The Stuttering Christian

Most people who know what "stuttering" is have done one of the following things:

A.) Seen The King's Speech 

or

B.) Read something about James Earl Jones


Both of those are fine.

But if you're one of the 0.01429% of people on Earth who "stutter", you need no explanation of what sits so plumply between those quotation marks. And those people are my target audience; just in case anybody thought I'm out to make a side-profit by blogging about a high-traffic topic.

So instead of explaining what stuttering is, I will simply tell my story.

I can't remember a time when I didn't stutter. Allegedly, I was an early speaker who knew more words than meanings of words. As a young child in a full, small-town public elementary school, my broken speech was unremarkable among a plethora of kindergarteners who could not successfully pronounce "kindergarten." But as things tend to go, I was discovered. My parents and I were summoned to one of the inner-offices of the small school building and, apparently, offered speech therapy.

In these therapy sessions, I sat at a round table with a handful of children I already knew while an SLP (speech language pathologist) went around the group encouraging them to pronounce their "R"s and "L"s correctly. During my turn, I normally was asked to "take a big breath" and "speak as slowly as possible." Truth be told: most of us were just happy to get out of math.

But as my friends' speech anomalies went away and my companions were removed from the sessions, I entered private meetings with different speech pathologists. They gave me and my parents a number of explanations as to why I had such a hard time speaking. They told me I spoke too quickly. Then they blamed my parents' divorce. Then it was the next thing. And the whole time, I didn't really care all that much.

Truthfully, my single-digit-year-old-self didn't think about it too much.

But as I began to notice the unreliability of my ability to speak, I began to slip into what I now realize was the self-proclaimed identity of a "stutterer" - or as I've read among the online community, a Person Who Stutters.

And the more I stuttered, the more I feared.

Anytime we read aloud in class I would do a head-count of the remaining readers until I had the floor and quickly find the selection I would end up reading so I could scan it for problem words. This strategy, as most of us know, yields mixed results.

When called upon in class, I retorted incorrect answers I could pronounce in lieu of the correct answers I feared to say.

In restaurants, I insisted my parents order for me. When that got weird, I would order entrees I could pronounce without regard to whether I wished to eat it. On the bright side, I often appeared to have a very adventurous tastes in food.

Just as unsettling as the impediment itself were the results of my therapy. Now don't misunderstand me: the right therapy is a good thing. But the wrong therapy is certainly not a good thing.
Years later, I remember still being called out of recess, lunch periods, and class time to a multi-purpose mobile trailer behind my school's main building where I would read children's stories aloud while a rotating cast of well-meaning pathologists asked me to "breath" and "speak slowly".  All the while, nobody could answer my questions.

Why is my speech broken?
Why is it so hard?
Is something wrong with me or have I just learned how to speak wrong?
Where is God in all of this?

Since it is beyond the scope of this blog to deliver an all-inclusive autobiographical account, I will summarize: I graduated from high school having experienced the expected difficulties of any other stammerer -- many of which being grossly inflated versions of the aforementioned difficulties.

But in the Summer between high school and college, after a lifetime of claiming to be a "Christian", I accepted Jesus Christ to be my personal Savior. But not like you read about on blogs (except this one, of course.) I mean my heart actually opened to the truth that the God who made me also purchased me back by stepping out of Heaven into a human body, living a sinless life, and letting the very people He intended to redeem carry out His excruciating execution as a sacrifice on my behalf. But not only did He physically suffer, for the Father poured out every ounce of His wrath that I deserve onto Jesus in my stead.

Accordingly, my account is washed and I am made righteous in the site of God. Jesus traded me His clean account for my unforgivably stained account. It's a concept called "Grace". And it didn't make a "bad" version of me "good". It took me, a dead person, and made me an alive person. 

You're probably saying "That has nothing to do with stuttering."

But in reality, it has everything to do with stuttering.

It's east to be closed up in a mindset set of "There is no god. I'm here by accident and incident of nature. At best, my speech is a result of a genetic predisposition and there's nothing that can change that nor is there a particularly meaningful context for any speech impediment I may or may not have."

But in fact, you are created by a God that holds everything seen and unseen, known and unknown, discoverable and incomprehensible in His hand. Should you wish to deny that, so be it. It is not a task charged to me by Scripture to persuade you. Those who contest it should celebrate their freedom to do so. But for those who celebrate, instead, that very truth: do you not realize that it is God who makes a person mute or deaf or blind? That's exactly what the Lord told Moses when he doubted God's command to go to Pharaoh on behalf of the Israelites (a different post for a different time).

Consider the Apostle Paul's words in his second letter to the Corinthians in chapter 12 concerning his own infirmity which he simply calls his "thorn in the flesh":

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

The words that bring me to my knees on a nearly daily basis are "my power is made perfect in weakness". Take time to digest that truth; the God who spoke everything into existence and invented existence itself allows my weakness to be the "perfect" stage for His strength.

So now you can see that this blog is not simply about stuttering. Nor is my stuttering about me. If I am to boast in my weaknesses then those within earshot of me should grow weary of my boasting -- for if there is any who can be considered "weak", it's me. And if God's strength is made perfect in my weakness, then God is truly infinitely strong.

I realize that this is long first entry that few may read. But I would be acting outside of my obedience to my God not to post all of this in its entirety. I, like many others, am a PWS. But my identity is not a "stutter" who is also a Christian. My identity is in Christ. I am not a Christian stutterer, but a stuttering Christian.