Beyond Labels: Seeing the Beauty in EVERY Child

Do you ever feel like your child is looked down on because of their disability or special need?

In the world, you often see a differentiation between the “haves” and the “have nots.” Those in sports are esteemed more highly than the shelf stocker at Walmart. The advice of those with the largest following on social media or YouTube is more sought after than the grandfather or grandmother up the street.

Sadly, this can even be true at churches. I hear of many parents on this journey in special needs walking through the church doors looking for community and eventually walking away because they are made to feel like their child is a burden. Congregation members treated their child as less than and not really valued.

If this is your story, I’m sorry. This Easter season, I want to assure you that God does not see your son or daughter as less than.

Here are 5 ways that we can see this in the Bible. 

1. Your child is created in God's image

"So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." - Genesis 1:27 (NIV)

This verse reminds us that every person, including those with special needs, is created in God's image and is therefore uniquely valuable and important in God's eyes.

 

2. God sees beyond physical limitations

“But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.’”

– 1 Samuel 16:7 (NIV

While human beings often focus on physical appearances and abilities, God looks at the heart. He sees beyond a person's disabilities to their true character and potential.

3. God sees my child's struggles and cares for them

"The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit." - Psalm 34:18 (NIV)

As a parent, it can be heartbreaking to see my child struggle with challenges or disabilities. But I take comfort in knowing that God sees their struggles and cares for them deeply. God is close to those who are brokenhearted, and I believe that He is with my child every step of the way.

4. We are all equal in Christ

“There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” – Galatians 3:28 (NIV)

In this passage we can see that in Christ, there is no distinction between people based on their race, gender, or social status. This includes people with disabilities, who are equal members of the body of Christ. God values each person equally and desires for us to love and accept one another just as Christ has loved and accepted us (John 13:34-35).

5. God has given your child a unique gift or talent to share with the world

"Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's grace in its various forms." - 1 Peter 4:10 (NIV)

This verse reminds us that every person, including those with special needs, has unique gifts and talents that can be used to make a positive impact on the world. By valuing and nurturing these gifts, we can help our children to realize their full potential and make a positive difference in the world around them.

This Easter season, as we celebrate the death and resurrection of our savior, I want to encourage you that not only does our heavenly father know and love you. In the same way, He fully loves your son or daughter. He does not view them as a burden or less than.

He tends his flock like a shepherd:
    He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
    he gently leads those that have young.

~ Isaiah 40:11 (NIV)

Written by Jonathan McGuire

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Jonathan McGuire  is the dad of two boys and co-founder of Hope Anew, a nonprofit that guides the beat up, battered, and worn out parents of children impacted by disabilities and special needs through the spiritual and emotional challenges they face to Christ-centered hope and healing.

Why Am I Struggling So Much?

Do you ever wake up and not want to get up? Do you ever lose your motivation and drive? Stay awake at night too late just vegging or zoning out? Snap at your spouse and everyone around you? We go about our day to day lives, caring for our kids, spouses, and selves handling what needs to be handled, doing the tasks that need to be done, mediating the scuffles that arise, and a host of other things. You used to have motivation to do all the things, to tackle the challenges, to meet the needs, to love others well in a peaceful way. Now you feel sad, angry, grumpy, tense, or unmotivated.

So, what is going on? What has changed? Why are you struggling?

 As a parent of a child with special needs and disabilities, you aren’t alone. The more parents I talk with the more I see this as a common, almost universal struggle. It may not be all the time, and it can be more pronounced in certain seasons of life and circumstances. And, I’m seeing it strongly right now in the general population with the Coronavirus stay-at-home order. Why?

One of the main reasons is grief. Grief is not only experienced when there is death, but with any type of momentous loss. This includes the loss of what was expected or anticipated in the future but will now not happen. This might be the hopes and dreams you had for your child and for how your family would look, activities they would do together, social interaction with family friends. But, the child will never accomplish those things, the family can’t do those activities, and the friends deserted you when you had a child with special needs. It might be a vacation you had planned or a graduation ceremony and senior year events with friends that won’t take place. It could be a lost job or every bit of “extra” income going to pay for therapies and treatment instead of a night at the movies or a vacation.

