Thinking twice about time

I've been thinking about time. That it takes more time and chronological distance to process things than we often allow. We live in the era of fast and instant: fast food, fast fixes, time-is-money, instant success etc. That subconsciously flows through to how we think and live. I see it in myself: I know the value of margin and not living life at full tilt 100% of the time, but I still struggle at times with thoughts about "wasting time."

Image from Pixabay    

Making every moment count is a concept that is so unhelpful in so many instances. For example, rest, personal growth, trauma recovery, mental illness, grief, even building friendships, dating, child raising, building a good marriage. None of these are things that can easily happen well in a short space of time. As I write about it, it even feels a little bit ridiculous that I even struggle with this concept at times, because I know this.

For example, about five or six years ago when one of our sons was having a horrid time during his last years of high school, we decided the best thing we could do for him was "give him time". He was too anxious to talk about the next week and conversations about post-high school just weren't happening. It was enough for him to just make it through each day sometimes. So we were stuck. We decided to let him stay with us for a couple of years until we could go with him back to Australia and walk alongside him as he made that huge transition to young adult years. He needed that time and we have never regretted it (though it was a bit wobbly at times when people asked about him and what he was "actually doing"). This week it's two years since he moved out of home. He's in a much better "place"—mentally and physically—and we're so glad that God gave us the wisdom of how to be the best parents we could be in a situation where we were pretty much at sea, and to be truthful, quite anxious ourselves.

Some time back a friend shared an article with me titled "Intentionally wasting time". It's written by someone from Sydney Missionary and Bible College about how we should live in relationship with others: by building in non-programmed, informal time with people. It's worth the seven minutes or so it takes to read it. Here's a quote:

Sometimes the most profound ministry moments happen during informal, unplanned spaces.

God works in quiet conversations. He turns up in fun, social times. He’s present in the impromptu prayers, in the ER waiting rooms, over meals and everywhere life happens.

While we’re waiting for the ‘main event’ to begin, or after the programmed teaching time ends, God brings us to another part of his work: to love, to be encouraged by the faith of others, and to help others love Jesus no matter what life throws at us.

One of the most enjoyable thing for me at the moment is something I realise that I've been missing for a long time: deeply satisfying relationships within a church family. And it's mostly happening because of frequent, intentional times of unstructured fellowship: staying a couple of hours after church to share lunch with others, joining an online prayer meeting mid-week (and trying not to be frustrated that it is not efficient, but rather another place where we're walking alongside others), dinners in people's homes, and even a time during the service where people share prayer and praise points.

We also really enjoy "wasting time" with our kids every Sunday afternoon: just hanging out on a video call for two or three hours. But calling it "wasting time" is to badly label it. This is totally worthwhile time.

Then today I saw another article about "wasting time" and ministry: https://www.alifeoverseas.com/did-i-waste-my-life-in-missions/. It's definitely worth a read, whatever your day-to-day job is.

Sometimes ministry can seem like a waste of time (and money). No one has ever said that to me about us following God's calling to Japan, but I wonder if they think that. I do know that people got impatient with how long it took us to get to Japan in the first place...and it's often hard not to get impatient with God's timing. 

But I think we need to go back to trusting God on this. I often pray at the start of the day that God would help us to do the things that he's prepared in advance for us to do (it's from Ephesians 2:10) and that what he leads me to will be pleasing to him. I need to trust that he's at work, that his timing is perfect, and seek his leading every day.

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.

The value of listening

The other day I got a message from someone in our organisation in Australia who I don't know. Her role is specifically about helping advise our members about their kids, as needed. We've never met. However, somehow she'd discovered this blog and had been reading bits of our story and wanted to know what we've learned along the way, especially in regards to neurodivergence and what help we'd received that she could pass on to others if she needed to.

A photo from a few years back when the
boys all lived with us in Japan.

I asked if she would be interested in hearing our story in detail. I explained that it would just be easier to tell her, because it's a long, complex story—which is pretty normal for neurodivergence, but I suspect ours is more complex because of the cross-cultural elements. It's a story that would take me hours, even as a fast writer, to get down. She agreed, and we talked for nearly two hours. Well, most of that talking was me! She asked some great questions, including some that I've never been asked before. But I think we were both exhausted at the end. 

I have been thinking about that conversation ever since. It was great to be really listened to (she was even taking notes). But it was hard to make sure I included all the bits and pieces. The story went back around 20–25 years and there were so many threads. In the days that followed that conversation, I kept thinking of more things that I could have added! But I think that in the end she got all (and probably much more) than she needed. It made me aware again of the various people God has given me along the way who have listened to me tell parts of our story, with all my struggles, questions, and tears. I'm so thankful. I'm thankful to all who have prayed for us, usually without much information, but just that we were struggling.

