Just today, thinking about all of this,  I found an article by Tim Keller, “Preaching in a Post Modern City.” He gives an interesting perspective on how we live and fail to live gospel centered lives. He talks about how we become the  changed people that we desire to be and are supposed to be. Speaking about virtue he says,” it particularly grows by a faith-sight of the glory of Christ and his salvation.” I believe that to be true, that seeing Jesus is powerful and causes us to move. He also says, “Is [the gospel] basically about what I must do, or basically about what he has done?”

Each evening of the trip, all 26 participants would sit in a circle for a time for reflection. The final evening, the reflections were dominated by questions of whether or not we could really take the lessons we learned back to our normal lives. I know I’ve previously felt similar spiritual ‘highs’ after a great retreat or trip. They always seemed to fade to some degree though when faced with entrance back into a lukewarm Christian American society. This might have been the case, given my travel woes, had I not received the most inspiring faith I’ve heard in a long time on this very trip.

A family, who is very dear to me, experienced great tragedy last fall, the sort of tragedy that brings huge life plans crashing down. This tragedy brought a university and community to their knees. I tend to shy away from emotional issues, and this was no exception. I praised God when two sisters from this family decided to go on the trip, and I finally summoned the courage to talk to them about some things I had been curious about. I was amazed at their faith. They openly admitted they would not have been on this trip had it not been for the events of last fall. In the wake of terrible misfortune, they weren’t cursing and saying, ‘why me?’ They had faith in God’s plan for them.

As I sat in the airport, I knew this was God’s plan – to see if my friend and I could persevere through this inconvenience without yelling at the ticket agents and forgetting all we had learned, to see if we could still come back strong after a reality check, to see if we had faith in His plan.

I met Sarah Palin at a book signing. I said, “Having autism, I really appreciate what you do as a special-needs mom.”

She said, “Thanks for the encouragement. How old are you?”

“Twenty-one,” I answered.

“How’s that going?” she asked.

“Great,” I answered as I walked off. ”I’m in school.”

The form of autism that I have is called Asperger’s Syndrome. It’s very mild. I’ll be able to get married and have a decent job. My social impairment is much milder than my obsessive interests. In some ways Asperger’s is a gift. It gives me a certain kind of intelligence. People with Asperger’s tend to have positive personality traits.

Throughout my life — even before I was diagnosed with Asperger’s — my parents played an important role in helping me to deal with it. Now that I have been diagnosed, my parents know more about the challenges I face. My mom has been helping me to figure out “dating,” and my dad helps me with issues related to jobs.

Many people with special needs face greater challenges than I do. Some of them will not be able to get married. Others will not be able to hold jobs. Does this mean that they cannot experience fulfilling lives? Does this mean that they are not valuable members of society?

I believe that God has a purpose for each person. God places people with special needs into the world for many reasons. One reason is to help families and society to become more caring. A child with a  mild disorder will cost parents extra time and money. A child with a severe disorder will cost a great deal of time and money. Spending resources on another person is not a burden but a privilege. Through taking care of a special-needs child, parents come to know more about God. They learn to see that each human life has intrinsic value. They learn that real love involves costly sacrifice.

Every Sunday evening, I’d stare at the big grandfather clock…waiting, wishing.  7:45pm. It takes me five minutes to get there…I’m too anxious, so I leave. 

I walk up the dark streets, watching the light bulbs flicker off when I come their way.  The streets are covered in acorns.  Acorns and cicadas. 

Their dead skins crackle beneath my instep.

I was thinking of him, that man.  Man, I say because he was more of a man than any other I’d met.  Not only was he charming, with gorgeous eyes, high cheekbones, and a muscular face, but he was intelligent, brilliant even.  A man who followed Christ with his whole heart, mind, soul, and body.  The words he spoke were like angelic chords, God’s light on the darkness of my life.  This man let Jesus work through him.  Because of that, I love.  Because of that, I care.  Because of that, I am free.  More free than ever before because, honestly, I was living a lie.  Stuck behind the bars of my own sin.  Inhibiting me from living, truly living.

So I looked forward to these Sunday night Bible studies before I even knew what was happening to me, to my soul. 

I looked forward to getting goose bumps, and hyperventilating, and feeling like my “ideals” were being ripped into shreds, being made into true moral values.  Because there was something about this man.  Something about his words, his charm, his charisma. 

Truth poured through him.  Truth that I could not get enough of, that I craved.

