How NVLD Taught Me About Perseverance, Empowerment, and Faith, By Christopher

To this day I can remember the looks of frustration on school teachers’ faces when I was grasping the content they were teaching. I can also recall the hours spent in specialized education programs and the stigma associated with that, especially as an adolescent who wanted to be anything but “different” than the rest of his peers. As a child, I did not know what was wrong with me or why I was struggling to learn in the same manner as my peers. All I did know was that for some reason, I didn’t fit in.

My name is Christopher Schilling, and I am an ordained minister and a professional chaplain in the healthcare industry. In 2015, I was diagnosed with Non-Verbal Learning Disorder (NVLD). Even though I was 30 years old at the time of diagnosis, learning which disability I have suffered from since I was a child has helped me not only adapt to having NVLD, but has helped prevent the stigma I’d carried in my childhood from continuing into my adult life.

I have been blessed in my life that I have earned not only a bachelor’s degree, but also a master’s degree. However, learning in a traditional method of instruction with NVLD was a challenge that started while I was in grade school and continued throughout my secondary education and into seeking to become an ordained minister.

Like many other people living with NVLD, I carry the painful childhood memories of how NVLD affected me. For me, mathematics, sciences, foreign languages, and even high school marching band were subjects which I struggled to comprehend. Additionally, with poor motor skills which made it difficult to throw a football or catch a baseball, I dreaded partaking in sports with my friends. Along with also being diagnosed with ADHD and having issues reading social cues, I also had a hard time forming friendships with other children.

However, despite these challenges, what I did have were two supportive parents who helped me not only not be hindered by disability, but also gave me the opportunity to find my passions for speaking, writing, and acting. And it is these passions which taught me how to adapt and not be defined by this disability.

Even though my passions as a high schooler helped guide me as an adult in post-secondary education work, there were challenges I continued to face because of NVLD. When I felt called to become a minister and was required to take two-year courses in Greek and Hebrew, I struggled to pass the courses and ended up repeating my Hebrew course three times. And when the denomination in which I was seeking ordination prohibited me from being ordained because I couldn’t pass their written examinations, I almost had to give up on my call to become a minister.

But despite the stigma, the emotional and even spiritual struggles which come from struggling to learn and comprehend information differently because of NVLD, it was the encouragement from all the teachers, professors, friends, and colleagues that allowed me to fulfill my call where I work today as a church minister, hospital chaplain, and will soon begin work as a grief counselor.

While having NVLD has been a struggle in my academic career and sometimes in my professional career, it has also been part of my spiritual story which has taught me about perseverance, empowerment, and certainly the power of faith.

Also, it is my hope that through advocacy, we can work to better educate the public about NVLD and the importance of neurodiversity, as well as provide educators with the resources to help NVLD students not just learn through methods other than non-verbally, but also creatively.

Above all, it is my hope we can empower youth with NVLD to remember that just because their NVLD makes them different, it doesn’t make them less smart. On the contrary, persevering through NVLD can help them discover gifts and passions that those without NVLD might not have been challenged to pursue.