People are all different. Yes, but some people are so different. Do they fit our idea of ‘human’? Christine Guth dealt with that in her own family – and found a new response to this question: What is it that people live to do, the way horses live to run?
Since the days of Job and the psalmists, people have been asking, “What are human beings?”
I once had my own easy answer to this question – something like this description by Martha Beck: To me, being human was “the part of us that makes our brief, improbable little lives worth living: the ability to reach through our own isolation and find strength, and comfort, and warmth for and in each other. This is what human beings do. This is what we live for, the way horses live to run.”
The capacity for relationship was, I thought, the most valuable aspect of human experience, and how we reflect the image of God.
My Asperger family led me to throw out all such assumptions and start over. First, both our children were diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome (a condition on the autism spectrum: a disorder affecting a person’s ability to socialise and communicate with others). Then my husband Bob also claimed the diagnosis.
Surrounded by people on the autism spectrum, I began to wonder how God’s good creation could include people with brain differences that limit ability to form relationships.
What could it mean to be human when some folks cannot relate in ways that meet our expectations? I concluded in frustration that the people I love with all my heart are a completely different kind of human being, incomprehensibly ‘other’.
Family life was often chaotic, especially during the kids’ teen years. I felt pulled apart as sole peacemaker in a household of three people who seemed constantly in conflict and hard-wired for inability to take another’s perspective. The resulting volatile atmosphere repeatedly activated my vulnerability to depression.
Two aspects of the faith community embodied God’s love to me during those tough years and inspire my ministry in the present. My studies and the faculty at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary (Elkhart, Indiana) helped me to wrestle productively with searching theological questions raised by my daily encounter with disabilities. And a few members of my local church community gave tangible emotional support for getting through many a tumultuous episode.
Long before we had a name for it, Asperger differences were already colouring Bob’s and my relationship. During our courtship, Bob and I had caused a pastoral counsellor to wonder at his lack of being ‘in love’ and to worry about our future together.
For decades to follow, including the trying years I described above, I wondered too. Where was the love in this strange relationship? Now, after 28 years of married life, I know that love is here, too. Though his love for me has pulverised my preconceived notions and stereotypes of love, who am I to say it does not qualify as love?
Bob’s version of love is marked by dogged commitment, persistence through agonising struggles, willingness to give and take, enjoyment of companionship, and other treasured aspects of shared living.
Folks with Asperger’s thrive on predictability, so their love may shine in predictable routines. Bob’s commitment to spending the last half hour of every evening with me, reviewing the day’s ups and downs, has, in its very reliability, breathed new life into our marriage.
Likewise, I have learned that Bob values when I express my love for him predictably. When I make sure the refrigerator always holds the items he invariably carries in his lunch, he feels my care.
Who says you need roses for romance? Bob finds it – and I gladly provide it each day – in romaine lettuce, unsweetened yogurt, whole wheat bread with apricot jam, and golden delicious apples.
I have had to come to terms with an absence of heart-warming moments in my marriage that match media images of being in love. But I have learned to appreciate other qualities: Bob’s rock solid commitment, unswerving integrity, and shared faith convictions and intellectual interests.
I have had to give up expectations that Bob will intuitively know my needs before I can voice them. Yet, as I have come to recognise and tell him what I need, Bob surprises me with how far he is willing to go to support me.
The closeness of shared emotion does emerge, albeit idiosyncratically. When I least expect it, I might catch the thrill Bob feels over weather, trains, birds, numbers, or another passionate interest.
It means a lot to both of us when I can share his enthusiasm for a moment. When he calls me in to watch the news with him, we often share a tender moment as he weeps over the pain of some public figure.
What is it that people live to do, the way horses live to run? My family members on the autism spectrum show me that we dare not limit our definition of humanity to a single trait.
Human beings live to share emotional closeness, yes. We also live for the thrill of learning, the comfort of daily routine, the pleasure of intellectual challenge, the joy of creating functional items and works of art, the satisfaction of analysing and understanding systems, the pursuit of passionate interests, and more. The diversity that folks on the autism spectrum bring to the human race explodes our narrow ‘universal’ pronouncements.
The richness of God’s image is greater than we understand, far greater than we imagine. These phenomenal people who think and act and love in such different ways than I do are still part of the humanity that God created, without exception, in God’s image.
Our faith communities benefit when we create room for their gifts. Our world is a richer place because they share it with us.
Christine Guth is program director for Anabaptist Disabilities Network (www.adnetonline.org), a Mennonite disability advocacy ministry in the United States. She leads a local support group for parents of children on the autism spectrum and is active in organisations that support people with mental illness and their families.
This article first appeared in the September-October 2010 edition of timbrel, the magazine for Mennonite church women in the United States. It is reproduced with permission.
Books
Erik W. Carter, Including People with Disabilities in Faith Communities: A Guide for Service Providers, Families, and Congregations. Baltimore: Brookes Publishing, 2007
Thomas E. Reynolds, Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos P, 2008
Jean Vanier, Heart of L’Arche: A Spirituality for Every Day. Chestnut Ridge, NY: Crossroad Publishing, 1995
Brett Webb-Mitchell, Dancing with Disabilities: Opening the Church to All God’s Children. Old Hickory, TN: United Church Publishing, 1997
Websites
Mayo Clinic. <http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/aspergers-syndrome/DS00551>.
