We Are In God's Loving Hands, Always

One of the hats that special needs parents wear is that of a risk assessment manager.  Depending on the special needs your child has, this looks different.  In our case, without even knowing that I’m assessing risk, I am nearly always assessing and maneuvering around potential meltdown triggers, dangers and needs. It’s amazing how fast I can survey an environment and pinpoint each and every possible worst case scenario.  How fast I then come up with a contingency plan for each possibility and a plan for continued vigilance and surveillance until our time there is over.  I am always two steps ahead in my mind.  Many times the worst case never happens, but many times I’m right on and I am ready.  My kiddo sees these risky spots just as quickly as I do, it seems.  He is also super vigilant in his surveillance of a room. For this reason, I am just always on my toes. 

There are emotional risks that are also assessed.  Will we be embraced or accepted as we are in this environment?  Will our hearts, both my child’s and mine, be safe in this space, with these people? I can make sure that a door is locked, or that there is appropriate physical accommodations made for our needs.  That part is easy.  It’s the emotional risks that often give me the most pause. 

There was a time that my heart had been hurt by watching how some people respond to us.  I was so afraid of my child ever feeling like he was less just because of things that are completely out of his control, and of myself feeling that parental pain of observing that, that my first thought would be to sit it out.  I never did.  I wanted to.  I wanted to protect us from the emotional risks so badly, that I’d consider missing the parts of life that make for a full and vibrant existence.  

I never benched us.  We never sat out, and you shouldn’t either.

Instead, the route I’ve chosen to go when it comes to shielding our hearts, is that of specific and focused prayer.  We go.  We are now making our way through the Christmas season.  A time of excitement and hope and waiting.  There are so many opportunities to encounter this pause.  Should we go?  Will we fit?  I no longer entertain those old fears when they enter my mind.  I take a deep breath and ask the Lord to guide our day, our thoughts and to be with the people we encounter.  I ask that he’ll grow their knowledge and acceptance through their time with us.  I ask that he’ll guide their hearts to be inclusive and accommodating.  I ask that they not treat us like we’re different, because we really aren’t.  And, I thank him for the grace he’s given me, as a parent.  I pray that I’ll be able to give that same grace to myself, as I navigate environments that aren’t set up for us, both physically and more importantly emotionally.   Finally, I thank him for trusting me with this incredible child, and pray that I am graceful in my parenting of him.

Not one thing has grown my faith more than this practice of specific prayer.  When the Lord answers your prayer directly, in real time, it’s life changing, life giving, and sets you free from fear.  Choosing faith over fear is no longer a choice for me.  I just plain have faith.  I’ve entered spaces after praying like this and experienced the most beautiful, caring and loving interactions.  I’ve met people that have become friends to me, and my child has also found real friendship and acceptance, as well.  I’ve felt that we were safe and protected, just as we are. 

This year, there are fewer opportunities for large gatherings.  If you do find yourself looking at an upcoming outing or event with that familiar pause, whatever you do please don’t sit out.  Take a deep breath and pray.  We are in God’s loving hands.  Always.

Written by BreAnn Tassone

BreAnn is a wife and mother to two beloved children.  Her 8 year old son is twice exceptional and has been diagnosed with PANS/PANDAS, and her 3 year old daughter is his most incredible advocate.  They both bring joy to this world in their own individual ways. BreAnn lives with her family in central Virginia.  She is a former Special Education teacher and serves as a volunteer at her church within the special needs ministry.  She is a homeschooler and coordinates groups and events within her community to support the childhood experience of her neighbors and friends. It is her conviction that all children benefit when all children are included, accepted and can live this life learning from and supporting each other.

Behold I Make All Things New

“And he who was seated on the throne said, “Behold, I am making all things new.” Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” (Rev., 21:5, ESV).

One of our favorite past times as a family is to visit the Botanical Gardens near our home in the Chicago suburbs. It is a huge space of grounds that covers many acres of forest preserve land, complete with a variety of gardens, wooded trails and greenhouses. As teachers (or former teachers!) we are always took advantage of free entry with our ID, and it has been a great place to take our autistic son whenever he needed a motor break or just needed to be outside. 

This year, we had a much different experience, as the Gardens hosted a new light show called Lightscape which unlike previous years where they had just stung up a variety of holiday lights, this was essentially a giant light show through the entire grounds, including whole displays timed to music, lighted shapes and designs placed along the walkways and trails, and even a light “cathedral” which featured hundreds of strings of lights that covered a long open gazebo.

