Sometimes my brain feels like a bowl of spaghetti. It’s twisted, and all my thoughts are mixed up, and I can’t seem to follow where one ends and another begins. Other times it’s not. Other times it’s like a bowl of snakes—and each little “murder noodle” is hungry, writhing, and wants to bite. My thoughts are constantly vying for attention, and they can get really loud sometimes (did you know that brain snakes had vocal cords?)
I remember years ago, when I was still in my early teens, being told that I needed to learn to be more organized. I said, “okay,” and continued on my merry way, snakes and all.
In college, I had a friend who meticulously planned her life in a basic day-planner—appointments, classes, meals, meetings, social events—all neatly arranged by time and date and duration. I marveled at her. She marveled back at me, “You don’t plan ANYTHING?” I explained that my life was too hectic to plan—I couldn’t count on anything I wrote down ever actually happening, so why write it down?
In fairness to both of us, we lived incredibly different existences—she was from your standard structured, very vanilla, very sheltered environment (in this case, “sheltered” meaning “largely free from life’s worries and anxieties”), and I came from a rather nonstandard environment of mildly controlled chaos, constant emergencies, and life or death health scenarios.
My friend (bless her heart!) bought me a planner, to try and help me organize my life. She sat down with me and said, “now write down what your day is going to contain.” I just laughed.
“What’s funny?”
I just laughed more. Then I simply said, “I don’t have a clue how today is going to go, so how can I write about it?”
She said I was missing the point. I said she was missing my point.
We were both right.
On the one hand, I couldn’t make her understand that the ordinary course of a day for me could mean walking out of a college class at any given moment and having to drive across town to collect a piece of medical machinery to help my mom keep breathing (and thus living), which could take half an hour or half a day. I couldn’t explain that my family’s wellbeing took precedence over my day-to-day life.
On the other hand, she couldn’t make me understand that just because I wrote down my plans didn’t mean that I was ultimately beholden to them. You see, in my mind, if I wrote them down, they were a done deal, and any breakage of those plans became a failure on my part—a failure to keep my word. And that idea was devastating to me.
It still is. See, I tend to put a great deal more stock in the written word than the spoken word.
We’ll get back to spoken vs written word in a bit, but for now, let’s keep talking about those weird brain snakes.
Now, maybe you’re like me, and you understand when I say that my brain is sort of like the teacups ride at Disney World—constantly swirling, giving me glimpses of the idea I want to see, but then it’s gone and I have to endure another spin-cycle before the idea comes back around. And other times my brain is like a rollercoaster, and I can see the idea off ahead of me, and as I get closer it becomes clearer and clearer, till I zoom right passed it, praying a got a decent look at the thing.
And then still other times my brain is like the Déjà vu or the Ninja (Six Flags over Georgia peeps will understand the reference)—that one ride that’s always got the sign out front, “closed for repairs”.
The point being, my brain is a veritable carnival of nope-ropes (snakes), and though many have laid out different systems and methods of organizing my thoughts, I’ve never been successful in implementing them.
“Well, maybe you’re just not trying hard enough.”
Well, you’re right. Maybe tears and panic attacks and existential crises aren’t trying hard enough.
Then again…
Maybe I’m just different. (I know I’m not the only one.)
Thankfully, my father and mother gave me lots of good schooling and taught me how to be smart and intelligent, so I’m usually able to get by.
But no application of intelligence will turn a bowl of snakes into an Excel spreadsheet.
In this, I consider myself a lost cause.
Thankfully, I have other giftings and skills. Ones that actually benefit from the carnival in my mind.
Now, I may just be part of that whole spectrum of “neurodivergent” people that have been raising such a ruckus lately (Hi, honey! Love you!). If that’s the case, fine. We have a word for it then—a very vague, unhelpful-other-than-naming-it, solution-less word.
As for what actions can be taken by ME to address things, I have no idea.
Calling myself “neurodivergent” merely puts the onus on the rest of the world to accept me as I am, and deal with my particular divergences. But that’s not what I want. I want to be able to overcome whatever mental eccentricities lie beneath my surface, so that I can thrive in the world in which I live. I don’t want the world to conform around me, I want to be able to overcome the world as it is. I want to prove to myself that I don’t have to be like the world, and that I don’t have to have the world change for me, in order to succeed and do well.
In short, I want to thrive on my own terms. Neurodivergent or not. It shouldn’t matter, as long as I’m good enough.
Now, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not knocking the whole “neurodivergent” trend. I’m just stubborn and don’t want to be restricted (or even excused and/or understood) by a label.
As you read this, I hope some of you may feel as though you’ve found somebody who understands your mental struggles. If so, praise God!
Others of you may be trying to figure out how I even tie my shoes. If so, well, you see, when I get a good tie, I just leave them tied, and that way I can easily slip them on 98% of the time.
Still some others may just be even more convinced that I’m just stubborn and refuse to learn how to organize my life and control my thoughts. (I wish that were true…)
So then, how is it that I can sit here and write over a thousand words in less than an hour, examining and explaining my own mental dilemma? Well, writing is my outlet.
The Lord, in His grace, has allowed me to have a rather clear mind when it comes to the written word. When I sit down and start weaving words, I find my thoughts to become significantly clearer.
Now, at the same time, let’s not make the mistake of thinking that the snakes get still and quiet when I write. Rather, they all just tend to writhe in the same direction. I would be lying if I said that I had ever written a rough draft, and then revised it, and then finalized it, when it comes to my own writing. I’ve never followed an organized structure or process of writing—I simply write. Will I proofread this piece before I publish? Probably (maybe….). But I definitely won’t go back to rewrite portions of it.
