Wonderfully … and differently made
- Mar 18
- 4 min read
This week marks Neurodiversity Celebration Week, a worldwide initiative that challenges stereotypes and misconceptions about neurological differences. In this piece, a Queensland-based Salvation Army officer writes from his own journey of discovering his neurodivergence.
BY CAPTAIN ANTHONY HUNT*
It began, as these journeys often do, not with me, but with my children.
As we tried to understand why school days left them exhausted, why emotional regulation required so much effort, or why focus seemed to come and go, I recognised something familiar. Their experiences echoed my own childhood – only now there were words for it.
In learning how to support their developing minds, I began to understand my own.
Many adults who discover they are neurodivergent later in life share similar childhood memories. School report cards that praised potential but questioned consistency.
Teachers writing comments like, “If only they applied themselves,” or “Bright, but easily distracted.” A familiar contradiction often appears early: being capable of complex thinking, creativity or handling pressure, while struggling with everyday organisation, routines and follow-through.
Labels
These experiences are rarely understood as difference. Instead, they become character judgments. Lazy. Disorganised. Too sensitive. Over time, those labels settle in and quietly shape how people see themselves.
For people of faith, this internal story can carry extra weight. When self-discipline, order and consistency are closely linked to faithfulness, difficulty managing time, attention or energy can feel like a moral or spiritual failure. You pray harder, try new systems and promise yourself you will do better next time. When change does not come, shame often takes root.
The unspoken question lingers: If I were more faithful, wouldn’t this be easier?
Different minds
Neurodiversity offers another lens.
Neurodiversity recognises the natural variation in how human brains work. It includes experiences such as ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and sensory processing differences. These are not new realities, but newly named ones. Many adults grew up without language to describe their experience or systems designed to support it. Difference was often corrected rather than understood.
For parents raising neurodivergent children, this can be confronting. As you learn to advocate for your child, to recognise sensory overload or emotional exhaustion, you may also begin to see how little understanding you were offered yourself.
That recognition often brings both relief and grief. Relief, because there is finally an explanation not rooted in failure. Grief, because of the years spent believing you were the problem.
Neurodivergent people often carry a particular mix of challenges and strengths. While everyday tasks can feel overwhelming, many are calm in moments of crisis. While organisation may be difficult, their sense of justice is often strong. While attention drifts in some settings, it can lock deeply onto what matters. Many notice subtle shifts in mood or atmosphere, carrying deep empathy and emotional awareness.
These qualities shape how people love, serve, and respond to the world. They are often the very traits that draw people toward advocacy, care, creativity and justice.
Strengths of difference
Pastor and writer Lamar Hardwick has written about how easily the church can mistake neurological difference for spiritual immaturity. His work challenges the idea that holiness looks the same for everyone and invites a more generous understanding of faithfulness.
Scripture consistently affirms that God works through difference. The biblical story is not one of uniform personalities or abilities, but of diverse lives called into faithful service.
Within The Salvation Army in Australia, faith is often described through the vision of living, loving, and fighting alongside others. This language reflects the heart of the gospel: a faith that is active, relational, and grounded in compassion and justice.
Living alongside others means telling the truth about who we are, including how our minds work. Loving alongside others means extending grace, patience and understanding, not only outward but inward as well. Fighting alongside others means standing against shame, exclusion and systems that overlook or misunderstand difference.
The whole person
Seen this way, accepting the brain you have is not self-focused. It is formative. As we grow in understanding and accepting ourselves, we are better positioned to understand and accept others. We become less quick to judge, more willing to listen, and more able to walk with people whose experiences differ from our own.
Disability theologian Amy Kenny reminds the church that disabled bodies and minds are not problems to be solved, but places where God is already present and at work. This challenges the idea that difference must be fixed before it can belong.
For parents, discovering neurodiversity invites grace in two directions at once: toward children navigating a world not always designed for how their minds work, and toward yourself, as you unlearn old narratives and relearn your story with kindness.
Acceptance does not remove difficulty. There are still days of exhaustion, frustration and uncertainty. But there is freedom in naming what is true, adjusting expectations, seeking support, and celebrating progress that does not look like someone else’s.
Within Salvation Army communities, there has long been a commitment to seeing the whole person. Body, mind, and spirit belong together. Dignity is not earned through performance. Justice is not reserved for those who conform. Compassion begins with listening.
Room for all
For churches and communities, neurodiversity invites gentle reflection. Who feels safe to be themselves here? Whose ways of engaging are assumed to be “normal”? Who may be present, faithful and committed, yet quietly overwhelmed?
Making room for difference does not require complex programs. It begins with curiosity instead of correction, patience instead of pressure, and the belief that faithfulness wears many faces.
Perhaps one of the quiet gifts of discovering neurodiversity, particularly through parenting, is learning to see ourselves and those we love with greater grace. It invites us to release shame that was never ours to carry and to recognise difference not as failure, but as part of how God has shaped us.
To say we are fearfully and wonderfully made is not to deny struggle or complexity. It is to affirm dignity. We are fearfully, wonderfully … and differently made. Our minds are not barriers to faith, but part of how we are formed for life with others.
As we grow in understanding and accepting ourselves, we are better able to live, love, and fight alongside others. This is faith expressed in everyday ways: walking together, standing for dignity, and making room for every person to belong.
Captain Anthony Hunt is the Beenleigh Corps Officer in South East Queensland