We were excited to bring our son since it was something totally new, and we knew how much he loved both the outdoors but also music and lights. As we entered the grounds on a chilly Thursday evening, we were struck by how sophisticated and lovely the show was, and our son was so entranced by all of the sensory experiences that he continually produced a giant smile on his face. The best part was when he stood mesmerized at a fiber optics display that was set up along the rocks of an outdoor fountain, just standing and watching the lights flow down the rocks like water.

In that moment, I was reminded by how unique and special this light display had made an otherwise regular feature in the garden that my son would have seen hundreds of times before. It was the same, but different, it had been recreated, transformed and essentially made “new” right before my son’s eyes. 

This experience reminded me of some powerful lessons this holiday season. While we always come back to the birth of Christ at Christmas as our source for eternal hope, I find it all too easy to get lost in the craziness of the celebrations.

This year, I was forced to look at this season in a new light, as my wife and me began the unfortunate process of divorce in November. I personally struggled to find hope when all I could feel was my own personal pain, suffering and anger, but a visit to one of my favorite places helped to lighten my mood. But it did more than that, as I watched my son’s amazement at the incredible light show that had changed a very familiar location into something completely new and different. It had become changed in ways I couldn’t have expected, and I was brought back to a place of peace and remembering the promise we have in our lives being reborn. It is in moments such as this that I am reminded of the promise that He will literally remake everything, and all we must do is to show up, be aware, and behold the goodness of His promises.

Written by John Felageller

John lives in Northbrook, IL and is currently a Social Programs Manager at Total Link 2 Community in Chicago, IL.  He is a regular contributor to Key Ministry’s Special Needs Family blog, and is both a live presenter and on Key Ministry’s Facebook page. He coordinates a Special Needs Dads meet-up in his community and works with several other local Special Needs organizations that serve both parents and children.

Connect with John on his Facebook page here.

When Hope Isn't A Thrill

This is the season of hope but I realize that many of you are going through hard times and not feeling so hopeful.

Sarah and I recently had the privilege of interviewing Gillian Marchenko on the Hope Anew Disability podcast and you will be able to hear the interview the first Monday in January! One of the questions that we asked was, “How do you find hope in the darkness?” We had a great conversation about this in the podcast. Gillian went on to write about it further in a recent article on her blog and gave us permission to repost it on the Hope Anew blog here!

May it help you find hope this Christmas season.

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A thrill of hope?

It’s Christmas time, those days in the year when popular lyrics like “a thrill of hope” are on the tip of the tongue. And yet, for some of us who fight depression, the idea of hope isn’t a thrill, but rather a briar patch of disappointment, confused emotions, and shame.

Depression is defined as hopelessness.

For me, hope often feels more lost than found when my mind is frost bitten by darkness. What in the world is a Christian supposed to do with all this?

“Gillian, how do you find hope in the darkness?” the podcast host asked me recently during a conversation about mental illness. A straight forward question with a layered and at times, seemingly complicated answer. How do I explain the inner turmoil that blows around my insides like a bitter, winter breeze swept up in a frenzy? Sometimes hope is a promise I can grab on to. Other times, it melts in my hands.

A positional hope

My friend Andrea and I are working through the book of Romans together and it talks a lot about hope. Look at some of chapter five:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 

Romans 5:1-2

Obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. This is a positional hope a person has when he or she responds in faith to the gospel. It’s solid, sure. It doesn’t melt away. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. What does glory mean here? It’s who he is. We rejoice in WHO GOD IS. He is our hope.

But can I find hope?

The wording of the question in the podcast, find hope, stuck with me. Can I find hope? Paul says yes. He talks about the already and not yet of hope, already possessed through the gospel and something that should be sought after and grown. But how do we do that? How do we seek hope and grow it?

Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Romans 5:3-5

After Paul proclaims positional hope in the glory of God through Jesus, he then gives us action points to help cultivate hope in our day-to-day lives. We are told to endure in the faith (not give up) and to let that endurance grow our character (by living faithful lives obedient to God). Endurance produces character and character produces HOPE. How do we endure? By looking to the gospel and trusting God. How do we grow our character? By beholding Jesus above and beyond anything else in our lives, and we can behold him in scripture, prayer, and in fellowship with others.

The NIV adds the word ‘proven’ to these phrases in Romans; endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. Although my emotions my say differently on any given day, when I look back at my life, I see God’s proven faithfulness over and over again. And when I commune with God in a rhythmic way, Christ has ample opportunity to whisper these truths in my ear.

