This is not the love of romance stories or Hollywood endings. This is the kind of love that brings you to the end of yourself and then beyond. The kind of love that takes all you’ve got during the day and keeps you up at night. Real. Costly. Love.
It is a long and slow process for me, a well-educated and nondisabled white male, to appreciate and to pay attention to the ways that God is working on the margins. But whether it is in pausing my frantic productivity to gaze for a moment at crisp pin-points of light in the night sky or in turning my attention to a neighbour who does not use words to communicate, I am “Learning how to say ‘Hallelujah’ from the ones who say it right.”
The movie Penguin Bloom is highly refreshing because it opens a window into the physical and emotional pain that is often associated with adjustment to disability [...] Most importantly it shows each member of the family journeying through their own experience of grief related to disability and eventually coming out the other side, not wishing to die but learning to spread their wings and fly with reinvigorated passion for life.
In the act of writing White Picket Fences, Amy Julia points with humility and gentleness to a kind of confession that refuses to only be part of the problem. It is possible to both acknowledge complicity and privilege and to work towards a better, more truthful, future.
I share my story, not because I need to be heard, but because people still haven’t noticed how hard it is for some bodies to be in a church building, or participate in corporate worship services or activities.
Receiving from Jesus means we understand he is inviting us into new rhythms of life that often demand we slow down and genuinely reflect upon what he is up to. In so doing, Jesus is actually revealing the gifts of our Christian discipleship- his kindness and gentleness.
My prayer for all five our children, those with and without autism, is that God would reveal himself in a way that they would understand.
The theme of the Christian Horizons Family Retreats this summer is Nehemiah 8:10 which says, "… For the Joy of the Lord is my strength." I find this verse particularly valuable at the intersection of faith and disability. First, how can people affected by disability live with "joy?” My joy comes from the Lord’s joy [...]
Wallin offers biblical encouragement to parents and caregivers in similar positions by sharing wisdom and insights found on her own journey toward forgiveness and healing.
The awareness for the need to support families with children with disabilities is what motivated me and other members of the core team at Village Eulogia to found this organization. Over the years, we have been working to strengthen relationships between couples, parents and siblings, and parents and children with disabilities. As we work alongside the families, we began to experience disability as a gift from God. Through disability, God taught us more than we ever imagined.