I sat down amidst the amoeba of bodies, all as eager as I to hear the words Matt had to say.  Even the atheists listened.  The agnostics more so.  He drew us.

When Matt spoke, he painted a picture with his words.  He took the initial breath stroke that had been painted in our brains, all crusty and falling apart, and painted over it, erasing it.  Erasing what we thought we had, what we thought we knew, replacing it with a gentle stroke that no person could argue against.

The looks of your painting depended on your heart.  It depended on whether or not your heart’s door was open.  How far open didn’t matter.  Because even if you opened it a pin-prick, Jesus could get through.  Matt’s words helped open it further.

The sad part is that some people shut it.  Once it was open and kept open, the love and beauty and understanding and peace of Jesus flowed through it like an ocean, without end.  But some saw the then unknown overflow creeping through the open door and got scared.  Panicked.

Faith?  What a scary thought. 

What an impossible dream to believe in such a loving and forgiving God.

All it took was a leap and I was hooked.  I thank God every given day of my life for having made me, out of all the billions of people on this earth, one of those fortunate enough to know and serve Him.

All it takes is a little faith.  A little leap. 

You might let go…but He never will.

So…

Why am I not the spitting image of my five closest friends?

Who am I?  I am God’s child.  A creation protected from the sin that I am so surrounded by.  I’m not perfect, but God certainly has protected me.  Like a laminated sheet of paper.  It was nothing I did.  It was God’s grace that engulfed me.

God is my Closest Friend.  He is my Five Closest Friends.

That does not mean I am His spitting image.

I’m not God.  I’m not Superwoman.  I am me.  But that me was not shaped by a death-ridden society.  That me was baptized and prayed for by too many to count.  That me was given grace and protected from the flames of moral corruption.

He is my Five Closest Friends.

So when I walk down the street with a big smile on my face as I look up to the sky, I am talking to Him.  At times I see large groups walking, yet I am alone.

Why don’t I ever feel alone? 

I never feel alone.

Ever.

I think I might just go as far to say that my Five Closest Friends are the absolute Five Closest Friends.  Because He’s not only mine.  He’s yours. 

And that’s what I’m about.

♥ Social mistake number…?  Took me a Second.  But He is my Five Closest Friends.♥

Everything was going great for me: I was a straight-A student, on the varsity basketball team, was the youngest in my ballet class to start toe shoes, and my family and social lives were going great.  Perfect, right?  Well, it wasn’t.

I attended church, but never paid much attention—I didn’t think I should have to…I felt pretty satisfied with my life already.  It came the time for me to get confirmed and I had to take a Catholic education class in order to do so.

I attended public school and my friends, knowing I was Catholic, always asked questions like: why are you pro-life? Why are you saving yourself for marriage?  I never knew the answers.  I didn’t know why the Catholic faith taught these things. 

When I took that confirmation class, I found all the answers.  Anything and everything I had ever questioned was answered.  Everything seemed to make sense.  I had finally heard Truth.  A couple of weeks into the class, my teacher noticed that I was liking what she was teaching, fully understanding, and craving more.  So, she suggested that I attend daily mass with her.  Daily mass?!  I thought church was a Sunday thing.  And now she wanted me to go every day??  It seemed excessive.  But I went, just out of curiosity and to make her happy. 

Turns out, it was one of the most inspirational experiences of my life.  I saw everyone kneeling, praying the rosary.  I was watching faith in action.  I had always thought that faith was like a set of guidelines, rules that we had to strictly abide by, but I never realized how much more it could become.  I looked on in awe as they spoke those beautiful words, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with Thee.  Blessed art Thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of Thy womb, Jesus.  Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  Amen” in unison.  I couldn’t explain it at the time, but there was something inside of me that wanted, deeply, to take part in that beauty, that love that illuminated those prayers’ faces.  My curiosity compelled me to go back the next day.  Awed by their dedication, I kept on going back: again, and again, and again…. 

Eventually I stopped going back out of curiosity, and started going because I wanted to for my soul.  I felt in my soul that I had to go.  I enjoyed going. 

This had a ripple effect on my whole life.  I began going to Adoration, and praying in front of the Blessed Sacrament.  I started opening up more during my nighttime prayer, and doing so more often.  I finally gained the courage to speak the Truth to my friends about the moral issues they had been asking me about all along.  And I successfully made them speechless.  After all, they had never heard anyone defend the Catholic faith before.  They had never heard the Truth.