Grief has five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

These stages aren’t linear, so just because you dealt with anger yesterday that doesn’t mean you’re done with it for good. No, you can go through the stages repeatedly and can bounce back and forth between different stages. You may stay in one stage for a while or you may experience all of them in one day. A participant in one of our group Hope & Healing Workshops once commented that they felt like they were in the tumble dry cycle of a clothes dryer and that can sum it up perfectly.

 What do you do about it?

1. Acknowledge it. Name it. Simply identifying it and naming it can help so much.

2. Express it. That will look differently for different people and personality types. It may be writing in a journal, talking with a friend, having a good cry, writing a lament, expressing it to God, etc.

3. Shelve it. While this isn’t a good long-term plan, it is sometimes necessary in the short-term. Sometimes in order to deal with what needs to be done right now in this moment, hour or day, we can’t take the time to deal with it because it would stop us from handling the current situation. But, still name it, “Oh, that’s grief. I’ll need to deal with and express this later for my emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual health, but I need to set it aside for now so that I can complete _____ task.”

4. Express it some more. Grief comes in waves and just because you acknowledged it and expressed it once doesn’t mean the process of grieving is complete. It will usually take repeated expressions of it before you are ready to move on, especially with more significant losses.

5. Don’t let yourself get stuck there. If you only ever focus on the loss, you won’t be able to move into the future and build new dreams. This doesn’t mean you deny the reality of what you lost, but it does mean you say something like, “Yes, I lost ____ and that is significant, hurts terribly, and I will continue to grieve it sometimes. Yet, I have ______ and while it will be different than what I wanted, expected, and hoped for, life can still be beautiful, good, and purposeful.”

Written by Sarah McGuire

Sarah McGuire  is the Mom of two boys and co-founder of Hope Anew, a nonprofit that guides parents to Christ-centered hope and healing. You can follow Hope Anew on Facebook here. You can also check out Hope Anew’s Online Community here!

Due to COVID-19, all membership fees to the Hope Anew Online Community have been waived!

WILL MY CHILD BE ACCEPTED?

I finally watched the movie “Wonder” and I may or have may not have cried. Don’t get me wrong, the tears were manly tears. Each tear probably had its own little beard but they were tears none the less.

What was it that hit me? Was it the hard times Auggie faced? The initial lack of social acceptance? Was it the fear and trepidation that his parents dealt with when they sent him to school or the conflict they had when they were not on the same page about sending him to school? Or was it how Olivia’s (Auggie’s sister) life was impacted?

It wasn’t any of these things. Although, all these things were right on the money and in one way or another I could relate to each of them. While our struggles were different, I could relate to each of the challenges depicted and have seen them exemplified in our own family. No, the thing that got me was the acceptance.

After all the difficulties, Auggie’s classmates accepted him. They laughed at his jokes. They high fived him and gave him a standing ovation when he was given an award for being an exemplary person at the end of the school year. This is what made the tears stream down my face.

 I’ve learned to take the good days with the hard. But it breaks my heart when I sit down with my little buddy, talk with him about his goals and his top goal is to make friends. He wants to make more friends but social situations can be really hard for him.

 He wants to be accepted and you know what, I want that for him. I want the kids high fiving him. I want them laughing at his jokes. I want them to be seeking him out and to miss him if he is not there.

Do I care if he is popular or if he ever has a standing ovation from a group of peers? No, but I want him to be accepted.

 This is why I cried such manly tears in this movie, because not all of our sons and daughters will win over the hearts of their peers and be accepted for the “Wonders” that they are. We don’t have screen writers in place to tie beautiful bows on our situations and make everyone else see our children the way we do. And it hurts.

 Here’s the thing though, even in the midst of the uncertainty about his future and how he will be accepted. I have a confident hope and assurance. Even when I’m no longer around, my son has a heavenly father in whose image he was made. A father who will never leave him, forsake him or turn him away. A father who recognizes how wonderfully our children were made.

 “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

~ Jesus (Mark 10:14 NIV)

 Have you seen the movie, “Wonder”?  How did it resonate with you?