Today I was at the local Christian Bookstore, Baker, when I spotted a cross that had Isaiah 41:10 on it. I looked it up. "Behold I am with you and I will uphold you with my righteous right hand". A reminder to me that no matter what kind of trials and tribulations we go through in this life God promises never to leave us.
Growing up I deal with rejection from people because I was different. I was the kid that was focused on narrow interests like birds, pipe organs, aliens from outer space. I was the one that loved writing computer programs. I would take a book with computer programs out of the library, write them into the computer and then try to debug them. I was the creative brain that would always come up with fantasy stories and put them on tape. I was the one that didn't like routine changes. Everything had to be perfect and in it's place. And I was the awkward one that didn't understand relationships or what it meant to have a girlfriend.
The kids at school at times would poke fun at me and at time would make fun of me. Members of my own family didn't like the fact that I was a "wierdo". I would make paper planes draw bird patterns on them and watch the way that they would fly. My brain was analytical-experimental. When I was just out of high school I went to a life skills program at Calvin College. I picked a careers book and flipped through it. I so wanted to get into something computer-related and was interested in Computer Science but knew that I didn't have the math skills for it.
The kids in high school were a mixed bag. Some of them wanted to get to know me. Some of them bullied me and laughed at me. Some of them intentionally wanted me to get in trouble so that I would go back to special ed and they wouldn't have to deal with me anymore. They were afraid of what they didn't understand.
I got the verbal abuse end of it but never the physical abuse. It was hard to grow up where your differences were covered up and you were expected to act normal. I so wanted to be able to date and get married like the other kids. In high school I was into the cheerleaders.
After high school my mom had me move in with two other kids on the autstic spectrum but that were lower functioning. She thought that it would be a good opportunity for me. Instead the banging on the walls and screaming of both of these kids was disruptive. On top of that one of the staff people got his kicks out of making empty threats at me. He was going to "jack me up" or "beat the shit out of me". It was about year later that licquor was found in the fridge and he was fired. The staff people wondered why it was that I never spoke up. Perhaps because he intentionally was trying to tell me to shut up or I was going to be physically assaulted.
After a year and a half of being there my mother and my then Godparent through the Catholic Church had a major disagreement which I am not going to go into and I finally moved out into Hope Network assisted living with some folks that had eating disorders. But I carried the scars for years of what that particular staff person did to me. Noone should have to go through that. I carried it in the form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (although it has not been diagnosed I am now getting counseling for it.).
When I was at CC the college kids didn't understand me. They knew I had autism and had me do things that went over my head. They told me that if I did a bunch of pullups or said this or that the girls would be impressed. I was per se full of whiz and vinegar back then and so I did it but reading a college article written about me they talked about how I had made a fool out of myself and it was because I had autism and didn't know how to read peoples intentions.
More than once I have been in situations where people have done that to me. It honestly hurts. To the point where I just wanted to run away from people who I thought were going to get angry at me or make fun of me or yell at me. My own family didn't understand me and there were times when stigma took over and they would act like I was 3 years old and incapable of comprehending.
For years I worked on a Goodwill Enclave. I worked with others with developmental or learning disabilities and eventuall I ended up getting a new job and had a job coach for a while. I started out with a warehouse called SAE Industries working with packaging fasteners. Eventually I met my new department head when they merged with Manufacturers Fasteners World. He did not understand me and ended up just getting frustrated and angry. On top of that he had a drinking problem. Plus the way he talked sounded a lot like the staff person from the group home. I suffered, I struggled with nightmares where I would wake up screaming. My mom and my brother didn't know what was going on with me. One time I got so tired of this man's yelling and his language that I almost got in a physical fight with him. Many times people with Aspergers when they go through bullying or intimidation don't know how to react. They will fight back. But it's not because they are violent and want to intentionally hurt people. It's because they feel they are under attack and want to try and defend themselves. This is what happened between me and the man who I am going to call Rick.
I carried the fear, the hurt, the anger, the paranoia for years from all this. My own dad didn't completely understand me and there were times that his comments and my stepmom's comments would make things worse. Stigma in itself is a type of bullying. All of this I was carrying for years and it was huge weight. The tears, the anger, and being misunderstood by people at the company that I worked for after getting laid off from SAE. I carried all that for years. I was made fun of called all kinds of names by people. One gal just wanted to be left alone by me because she didn't like that I was wierd.
My first encounter with a God that loved me occurred in 2015 when he used a gal that I didn't know to call me to get baptized in Jesus name. I was obedient because I knew that I had to follow Gods call. When God filled me with the gift of the Holy Ghost I met a God that loved me, forgave me, and was ready to walk with me through the trials. Gods intent was not to take the trials away, God's intent was to mold me into the image of Jesus through those trials. Jesus was bullied. Jesus was mocked. Jesus was scourged. And he promised never to leave us. Paul promised that we would be persecuted like him, that we would go through trials like he did. At first I was really just reeling from years of dealing with scrupulosity which is a religious form of OCD. I ended up in some bad situations with some religious narcissists that took advantage of me. I constantly felt like I was going to go to Hell. Everything that was going on in the political world between Donald Trump and the far left was extremely triggering. I felt like I wasn't standing up enough. I felt like I had to do more or God was going to walk off on me. These were all OCD lies. It got to the point where these religious bullies had isolated me from my church family that loved and cared about me and they wanted to try and get me away from my family as well. I thought I was had. The meltdowns and sensory overload was terrible. I was believing lies about God.
Then my church reached out to me and I realized I needed to run back to them and away from the religious bullies. Since then God has been working on me. All I've felt is God's love. I've known a God that is not the angry taskmaster of Catholicism but a God of grace love and mercy, a loving father that has never ever given up on me. God has been starting to deal with some of that trauma that I held onto for so long and changing me through the prayers and fellowship of the people at the Apostolic Pentecostal church that I belong to. Through the patients of our pastors and the people at our church.
Bullying is unacceptable in any form. It;s hard when people that hurt you are people that are close to you, people that you trust. Recently a friend of mine from the computer company that I now work for went to work at Network 180 and part of his job is to make sure that bullies do not end up in staff person jobs working with developmental disabled people. Staff people are supposed to serve and protect people with developmental disabilities and not be the source of their trauma. Fortunately when I moved out and lived in supported independence through Hope Network for years I didn't run into any more.
Many because of religious bullies think that God is their enemy and that he's out there to toast them in hell forever and make them jump through hoops. The most important thing that any church organization can do is expose the lies of these types of people and distance themselves from them. I do pray for the ones that hurt me. I pray that they will see the light. I pray that they will repent and that they will turn back to God and turn away from a lot of the lies that Satan has been feeding them.
I leave you with this. For years I wondered why I was going through some of these persecutions. Why was I being mocked and rejected. The truth is that trials and persecutions are meant to bring us closer to God and make us lean on Him. He will never betray us or stab us in the back or say hurtful things about us. In fact it's the other way around. Jesus experienced the worst of the worst of the religious bullies. He knows what we as human beings go through. So know that there is a God that loves you in the middle of what you are going through and has walked through it himself.
Blessings friends.
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