Most importantly, I was happy.  I had finally found something that truly fulfilled me.  Having everything I had just wasn’t enough; I was missing something, or rather, someone: Jesus.  I finally could stop searching because I had Jesus, who fulfilled me completely so much that I sought nothing else. 

And right now, I seek nothing else.  Jesus is here.  He’s in me.  He’s in you.  He’s in everyone and He’s not going anywhere.  It’s all a matter of seeking Him out. 

We all have reason to believe that Jesus was the happiest man on Earth.  He lived and loved completely.  Find Him, and you will too.

That social mistake just keeps growing.

[Editor's note: Natalie is the Poet Laureate of Seed.  She is a Penn State undergraduate majoring in Communications, is an active member of everything, and likes to drive editors crazy by including unusual typographical symbols in her writing.  Enjoy.]

Wait a second…

I have always heard that one’s five closest friends added together, give or take a few complimentary idiosyncrasies, mixed up, and spit out—personality, humor, charm, morals and all—equals oneself.  Because truth is, we choose our friends based off of these criteria.  If we don’t smoke, any smoker “friends” we may have are probably better titled “acquaintances”.  We bond with who we relate to.  To what degree this is true, I know not.  But I have been an inhabitant of this earth long enough to know that most of the time, it proves to be true.  One night I sat on my bed pondering all of this.  I thought about all the cliques in my high school and how alike those within each clique were.  They were all on the same sports teams, went everywhere together, loved the same movies, laughed at the same kind of humor.  I thought…and I thought. 

Then I thought, why am I so different?

My five closest friends, if you could even call them that close, were among those called “high school drop-outs,” “depressed,” “boring,” “awkward,” “anti-social”.  As far as I knew, not to be too presumptuous here but, according to my standards and the standards of my family and the standards of society, I was none of those things.  I’m in college, certainly not a high school drop-out.  I’m too in love with life to be boring, depressed, or anti-social.  And I can only hope that I’m not awkward, but I could be wrong ☺.

All that said, if I am nothing like my five closest friends, different from my family (that’s even more complicated), and not the human concoction studies have made me out to be, then who am I?

Whose spitting image am I?

Second day of high school.

I walked through the maroon-colored cafeteria doors.  My heart stopped.  Not again, I thought.  Why do I have to go through this horrible process of finding an eating area where only embarrassment and silence seemed to emit from my soul?  Gosh.

I dragged myself over to the lunch line.  I was one of the few whites who bought lunch.  Social mistake number one. 

After I got my oh-too-sloppy joe, I headed over to the condiments table, stalled a bit.  A bit longer.  And longer, scoping out the tables to see a kind face, a nice gesture, an inviting hand.    No one.  Nothing.

You see, I was not like Yvette and Mildred in “The Wrong Lunch Line,” by Nicholasa Mohr.  I had no best friend.  No one to sit with.  Not a soul.

Then I saw them.  Perfect as could be, I thought.  Why not join them?  If I sit with the popular people, maybe I’ll become one of them. 

My heart raced as I made it over to the already over-crowded table.  There had to be at least 15 girls sitting at this single 6-foot diameter surface.  Social mistake number two.

I squeezed in with them, not really saying much and ignoring the sideways glances. 

Why do you hate me? I thought.  Just smile…maybe they’ll like that.

So I smiled.  And smiled.  And my upward grin turned into an awkward line as I listened to the silence.  Most of the girls had already finished eating.  Except for me, of course.  Social mistake number three.

Two girls waited up for me.  Nice enough, right?  Not really.  The next day was the same story, but no one waited for me.  I felt the embarrassment that Yvette felt when that teacher called her out in front of everyone.  I felt like I had done something out of my place.  Like I didn’t belong.  People were calling me out for it with their stares. 

That day I found a note the girls were passing around about me.  “Please don’t let me cry, thought Yvette” (Mohr, 55).  Please don’t let me cry, I thought.

It hurt.  Really bad.  When people write that you’re weird and you have no friends and that they don’t like you in high school, you believe it.  It tore my insides apart.  I could not function for the rest of that day.  I was like a zombie, one with too many tears to hold back.

I nearly jolted home. 

That’s when I got down.  On my knees, I mean.  In front of my window, right at the foot of my bed.

“God…”

Tears ran down my cheeks.  Tear after tear and soon I was bawling.  I couldn’t breathe.  Who was I?  Why was I?  What was I to do?

I looked up and saw the answers.  I listened and heard the answers.  I knocked and the door was opened for me.  Social mistake number four .