There’s hope positionally in me. And there’s hope for today.

Hope grows in suffering

We rejoice in our sufferings.

Romans 5:3

Is my depression, the one thing I would flick out the window as quickly as people flicked cigarette butts out of the car in the 70s, what is teaching me to hope?

Years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to stomach the thought that my depression would produce hope. But as I’ve grown in my faith and in health, in the midst of freezing out the world in dark nights of the soul, crying out to God for healing, and clawing out of the pits of pain time after time, I have learned and continue to learn this:

When Jesus is all you have, you find that Jesus is all you need.

My depression is training me to hope. Suffering produces hope.

The weary world rejoices

Because of Christ, I can rejoice in my achy limbs and muddied thinking. They aren’t happenstance. They have purpose in me. They stretch me to endure. They mold my character. Hope exists whether I feel it or not because hope isn’t the desire of a future want or need fulfilled, but rather Jesus Christ himself. It’s his life, death, resurrection, and pending return. And when I focus on these truths, my weary world rejoices.

Hope is a promise, not a feeling. And God, by his grace and in his great wisdom, is growing hope in me today.

And that actually is pretty thrilling.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Romans 15:13

Written by Gillian Marchenko

This article was reposted with permission. To read the original, please go here.

Gillian Marchenko is an author and a speaker. She lives near St. Louis with her husband Sergei and their four daughters. Find out more about Gillian at her website gillianmarchenko.com.

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Emmanuel, God With Us

The very name of God, Emmanuel, God with us. It leaves me astounded.

We live on this Earth with pain, brokenness, strife, and evil of every kind all around us and bombarding us in the headlines daily.  

In the midst of everything we went through with our son, who was allergic to all food except for sweet potato and on the severe end of the autism spectrum; I found myself questioning God. “God, why did you allow this?” “God, why don’t you stop evil?” “God, where are you?” “God, have you abandoned me?”  I sank into a rather dark and hopeless place.

I questioned and felt lost. I knew what the Bible said. I knew the theological answers. But, suddenly, the questions and answers were no longer hypothetical. You know the hard places too, right? Maybe you’ve had some of the same questions.

Something I forgot in my dark, hopeless space was this – Emmanuel, God with us. It is part of who God is. It is His name. It is part of His very identity.

From the very beginning after creation, when the Earth and people were still perfect, before sin entered our story, God walked and talked directly with Adam and Eve. Emmanuel, God with us.  

Our choice to sin forced a separation between God and us. Yet, He loved us too much to leave us with the consequences of our actions and forever separated from Him. So, He sent His son as a man. Emmanuel, God with us.

He had His only son pay the price of our sin in our place. Emmanuel, God with us.

He sent His Holy Spirit to inhabit His people to act as comforter and guide until His son returns to gather us to heaven. Emmanuel, God with us.

We now have the hope of eternity spent with Him. A God who loves us beyond comprehension. Enough that He came from the perfection of heaven to this sin-cursed, pain-filled, broken, evil world in order to be with us forever. Emmanuel, God with us.

It astounds me. He is the God of the entire universe and being with us is one of His greatest desires. So much so, that it is His name. This Christmas may be a happy, sad, or challenging season for you, but remember that you are not alone. You have a God who loves you and is with you. Nothing can separate you from His love.

 “And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love.  No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” ~ Romans 8:38, 39 (NLT)

Written by Sarah McGuire, Co-Founder of Hope Anew

Feeling Isolated in the Midst of Gatherings

The season of holiday get-togethers was upon us.  Church carry-ins, family potlucks, and work dinners began filling up the calendar. With it, our level of anxiety went up as we began thinking about what preparations we would need to make so we could be at each of these events.  Tension mounted as we checked what food was being planned at each activity.  Often, we would find that we would need to bring an entire meal for our son due to his dietary needs.  There was a scramble to figure out how we could make a holiday meal that in some way resembled what everyone else would be eating so he wouldn’t feel too left out. 

At the events, our minds would be on hyper-alert trying to ensure that someone didn’t accidentally give our son a food item that he would react to and reverse months of developmental progress.  We would constantly be monitoring Jordan for signs that he might be on the verge of overload or any indication that he might suddenly melt down.   Picture two soldiers transporting precious cargo to a new location. They are driving through areas that are often friendly, the locals are waving, giving thumbs up to them but they are still vigilant for an attack that might come seemingly out of nowhere.  Their eyes trained to spot things most people wouldn’t notice.  While we would engage with friends and family, our guard was constantly up.  We were amid people who loved us but we still felt alone.

