Just Start with Hello… My Name Is…
It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year is an old Christmas song made popular by Andy Williams. For most, Christmas is a wonderful time of gathering, giving, and most importantly grace - His grace. For some, Christmas is difficult and lonely. The song itself illustrates the dreaded social aspects of Christmas - parties for hosting.
Parties are a complex secret code for the mentally ill and Aspies (short for someone with Aspergers). Parties invite awkward anxious thoughts that fill my mind. Will I be invited to a party? Scrolling social media reveals how odd I am, because I rarely get invited to parties or other functions. I love the notion of being invited, but I look for any way to escape. Why?
Start with this one small phrase: "hello, my name is…," and it is terrifying. No other phrase creates such panic inside my mind. It is awful, abysmal, and atrocious. So much is going on in my mind when a stranger wants to engage in small talk with the accompanying expectation that I will reciprocate. It is harder than when I was a child and I was forced to apologize to a sibling. It’s just like walking through an empty city alley at night. To me, this phrase is petrifying, paralyzing, panicking.
So when you’re at a gathering, and you see someone off to the side, if you approach them, be compassionate, patient, and listen. It takes me a lot of time to process verbal information. Communication is a situation that is both physically and psychologically painful for me, like nails drawing down a chalkboard, and this increases the processing time. In the midst of it, I am constantly reviewing, “Did I say it right? Was I odd or weird?"
If I am invited to a party, I take a lot of time to rehearse conversations before the event, even though I don’t know what the topics or subjects will be. I do this for almost everything in my life dealing with casual prospective conversations. As I drive in my car, I rehearse these conversations. As I take a bath, I rehearse these conversations. When I cook, I rehearse these conversations. A lot of my time is devoted to talking to myself. This may sound very odd to people without afflictions, but it is the way for me to adjust to the normal world of communication. Although it doesn’t work well, I still do it all the time. However, that’s okay, because of what I do know very well about Christmas.
It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year! As the song states about past glories of Christmases of long long ago - Jesus came into the world as a gift from our Father to repair our relationship because of our sinful nature. Jesus was fully man but still fully God. He felt every emotion, every pain and every joy as a man, but since He was fully God, He never sinned. He was born in a manger on a cold night to a virgin. He came not to be served by man but to save us from eternal separation from God. He served us. He is the Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, (Isaiah 9:6) that is why It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year!