Living fully as a gifted adult begins with trusting God created me intentionally, weaving His purpose into every part of who I am.
The other part of my neurodivergence is even newer to me in revelation than being an EE. On my travels through the INF resources, I came across a recommendation for a book titled, The Gifted Adult: A Revolutionary Guide for Liberating Everyday Genius by Mary Elaine Jacobsen, PsyD. It freed me like no other. It was the foundation to understanding my specific brain’s function removing so much of my shame having tried so hard to function “normal”, yet so often failing in the ‘real’ world.
You are the first people I am telling that to. I haven’t even told my husband. My kids. That word Gifted doesn’t roll off my tongue easily. And typing it feels cringy. It feels foreign. Outside myself. But, inside I know it is true. Page after page after page resonated on an experiential level from my earliest memories so much so the entire book is highlighted ~ a beacon, a lighthouse shining brightly on the unsolved mystery of my life. It became an answer to one of my most longing questions, “God, who am I? Really?”
I’ve rarely made sense to myself. I almost never make sense to the world. I have often felt very stupid, and yet, I mustered curious courage to take the test tucked inside this book. I scored Very High. I stared at my results with jaw dropped to the floor for quite a while until tears started to flow from my eyes dotting the paper with my scores. At 47 years old, well on my way to midlife, I discovered I am not stupid at all. And, through a string of connecting miracle intuitive dots, the new therapist God put in my life whose family and clients comprise this new to me label picked up on whatever clues she was looking for in the first five minutes to help.
Living water.
We live in a Left brained world. Intelligence is measured in Left brained functionality. Our school systems, corporations, government, healthcare, and yes, our churches are structured around Left brained systems. HOA’s. PTA’s. Athletics. I am not anti-Left brained. My husband is Left brained gifted as is my daughter. I thank God, actually, because it helps immensely to be Left brained living in this world. I am not just a little bit, but a lot different. Regardless of what AI says that being one or the other is myth. Experientially, I know my truth.
I am 97% Analytical almost entirely on the Right side of my brain. I think in terms of symbolism and metaphor. I live in terms of symbolism and metaphor. When we lost our spiritual family, I told my closest Sister in Christ at the time as I was losing her in the midst of my excruciating trauma, “Please, I beg, don’t shut us out,” sobbing, convulsing through all my pleas. “It feels like open heart surgery without anesthesia,” my heart being cut out. To a Left brained person receiving this information, it can appear intensely melodramatic. I now can see that truth in years long self-reflection.
Yet, to me experiencing the pain, I was describing in concrete terms what I was literally not figurately experiencing, feeling. I felt the ripping, the cutting, the stabbing sensations of immense, physical grief on a cellular, nerve-ending, bodily level that made me want to die begging for help, relief, the True Gospel to win. I cried every day for years over this friendship cut from my life. Years in therapy understanding my own true Self to see clearer from her point of view. I am no longer filled with shame or sting or blame. Jesus has healed my pain leaving me filled with grace for both of us.
Mundane tasks biblical Martha would be proud of bring on boredom that makes me want to die. This again is literal sensation. Brain fog and pointlessness. When we aren’t using our gifts, we become collapsed versions of ourselves. When we do use our gifts, we can be so driven, hyper focused and intense it can alienate us. Also called Monotropism. I have always known this about myself. I just didn’t have the word for it. Now I do at almost a half century old. A common experience for many of us making new midlife discoveries about the brains we’ve carried our whole lives. When I am in a zone using my gifts, I abhor being interrupted. Right now the dog I love is scratching at the door to be let in, and not for the first time writing this. Breathe I tell myself. Passion oozes from me. Animated. Alive. All inside my head. Thoughts.
My solution early in mothering was to put my gifts on the far back burner out of sight untouched so to never, ever have my children feel a distraction, irritant, nuisance. Hypervigilant to create the home life opposite my own. I chose them over my gifts not knowing how to strike a balance and often I withered from lack of use, creative spark. This is called the pendulum swinging between using your gifts fully lit up to collapsing from not using them at all feeling like parts of you have died. Or being stuck in a perfectionism that leads to total paralysis and the seismic familiar feelings of failure sentencing you to doom.
I don’t multi-task well. I am scattered and circular, a woman who thrives on anti-structure. The pressures of life in the world let alone biblical womanhood foster the opposite. The measuring stick very much in Martha’s favor despite making a little room for Mary at Jesus’ feet so long as she doesn’t tarry or have too many idealized fantasies about true Gospel living that don’t conform to structured protocol, patriarchal pride, and woman’s obedience to her role.
She must know her place and not be too fanciful in idea or use her gifts too expressly, containing her intensity and drive for spiritual matters of truth and sincerity and uncovering to benefit the whole. Be hypervigilant to clean her own home top to bottom, her own heart from sin’s taint and her children’s too, but do not dare begin to cleanse the rotten stench of hypocrisy in the church, spot and expose wolves, or shine a Light on cracks in the foundation, holes in the walls, even while pointing out its Jesus’ House being destroyed. Oh, no. Meek, mild, silent, giftedness contained no matter the Source of her giftedness being God breathed.
God is a God of order not chaos. With more members than a handful it makes sense to organize and structure the church around rules and protocol. I am not anti rules. I am actually a strong rule follower. It was definitely engrained in me from my earliest breaths. This became my Achilles heel. I wanted to follow the Gospel to the T and it was despairing to learn those who proclaimed it the loudest from pulpits and pews did not have the same conviction.
The Holy Spirit though is free, flowing, and on the move. I liken the Holy Spirit as anti-structure. One without the other brings imbalance. Swing one way and you get legalism and rigid conformity, power and control. Swing the other and you get chaos. Would you not say Jesus is the perfect balance of both? TOV.
Church trauma aside, in my parenting as a mother trying my best to provide for my beloved children, I forced myself into so many mainstream boxes I could have been a professional contortionist just to fit in now 24 years counting.
And, I am exhausted.
Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30
I don’t know about you, but I am ready to let go the yokes of this world. I am retiring my contortionist self and removing all my mainstream boxes I have tried at only my expense to fit in. I am no longer allowing others to define what it is to be a ‘biblical’ woman. I am giving myself a one year sabbatical with Jesus to let Him grow me inside my own cocoon removing myself from ‘public’ view.
Update: I first wrote this last August. I took that sabbatical eight months ago, and I am just now resurfacing. Rest felt good. Very good. TOV. More on that process later in this blog.
I pray for your Lighthouse moment divinely appointed to illuminate for you your adult giftedness that helps to make sense of your experiences and to know in the depths of your being you are very bright, indeed not stupid at all.
Love,
Raya
The Gentle Rise 