wycliffe’s sending branch here.

I’m thankful to be a part of such a church. Oftentimes I struggle to feel a part of it at all. My language skills hold me back from knowing more people and what’s going on. But it’s a blessing that we can be present every week. There is a love there that goes beyond the spoken. I love standing on the sidelines and seeing what this church is involved in and quietly thanking God that his name is glorified in this place.

It’s good for us during the summer to go to more rural and remote places and worship in other churches, to catch a glimpse of how it is to be a part of smaller churches. But I continue to be encouraged that, in this country where the chance that you will meet a Christian is less than one in a hundred people, there are mature churches and mature believers. Churches and believers, that though they are seriously in the minority in this land, continue to draw their strength from God. They haven’t collapsed in the face of the enormity of the task and they aren’t looking inwards. It’s terribly encouraging.

My weekend

This last weekend I spent about six hours on trains over two days. 

Saturday
I travelled from our western Tokyo home to east of the capital for an OMF gathering that included some long-term missionaries, but mostly foreigners who aren't officially with OMF, but also have a heart for reaching Japanese. Most Our region of OMF has been trying to provide some support and encouragement for such folk and this three-hour worship, fellowship, and discussion time was part of that. I enjoyed it, but it remains true that our headquarters is a long way from home.

Sunday
Then on Sunday I travelled from home to Yokohama, south of Tokyo. This was an equally long journey. Just like Saturday, it involved three of four trains and about one and a half hours.

We met our friend at the train station nearest where the
church was meeting and we found an attractive little
pizza restaurant nearby. This is the salad that came
with the pizza. Minimalist, but tasty.

I took a friend to Yokohama and we met another friend who lives down there for lunch, Bible study, and then church at 2.15. We joined with a small OMF church plant for their worship time. 

My intention was to introduce our friend, who's moved to Yokohama, to a church down there. It was also a good thing to do. It's not very often that we get to see what other OMF colleagues are doing. Seeing a young church plant reminded me to pray for our colleagues even more. It's tough, slow work in Japan!

Consequences
I was pretty tired at the end of the weekend. But I'd been fairly tired to start the weekend. I've been dodging illness-bullets for some time now, but obviously not taking time-off over the weekend was all that was needed to end my winning streak and I ended up at the doctor with an infection yesterday afternoon. I was pretty wiped out from lunch on. Thankfully it's an easy-to-treat infection and I'm already feeling better.

I'm thankful too that my job is fairly flexible and it isn't usually too hard to take things easy if I need to. The trick that I haven't yet found is how to avoid these situations altogether. I don't think I'm terrible at managing my time, but somehow I get over busy and I periodically get physical reminders like this, that I need to take some time to rest.. Probably it's a great blessing that these are relatively small things, gauges to help me see when I'm getting too worn out.

At this point I'm looking forward to our holidays. We're going away for a while in July. The rest is much needed and much anticipated. For three of the nights we'll be camping at Lake Tazawa (check out the lakeside campsite) towards the north of this island, with other venues planned either side of that. I'm looking forward to new experiences and stepping away from most of my responsibilities for a bit.