it’s just hard
All I ask, Riley sitting beside me at the bar in the kitchen for lunch, us with our bright-fresh salads, glint of forks, napkins folded in neat rectangles, is, do you want to say the prayer?
Umm, that’s okay, she says, I’m good, and then, her voice wavers, and her eyes suddenly fill with tears.
My face, I know, looks only expectant, and then, surprised.
Wait, why are you sad?
I ask aloud before I think, and the tears brim and slide, and she drags the side of her hand roughly across her face.
I don’t know, she says, but incredulously, the contraction and the ‘kn’ sound landing hard, as if to underscore the point that after all this time—she will feel, even with just a couple of hands full of years, that it has been so long—she still has trouble making sense of what she feels in her body.
Life in the body, especially with unique cognitive wiring and a wonky central nervous system, can be difficult to figure out. And we are not merely synapses but souls; there are the temporary and the lasting parts.
In our early years, aware of the challenges unique to Autism, I practiced decoding facial expressions with my littles, trying to connect the mystery of emotion to the body’s physical responses and to body language, showing them photographs of people wearing various expressions, asking them to match the grimace, the grin, the chin-dripping tears, to an appropriate feeling. Adam had a work task like this that I had built using a laminated folder and what amounted to various face emojis. He would transfer a Velcro label–the halves ripped apart by his pudgy fingers with a rough rrratch–from one side of the folder to the other. I kept it basic at first—happy, sad, excited, afraid, but it was often difficult to tell whether my kids were learning a mind-body connection or simply memorizing the order of the labels.
Eventually, I realized that, for Riley, interpreting and articulating her own feelings and sensations can be even more challenging than decoding emotions in other faces, and that most difficult of all for her are the body’s spontaneous responses, which circumvent cognitive control in a way that feels, to Riley, like betrayal. At some point, I began to understand that because of the complicated mix of challenges Riley experiences with Autism and Epilepsy, she has, for most of her life, keenly felt a certain mistrust of her body, a simmering anxiety over the unreliability of the interaction between body and mind, and the constant potential for unpleasant surprises.
It all sounds very scientific, but none of these challenges and realities are new. Human beings have been trying to understand and decode the mysterious synergy—or lack thereof—of mind, body, and soul for ages. It’s as though the disconnection of the world has been written into our DNA, and at some point, we all have to decide which direction to go, so the apostle Paul says, walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Today, because of the unbidden tears, Riley feels meanly exposed. Beside me, she sucks in her breath and blinks, trying for composure, and I think of something else Paul wrote, that in this mortal body we all feel naked, longing to be clothed with immortality.
This feeling of dissonance between our wishes and the body’s response, what Paul calls groaning, is part of the human condition. We all struggle with it, because from first inhale to final exhale, our bodies are changing, and not only in scientific ways. Maybe the incongruence we feel represents not just the failure of physical systems but spiritual progress, or so Paul seems to say.
Our groaning only grows when our bodies suffer injury, as they age, or when we are afflicted with chronic conditions. In fact, Paul describes a departure happening over time, such that outwardly we waste away but inwardly we are renewed, as though we slowly shed our mortality in preparation for forever. The process is difficult, bewildering, and universal, but the ultimate outcome for those apprenticed to Christ will be more wonderful than anything we can imagine.
It’s just hard for me, Riley says, blotting her cheeks now with her napkin, and I understand this not as an attempt at dismissal but as an accurate assessment of the situation. It’s just hard, of course, for everyone. Would that because of it some compassion would take root.
So, why don’t I just pray right now, for you?
The whisper of another passage drifts through my mind, about the connection between prayer and peace, that is, that peace, the heart and mind guarding wholeness that is a comprehension-defying gift from God is given to us when we pray. So, could it be that the antidote, maybe, for all our bewildered struggle with dissonance and disconnection is reconnecting to God? Could it be that after all, the thing we need to do is just pray?
I have already closed my eyes, have already entered the conversation, and so I feel before I see the relief that floods Riley’s heart and pours out, welling like living, soothing waters baptizing body and soul. It’s like there are chains breaking and knots slipping free, and beside me, she exhales, a quiet rush, and her grin is a sound like laughter. It’s light, overwhelming the shadows.
It’s always been this way for Riley, that the peace of prayer moves in like a force, healing everything, and it doesn’t make sense, really, because somewhere deep in the tissue of her body, things still match up differently or not at all. It’s still hard for her; it’s still going to be, and yet, just like that, she’s whole.
But so it goes, with God.
