A Different Boat

Our society seems to push gratitude in a context of comparison: Thank you for my health (that I'm not sick like that person over there) Thank you for my family (that I'm not alone like that person) Thank you for my home (that I'm not like that homeless person there) Thank you for food to eat (that I'm not starving like those children in Africa) We see others that we judge to be less fortunate than us and use that as an opportunity to feel grateful.  What happens though, when your world falls apart and you find fewer and fewer people fall into that "less fortunate" category?  How do you still find gratitude in your heart when your world is crumbling apart?  How does Job find gratefulness in the absence of health, family, and material possessions? Perhaps we need a mind shift away from the "I'm so thankful I'm not like that person" to a place of genuine gratitude for the good and the bad and the way those together have formed our life....

Twice this week I've been confronted again with the idea of miraculous healing.  I remember wrestling with the Biblical accounts of healing versus my personal experience when Wes was much younger but I've rested in this place of slight disconnect for a while now.  I sit in this place where I know that God is fully capable of miraculously healing Wesley's brain, but in doubt of if that is truly His will.   My experience tells me that there are an abundance of blessings that have come from Wesley's life; that just as we all struggle living in this fallen world, Wesley's struggles are more visible than most; that he is no more in need of healing than you or I am just because his struggles are physically obvious to the world rather than hidden in his heart.  Yet the New Testament has story after story of miraculous healing of illness and disability.  The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the sick are healed.  There are stories that differ slightly from...

I've started comparing the emotional journey of parenting a special needs child to swimming in the ocean. When your child is born/diagnosed it's like being thrown in.  You may know how to swim in the calm waters of a swimming pool or maybe you just know the basics of treading water, but either way, those skills are only marginally helpful when swimming in the ocean.  The first wave hits you and you go under getting drug around by the current, losing track of where you started.  But eventually you pop up for air and start to reorient yourself.  Before you've been able to really grasp what just happened to you, another wave hits and you're under water, floundering yet again. Wave after wave hits you (missed milestones, birthdays, looks from strangers, assessments, lost friendships...), exhausting you, and challenging you to just keep coming up for air.  But you start to learn that eventually the current will ease and you will be able to breathe again.   ...