If you have tweens, teens or young adults in your lives, please feel free to share my testimony.
Fearfully and wonderfully made…
From a very early age, like kindergarten, I knew I was different. My social skills were immature for those in my grade, and I typically was one of the youngest in my class with a September birthday. I didn’t have many friends in elementary. In middle school, I had a best friend who became a lifelong friend. She helped me feel “normal.”
In seventh grade my life was overwhelming. I wasn’t sleeping well. I had energy the pink bunny couldn’t keep up with. I was struggling with reading and comprehension, and let’s not even discuss math. I committed a felony my seventh grade year when I forged my mom’s signature on a math test in pencil! Apparently, I wasn’t the brightest bulb on the string either.
All these things and issues with anger and impulse control led my parents to take me to a doctor for testing. Back then there was very little known about ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), and most of the time, boys were diagnosed with ADHD not girls. In order for me to be diagnosed, I had to have tested pretty strong. So, now we knew what the problem was, and next we had to find a medicine that would work for me.
In high school, my spiritual gifts started presenting in a strong fashion. My spiritual gifts are prophesy and discernment. I didn’t really have a clique to hang out with even though I was a cheerleader. My opinions were very black and white, and I was verbal. I had sharp edges. So if being ADHD wasn’t weird enough, let’s throw some prophesy on top of that for good measure.
Then let’s add a healthy helping of self-confidence. You would think that knowing I was different would make me self-conscious, but no, it didn’t. I knew who I was, and I wasn’t going to do much bending to fit in either.
My junior year I told my mom I wanted to adopt three kids. All my friends were talking about wanting to get married one day and having babies. No thank you, I had a kidney stone. I didn’t want to go through that kind of pain again. God placed it on my heart to adopt. So, ADHD, prophesy, and desire to adopt – looks like an odd cocktail presenting as the life of a person.
Fast forward 15 years. I was selected to be part of the Special Investigation Unit with my employer. I investigated questionable insurance claims, many were fraudulent. The things that made me weird in middle school and high school were the exactly the things I needed to do my job. I needed to have lots of energy to keep up with all of my investigations and confidence to go into prisons to take statements and to testify on the stand. I needed to have discernment when investigating questionable losses to determine what was owed and what was not. I needed to be able to spin a lot of plates at one time, so to speak.
A few years later, we would find out we would not be able to give birth to our babies. We would indeed adopt two beautiful babies over 3 ½ years apart.
Why did I tell you about these little vignettes in my life? My son who is also ADHD told me tonight he hated being different. He wished he was like everyone else. I remember that feeling all too well, but I was able to give him perspective that I didn’t have at his age.
God uses every little thing we find weird or off about ourselves. He uses every little bit. The key is to not allow Satan to come in and taint the process. Satan does that by strapping hate, low self-esteem, resentment, self-doubt, and anger to your back. If we can teach our kids that God is going to use what he or she thinks is a problem, then we teach them to expect to see God work it out.
If kids get focused on how they are treated, how they “feel” about themselves or a situation, then we fail to show them how to use those things as stepping stones to move forward. If I had been allowed to stay focused on how I “felt” (which we know “feelings” are deceiving), then I would have never learned the good things about being ADHD. And yes, there are benefits to being ADHD.
Kids need to know God has placed every little thing in their lives to prepare them for their future. Kidney stones? Yep, I wanted to adopt after that, so I didn’t grieve when I couldn’t get pregnant.
God uses it all to prepare kids for His kingdom work and their future. We just have to be patient to see how He’s going to weave it all together and make the tapestry into a life.
Don’t hate the fact you are different. Discover why you are different. Develop what makes you different.
My son loves super heroes. So, I told him being ADHD is like having a superpower. Every hero had to learn how to use the superpower, and they weren’t immediately successful at it either. I also pointed out superheroes had their own weaknesses or Kryptonite. For my son and me, it’s anger or lack of self-control. We have to find out how to overcome those weaknesses. That is what this season in his life is about. It’s about learning about his strengths and weaknesses and how to overcome the latter.
Your kids need to know they are not a mistake or an accident. They need to know they are fearfully and wonderfully made, and they are in the years of discovering who God created them to be. It is an exciting time to see how God is going to work putting it all together. We just have to be patient and do our part.