Do I treat all of my writing this way? Mostly. But not if I’m writing for somebody else (i.e. professional writing, journalism, etc.)
But when it comes to my own written word, it’s largely a stream of consciousness type of experience-ideas lining up, and then me just knocking ‘em down with the keyboard. (That may account for my ramblings and my long-winding points.)
Speaking of long-winding points, I mentioned that I was going to talk about the written word versus the spoken word, and this seems like a sufficiently forced segue…
I said that when I wrote something down in a planner that it felt like it became law to me; I HAD to do that thing, or else I had failed. The written word carries a significant weight for me, and I believe it is tied to an intrinsically biblical principle.
As Christians, we are called to examine every aspect of the world and our lives and hold it up against the standard of the Word of God—the written Word of God.
Even if a voice called out from Heaven and declared something to the entirety of the Church, the people of God are still responsible for going back to the Bible and seeking earnestly within its pages to confirm the veracity of that heavenly voice. In other words, if God speaks out of Heaven, He expects His people to confirm His spoken word with His written Word. We see this principal laid out in the Book of Acts as well as Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia.
So, even God has constrained Himself to His written Word.
Now, beyond this we venture into theological and philosophical things that a greater mind than mine must ponder and figure. I dare not venture too far afield, unguided. But, this seems a rather safe observation to make—that the written word contains some degree of “superiority” over the spoken word.
This superiority, however, is not global. There are also applications of the spoken word that supersede and surpass the written word.
But don’t get your hopes up. I’m not going to think through all of those ways right now. Maybe in another article…?
I may not have all the answers, but I definitely think there’s something to be said for considering the relationship between the spoken and the written word, as well as the differences between them.
For the time being, I think the safest application I can make is in regards to prophecy in the church.
If a person speaks “a word” over another person and declares “thus says the Lord” into that person’s life, then they had better be DARN SURE that what they are saying is 100% backed up by Scripture—and I don’t just mean the Bible is silent on the matter, I mean that the Bible explicitly states that XYZ is the case.
There are many sects of the church today that play fast and loose with the Word of God. This is a huge issue, whether they realize it or not.
What they don’t seem to understand—perhaps they’re just ignoring it—is that to claim God has “given you a word” is 100% the same as saying “God says in the Bible.” So, anytime a person stands up in church and says, “God gave me this message…” they are claiming and ascribing divine Biblical authority to whatever they say next.
So, when a fella speaks up in small-group and says, “God told me…” then his next words BETTER be completely in agreement with what’s already in the Bible. Because if they aren’t we run into a handful of problems.
Let’s explore…
Say Little Johnny is looking for a job. It’s been months since he was solidly employed, and his friends are all seeing it wear on him. Well, at Bible study, his good friend Veronica Vision says that she was given a word from God for Little Johnny, and she stands up in front of the group and declares, “Johnny, God told me that your very next job interview is going to be the one!”
The group murmurs their assent, congratulates Johnny in advance, and moves on.
His interview is the following day. He attends. He goes in, with Veronica’s words ringing in his ears and in his heart. He totally crushes the interview. He’s stoked!
Three weeks go by, and he still hasn’t heard back from the company. He hasn’t attended any other interviews or sought any other work because of his confidence in the Word of God as delivered by his friend.
The job never comes.
Now flipping burgers at a run-down fast-food joint, he returns the group, tail between his legs.
The group asks about his new job… He tells them the story.
What do you think the group’s response to Johnny would be?
Would they just say they were sorry it didn’t work out?
Would they place the blame on Johnny for not believing in God strongly enough?
Would they pray over him to be able to find himself “in the center of God’s will for his life”?
I’ve seen each of these responses play out, and each of them is wrong.
The biblical response (if we’re being Levitical rule-followers) would be to drag Veronica outside the camp and stone her to death because she falsified the Word of God, making her the exact definition of a false prophet.
This is not a response I’ve seen as often…
It think it bears consideration.
“But Matt, you jerk, we don’t have to follow all the Laws anymore because Jesus fulfilled the Law!”
Ok, fine. But that doesn’t mean that we throw out the reasoning behind those laws. The law regarding false prophets existed because God takes His word that seriously—if you lie about God’s word, you die. Simple as that.
I think the church today needs to be very, very careful about how we approach the Word of God. Are we delighting in it, studying it deeply, and relying on the Word to guide our thoughts and understanding, rather than our thoughts and feelings guiding our understanding of the Word; or are we using the Bible to further our own ideas, our own standing, and to fulfill our own prideful needs to be important, special, or unique?
To all you Veronica’s out there, is speaking a potentially hopeful thing to a friend really worth blaspheming the Holy Spirit, misrepresenting God’s Word, abusing your status as God’s child, and making God a liar?
If it is, then you need to reevaluate your standing before the Lord.
If you truly believe that you are in fact prophesying, on behalf of God, then you might need to reevaluate which god it is whose word you’re delivering—because the Word of the God of the Bible NEVER fails, no matter who sets themselves against it, no matter what lack of faith it encounters, and no matter how insufficient the prophet may be.
So, if you’re delivering prophecies that aren’t coming true (if you have EVER delivered a prophecy that has not come true), then I can assure you that that prophecy isn’t coming from the Lord God Almighty.
I can prove this from Scripture if you like. But even I can see how obvious this truth is…
And my brain is a bowl of snakes!
Beyond the Garden 