As I think about these struggles, I can’t help but think back to the very first Christmas.  The angel Gabriel came to Mary and let her know that she would be giving birth to the son of God. During this time, Gabriel also told her about her relative Elizabeth who was experiencing her own birth related miracle. Just a few days after receiving the news, Mary traveled to be with Elizabeth.

Elizabeth and her husband Zechariah had been unable to have children and now were old. Zechariah was a priest.  He was in the temple sanctuary burning incense when the angel Gabriel met with him and told him that he and Elizabeth would have a son who was to play an important role in preparing the way for the coming of the Lord.  Zechariah questioned how this could happen since both he and his wife were so old.  As a result of his doubt, Gabriel told Zechariah that he would be unable to speak until their child was born.

Imagine the relief that both Mary and Elizabeth must have felt to have had someone that they could talk to.  Mary likely received many incredulous looks from family and friends as they found out she was pregnant and probably had many of her own fears and doubts.  What a relief to have someone that believed her and didn’t question her story that the baby she carried in her was the son of God.  Imagine what it would have been like for Elizabeth not being able to really talk to her husband about the baby growing in her and not having other women in the community who could relate to what she was experiencing.  How extremely valuable it was to be able to have someone there who got it.  They valued each other’s company so much that Mary stayed with Elizabeth for three months, until just before Elizabeth was due.

If you find yourself feeling on guard this Christmas season and just trying to get through it, take comfort in knowing that you have a heavenly Father who sees you and knows what you are going through.  You might not have angels singing in the sky above you, or shepherds coming to your door, which is probably a good thing…talk about sensory overload, but the same Father who sent a star to guide the wise men to their Savior knows your every need, your heart, your struggles and is with you when you feel alone.  He didn’t just provide a Savior and turn His back on you but He is with you every day.

I’m praying that this Christmas season, when it is so easy to lose sight of why we are celebrating and when our precious routines are thrown out the window, God will provide you with an “Elizabeth”.  That He will direct you to someone who gets it, that you can encourage each other and that this season truly is a season of celebration. You are not alone.

We would like to hear from you.  What is your biggest challenge during the Christmas season and what helps you the most during this time?

Rewrapping Christmas: Establishing New Traditions

What are some of your favorite memories from the holidays growing up? Did your family have traditions that you looked forward to every year? Maybe it was a special dessert, a fun activity, or a certain event.

Growing up, the smell of cookies baking would take the edge off those frigid days and signaled the coming of Christmas. Mom would go into baking mode the weeks before Christmas and would bake so many different varieties of Christmas cookies that were to be brought out on Christmas day. Each of us had our own favorites that we would sneak from the freezer. Mom must have made extra to accommodate for this, because we always seemed to have more than enough for Christmas. In addition to this, we would have a special coffee cake that she made for Christmas morning.

It may sound silly, but when we found out that our youngest son was allergic to all food except sweet potato, I really went through a grieving process during the holidays. It was such a huge part of what I looked forward to each year. Celebrating Christmas was synonymous with having scrumptious smells wafting around you like a warm blanket, inviting you into a sense of peace, comfort and safety. The most challenging decision being which cookie to eat next and leaving you with anticipation over the meals to come. I missed this. Christmas no longer felt like Christmas.

Each of us have those things that make the holidays feel special. Many of us have had to give up those things due to the needs of a child and that is okay, we would do it again in a heartbeat but giving up those traditions can leave us in a little bit of a funk. It is also okay to miss those things. Don’t feel guilty about it.

 So what can you do if you find yourself in a little bit of a holiday funk this year?

• Acknowledge it to yourself. Don’t pretend that everything is okay or put yourself down for struggling with the new normal.
• If married, share about it with your spouse. Odds are they are struggling to some degree as well. If not married, find a friend you can talk to over a peppermint latte or other favorite holiday beverage.
• Dare to dream. What new traditions can you build? Initially they may feel forced, but eventually you and your family will look forward to them with eager anticipation.

Our family now enjoys unwrapping a new pair of Christmas Pajamas and watching “Elf” on Christmas Eve. As I sit here with my cup of coffee, healing has taken place and I can fondly reflect on the memories from Christmas’ gone by and look forward with anticipation to the Christmas’ yet ahead. 

We would love to hear from you. What does your family do to make Christmas special?