It's a huge blessing to be able to look back at all of that and see where our kids are now and that they're all okay. One of the hardest things about being a parent is not knowing the end of the story. Of course all parents have to make decisions without all the information that you feel you need (especially a comparison between the outcomes of two different decisions). Not knowing what long-term impact your decisions will have on your kid is difficult, but when your children aren't thriving or "fitting the norm" it's even harder. One of the extra hard things about being a missionary parent is not having many people around you whose situation is similar to yours and few who understand the nuances of your situation. It can be quite a lonely and difficult place to do parenting and make hard decisions.

So, what's the point of me sharing this? I think, to shed light on the difficulty of being a parent of a kid with neurodivergence and that it is even harder when one is living a missionary life. But most especially to note that the most valuable thing you might be able to do for such a parent is to listen to them. You might not be able to provide any solutions, or point a parent to a place where they can get help, or help them make an important decision, but if they feel heard then that is a help. Parenting kids who have difficulties is a lonely job, it's hard for others to understand the daily challenges you face. If someone is willing to stop and listen to you talk about those challenges, it's a huge encouragement.

Neurodivergence and transition

This week I've seen a couple of articles from A Life Overseas website about neurodiverse missionary kids. It's a journey we've walked and I‘ve written about (here), so I was interested to see what these articles had to say about it. And it wasn't too much different to what I'd written, though obviously not in first person and thinking in more detail of a broader audience that will encounter many different cultures.

A photo from 2017 with our three guys

I didn't find the first article all that helpful, though someone who knows nothing about neurodivergence would probably find it a good entry point into thinking about their kid (or someone else's) who just don't seem to fit or find things difficult that the rest of us take in our stride. First article: How to Notice Neurodiversity in Third Culture Kids

The second article "How to Help Neurodiverse TCKs in Transition" came out today and it hit very close to home. Transition is one of the big issues that our kids struggled with. It's shaped how we've raised our children and the decisions we've made about moves, holidays, home assignments, how we've used our home, how much hospitality and travel we engaged in, etc.

One particular story comes to mind. In June 2018, we moved to Australia for six months home assignment. We knew that one of our teenage sons needed to see a psychologist, so tried to work ahead to make that happen, because in the end six months isn't that long and could easily be taken up with a waiting list. Our habit has been to find a mid-way place to stop between Japan and Brisbane as we move back—that gives us a short time to breathe, after finishing everything in Japan before diving into all that's required for settling a family in Australia. It never feels like enough time, it also usually feels chaotic and the "when can we get settled" feelings come over us.

Anyway, that year we decided to stop in Sydney for a few days. I found low-cost accommodation for a few days with a mission and we were making the best of it. No one was in a good condition, however. We were all tired, unsettled, and not at all comfortable with our unfamiliar surroundings. The boys were facing six months without their friends or classmates, familiar surroundings or belongings, and without their usual routines. Everything, except each other, was different.

In the midst of this especially messy time, I got a phone call from the psychologist's office. I was literally standing in the midst of open suitcases in a hotel-type room in Sydney. It was the kind of routine admission phone call that they make. The admissions officer asked me a bunch of standard questions and I remember laughing out loud at one that read something like "Between 1 and 10, 1 being in good place and 10 being really not good, how would you say your child's mental wellbeing is today?" I tried to explain why I was laughing, and she brushed it off, asking just to answer anyway...of course he wasn't in a good way that day!

I have many, many stories. In the blog post I wrote two years ago (first link in today's post), I wrote these words:

We've got many sad memories of the difficulty of getting our kids seated in a crowded [unknown] church, of awkward whispered conversations with people who assumed our kids would join the Sunday School, or even a child who refused to get out of the car and come into church at all. And then the difficulties of staying in other people's homes: relatives, friends, and strangers. So many unspoken expectations surround situations like that, including conversation, politeness, and even that two children will share a room willingly. And all the while, feeling like our kids and observations of our parenting are somehow part of a report card on our fitness as missionaries. That's a lot of uncomfortable pressure.

Overall, though, we've been blessed with being able to provide a lot of stability and minimal transition through most of our sons' growing up years, though, and for that, I'm very grateful.

I think that one reason that we are especially happy in our new season with our boys living independent of us, is that we no longer have to drag them through the sorts of transition that litter a missionaries career. They have much more control over their lives now they don't live with us. And we are free to make decisions without the complication of deciding how these decisions would work for the whole family, how well our kids would cope with whatever transition our decision/s would inflict on them.

All that being, said, probably our kids have ended up more flexible just because they had no choice about it. It was painful at time, for all of us, but probably it has helped them grow as individuals and hopefully they are more resilient because we haven't surrounded them with cotton wool. Like most things, too much is bad, but so is too little. Hopefully we've landed somewhere in the middle, by God's grace.

Please reach out to me directly if you'd like to talk more on this subject. I find it's easier to be more open about our personal experiences in a private conversation than it is on this public forum.