we all need encouragement

I'm hurting today. I mentioned in my post yesterday that my knees were acting up, and my right one is now the worst it's ever been. Being a stay-at-home mom to two kids - ages 2 and 4 - isn't easy when the pain of walking from one room to the next can take your breath away. And having all three of us sick with head colds certainly doesn't make it any easier.

To be honest, I don't have much to offer right now. I'm feeling pretty depleted. Some days God strengthens me in spite my rheumatoid arthritis, and some days He uses RA to empty me so that He can fill me again. Right now I'm feeling as if I'm being emptied. How encouraging it is to know that He is faithful to fill me once more with His goodness and strength!

In all this, I am thankful for friends who God uses to encourage me, friends who send me messages like this:

I am praying for your heart first and your knees next. Don't go the pity party route... please!!! You know that won't accomplish anything, so don't buy the lie. I am super-angry at the enemy for attacking you. And I'm telling Jesus all about it.

And friends who write words like these:

 I’m weeping with you, and KNOW that God will bolster you

And these:

I am so sorry you are hurting. I am praying for you. Let me know what the rheumatologist says. Love you!

Special needs ministry is often about encouraging people who have found themselves in circumstances they wouldn't have chosen if it had been up to them. And about pointing to a God who is sovereign over all things, even if we don't understand His ways.

How can you encourage someone else today?

I believe that I shall look upon the goodness of the LORD
   in the land of the living!
Wait for the LORD;
   be strong, and let your heart take courage;
   wait for the LORD!

{Psalm 27:13-14}

Special needs ministry weekly round-up! {9/19/11}

Before I dive into the links this week, I have a prayer request to share with you. I'll be talking with some of my specialists today to figure out what's happening with my knees. I think it's a fairly sudden flare of rheumatoid arthritis, possibly related to the shift in weather this week, but I've never had a flare this severe come on this quickly before and the weather has never affected my arthritis before either. I think we'll need a couple weeks of a drug I hate/love, and we might need to add some physical therapy into the mix too. Please pray that this will not interfere with the planning and execution of our October 1st respite care event!

And now to this week's links... 


This isn't related to special needs ministry, but my senior pastor has started a new blog: Equipped for Life I am blessed to work alongside godly men and women who lead our ministries.


Special needs ministry isn't just about the person with a disability. It's about family ministry. Here's a great post I meant to include in the round-up last week: 6 Ways to Support a Sister of a Child with Autism


I've blogged occasionally about adoption and will continue to do so. For starters, rates of disability are higher among kids who have been adopted. Beyond that, special needs and adoption have other overlaps as well; both change families, both include people who are often left out on the margins of church and community, and both give us the opportunity as a church to put our faith into practice. In this post, Jen honestly writes about life as an adoptive family ... not just in the beginning, but after the airport. Where are we then, after the airport or after the diagnosis?


What do we know about kids at risk of behaving aggressively? This is part of a fantastic series of posts by Dr. Steve Grcevich, who is the president of Key Ministry and a physician specializing in child and adolescent psychiatry. His closing comments are something all of us need to consider:

The most important take home point is that there’s a pretty good chance kids who struggle with aggressive behavior at church have some condition that predisposes them to act that way or have been victims of such behavior themselves.

They sound like kids who could certainly benefit from the opportunity to experience the love of Christ through a local church, don’t they?

Yes, they do.


One of the ways disability ministry can display the works of God is that it shows what we're for. When polls and books like unChristian highlight that we're often viewed by what we oppose, it's refreshing to see posts like this one. He writes, in response to a video clip of Mike Huckabee on Fox talking with Emily and Chuck Colson about her son and his grandson Max who has autism,

Although I am not a fan of religion in general, I love the commitment to family and to love beyond oneself that faith often awakens in others.  This segment from Mike Huckabee's show on Fox News demonstrates how Christian values can open up a deeper and more meaningful conversation about people with autism than what we usually see on TV.

Time and time again, I've seen disability ministry catch the attention of secular groups or media. Let's be a church characterized by radical love for others, such that those who admit "not [to be] a fan of religion in general" commend what we're doing!

These definitions of the fruit of the Spirit by Tim Keller - the definition, opposites, and counterfeits - are useful for how we can minister and live as believers. (Thanks, Kim, for the heads up on this one!)


This article ran in The Salt Lake Times this week: Churches must welcome special-needs children It raises some good points, but I'm a little perturbed by the headline: special needs ministry is not just a children's ministry thing. Our Joy Class had a party this weekend in which adults with disabilities were celebrated as part of our church body as well. My role in our church is focused more on children's and student ministries while another volunteer, Katie, and her team do an excellent job serving alongside adults with disabilities. It's illogical to welcome kids with special needs if you plan to exclude them once they grow up.


 And now, a couple of churches doing it well:

• a church hosting support groups for siblings of children with special needs
• a church beginning a worship service that is welcoming to people with disabilities

Finally, Joni & Friends held a Through the Roof conference this past weekend, equipping church leaders to engage in disability ministry. Join me in praying for all those who attended and who return to their churches this week to put some of what they learned into practice.

Pat Robertson's view of Alzheimer’s and divorce: Not just wrong, but dangerous

My heart ached today as I read this introduction to Russell Moore's post:

This week on his television show Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson said a man would be morally justified to divorce his wife with Alzheimer’s disease in order to marry another woman. The dementia-riddled wife is, Robertson said, “not there” anymore. This is more than an embarrassment. This is more than cruelty. This is a repudiation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

The opinion Robertson gave is wrong. It is not supported by scripture. I could write an entire post on why his words fly in the face of biblical teaching about both earthly marriage and the union between Christ and the church. Moore has already done an excellent job of explaining that, though, so I suggest you read his post.

When it comes to people with special needs, from the littlest ones to the elderly wife he said the husband could divorce, Robertson's words are more than wrong. They are dangerous.

If it's okay to say that a husband can desert his wife because she is "not there" anymore, what else is okay? How about a parent deserting a child because she can't communicate verbally? Or aborting a child because he has a disability? Or telling the world that you wish you could have had an abortion so your child wouldn't have to watch other kids run and play without being able to join in? Or what about a judge forcing a couple to fight to adopt a child with a disability because that judge doesn't think the child deserves anything more than a sterile institution? If it's okay to walk away from marriage because your wife isn't cognitively there anymore, then why aren't all of those things okay too?

Or, to return to the topic of marriage for a moment, how about me? When we were dating, my husband and I charted out several lengthy rock-climbing adventures we planned to do one day. Rock climbing was a passion we shared and loved together, and we expected it to be a major part of our married lives too, at least while we were younger. We also each wrote on our premarital counseling surveys that I would probably be the one to get up during the night with the kids. We didn't know I would have two chronic and incurable diseases before our second wedding anniversary, health conditions that make sleepless nights much harder for me (so he's the one to get up with the kids, not me) and that ended our rock climbing plans (though I still have them saved because those dreams are still precious to remember). Would it be okay for my husband to walk away because our lives are vastly different than we planned and because he has to do more to support and care for me than we ever anticipated at this stage in our lives? Thank God that the answer is no!

And what about a church that says it's just too hard to include people with disabilities, especially those who might not be able to understand basic theological instruction? If it's okay for a husband to divorce his wife who has Alzheimer’s, then logic would allow the church to neglect those who we deem to be "not there" by our standards. Neither is acceptable.

I opened with Russ Moore's words about this, and I'll close with them as well, because he nails it far better than I could:

Sadly, many of our neighbors assume that when they hear the parade of cartoon characters we allow to speak for us, that they are hearing the gospel. They assume that when they see the giggling evangelist on the television screen, that they see Jesus. They assume that when they see the stadium political rallies to “take back America for Christ,” that they see Jesus. But Jesus isn’t there.

Jesus tells us he is present in the weak, the vulnerable, the useless. He is there in the least of these (Matt. 25:31-46). Somewhere out there right now, a man is wiping the drool from an 85 year-old woman who flinches because she think he’s a stranger. No television cameras are around. No politicians are seeking a meeting with them.

But the gospel is there. Jesus is there.

When are YOU fed? When do YOU rest?

I have a range of readers for this blog - ministry leaders, parents, pastors, people with disabilities, and other friends - but we all have a few things in common:

• the need to be fed, not just to be feeding others
• the need to rest, not just to offer rest
• the need to rely on a Savior, not just to trust in ourselves

Today is the first day of this year's Bible study for me and the kids. I'm thankful to have a great program at our church in which I'll be studying the book of Acts with other women this year while my kids - Robbie, age two, and Jocelyn, age four - will be exploring the same passage at their own levels in their own classes. I love our Tuesday morning program because it provides me with an opportunity to show up and participate without being in charge of anything, which is a refreshing change of pace. I get to dive into God's word to be fed alongside other women. And it is always a blessing.

Instead of writing a complete post today, I'd love to hear from you. What do you do to be fed? How do you prioritize rest? When you're serving, how do you avoid the trap of relying on yourself instead of Him?

It is in vain that you rise up early

and go late to rest,

eating the bread of anxious toil;

for he gives to his beloved sleep.

{Psalm 127:2}

And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.

{Mark 6:31}

"Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

{Matthew 11:28-30}

Weekly round-up! {9/12/11}

I've mentioned before that Wrestling with an Angel is one of my all-time favorite books and the book that every pastor ought to own and read through at least twice. Here's an interview with Greg Lucas on the Together For Adoption website, posted last week.

To spotlight one church that is doing it well, here's one that held art classes for adults with special needs and then held an art show to display their works.

That church with the art show? That's Stonebriar Community Church in Frisco, Texas. It also happens to be the church pastored by Chuck Swindoll. He also happens to be the keynote speaker for Inclusion Fusion, an upcoming web summit for special needs ministry that will be held November 3-5, 2011. I have been helping with it as part of the program team, and I will be one of the speakers. I'm excited to be part of an event that can equip church leaders for free and from any location via the internet. You can find out more or register here.

And, though I usually end these on a positive note, I want to leave you with this story. I blogged on Friday about a mom who testified in court that she would have aborted her three-year-old son if she knew before birth that he would have no arms and one leg. Later that day the court ruled in favor of her and her husband, awarding them $4.5 million dollars. Here are some quick takeaways from this:

• Pray for their son, Bryan, who will one day learn that his care was paid for because his mother told a room full of people that she wished she hadn't given birth to him.
• Pray for everyone involved in the case, from the parents to the ultrasound technicians.
• Pray that this wouldn't encourage other doctors to recommend for abortion to avoid similar malpractice cases.
• And pray for the church to rise up and take a stand in love with people with disabilities. If we do nothing, then we let the world define the worth of individuals with special needs. And this is what the world is saying.

And a positive note for us to end on? A related post from my friend Becky about the choice for life that she and her husband made for their son with special needs. It's worth reading.