A Word is A Word is A Word!

Words do matter! Word choices matter! It matters if the hearer thinks one definition and the speaker has another meaning in mind! NOT much communication happens in that case!
Recently Dr. James Dobson featured on his radio program a couple who discussed "Raising a Handicapped Child."
Handicapped ...... Special Needs ....... Disabled ........... Affected by Disability ...... and more. Which is the best practices term?
No criticism intended or implied to either Dr. Dobson or Focus on the Family or the couple interviewed - just some personal observations related to my journey in disability ministry:

• In the last six years my thinking has undergone a radical transformation in relation both to individuals affected by disabilities, to myself in relationship to them and to HOW and WHY and WHEN the Church of Jesus Christ should and must work out the mandate to be inclusive to all!
• Luke 14:12-14 is the core passage from Scripture which addresses this concern. AND the fact that Jesus spent almost His entire ministry hanging with just such individuals is both inescapable and compelling as a mandate!
• Terms matter - What is the best term to use for this discussion? Frankly I'm still studying on that one. To quote a famous someone, my thinking is "still evolving" evaluating terms and process related to special needs ministry.

Some years ago I read an article in a publication from a nationally known special needs ministry. They actually prefer and advocate "affected by disability." The article described the difference between "handicapped" and "disability." I have never forgotten the distinction:

We are ALL handicapped in one way or another. To use the article's example - I am 5'5" tall. It is impossible for me to reach the top of my kitchen cabinets without some assistance. That assistance may come in the form of a chair or stool or climbing up on the counter top or even something else. I overcome my handicap with a "tool" intended to increase or augment my height.

A disability is a lack of function in life which may be physical, mental, emotional or even spiritual. We are all disabled in one way or another if we generally include "brokenness" as a qualifying category. There is wisdom, however, in having a "best practices" term related to individuals dealing with the wide range of physical, mental and emotional diagnoses or "labels" (for want of a better term). There is significant discussion about hidden disabilities in this "field." We all have hidden disabilities in the sense that all of us are broken in one way or another until Jesus makes all things new on an awesome future day! But I think we need to be careful not to appear to minimize the HUGE pain experienced by individuals and families whose lives are affected by disability 24/7 with real diagnoses and needs.

I don't pretend to know the precise best practices term. I leave that determination to minds much senior to mine in pay grade. What I do know is that there needs to be open discussion about words related to describing disabilities so we communicate without doing harm! My friend Dr. Steve Grcevich of Key Ministry recently blogged his own thoughts on this very subject.

The ultimate goal is to find and use terms that are inclusive, respectful, clear, person first, relational and effectively communicative because words DO matter! There are far too many wedge words in life for the church before the watching world not to take the meaning of words seriously!

God, AAA and Me Today!

God, give me a heart today that obeys You no matter what happens - WOW! I'm big time having an opportunity to test this in spades today!
I posted this on Twitter today - only I neglected to hit "enter" - and rushed out of the house to take my hubby a piece of equipment he needed in a meeting. Just a few details: the meeting was on the exact opposite end of Pittsburgh, he didn't have a street address for my GPS so I headed out.........
I got to the right "street" only I didn't know the number - just that he was at a Panera's (There are at least 4 Paneras in a 3 mile stretch of that highway.) . He wasn't answering his cell phone and texted "I'm in a meeting". Well, I knew that!

He finally called me back. I was sitting in a Lowe's parking lot waiting for a call back. So he told me I needed to come a mile or so west. I drove to the stop light with my left turn signal on. Just a few car lengths from the front of the inside lane of two left hand turn lanes my car cut off. There was no power AT ALL! I couldn't run down a window. Even my emergency flashers didn't work! I can't tell how many cars came up behind and then around me to both the right and the left.

Meanwhile John was coming to me. He came toward me and then pulled in front of my car so he could jump my car. NOW you need to know that this was in the middle lane of seven traffic lanes! Hubby hooked up the jumper cables. My car started and ran for a total of about 20 seconds and quit again! THEN a policeman - lights flashing pulled up behind - but he wanted to give us a ticket or rather two tickets and then tow my car which we would have to pay $250 to get back from the impound lot. THEN just behind him a flatbed AAA truck pulled up. We have AAA Plus so suddenly things started looking up. The AAA man offered to get in my car after he put his battery thingy under the hood so he could drive my car around the corner and off the road. Long story short: The friendly (?) policeman left without ticketing us. The AAA man towed my car and it's at the repair shop. John has moved on to the rest of his day after leaving me at home.

I sat down at my computer and saw:
"God, give me a heart today that obeys You no matter what happens!" UH, I guess God was getting me ready for what He already knew! I guarantee you that the words typed somewhat glibly earlier take on NEW meaning now! WOW! God takes even my glib prayers seriously and answers but I gotta say I wasn't exactly on that track sitting in the middle of 7 lanes of busy traffic with NO power in a dead car!
Thank you, God, for AAA men and for husbands and for flexible schedules!

Another Day

I'm sitting a long way from home very tired in a home finally gone quiet and still. It has been a very long day filled with many things. I am helping my sister care for my parents this week. They are both frail and needy. It is not always easy. My sister is a trophy of God's grace as she lays down her life sacrifically for them. I'm just following in her train trying to be a second pair of hands.
There may be other words that describe those we love who have various levels of function that create needs that are special because no one presents entirely the same. Personally I like special needs. My parents both have special needs - different but equally necessary to lovingly care for them! They were neither one born with these issues - physical, mental and more. Each struggles with broken minds and bodies in this season of life. Life has brought each to a place he and she would never have chosen.
It is bitter sweet and I knew when I came that it would be. It will be a sweet memory that I had these days to love and serve them. It is also "bitter" to lose two wonderful people who have been my world in many ways and to lose them inch by inch. Their issues will not be fixed this side of heaven. Their needs will increase as time moves on until one day each crosses over to that eternal world where there is no more pain, where broken minds and worn-out, disease-ravaged bodies will be restored.
Well, the clock is striking hour 23 and tomorrow is another day...................!

A House or a Home?

Scene 1: As I write I am sitting in my mother’s chair at the beautiful mahogany dining room table my parents bought more than 50 years ago. It is more than a little eerie to be sitting here. It’s even more eerie to walk around this house. Yes, it used to be a home but now it’s just a house. Every room has bits and pieces of furniture. Almost every room has evidence of what used to be by the deep indentions in the rugs. Only one room is as it was – one bedroom – but even there is a certain loneliness.
Scene 2: This morning I got up and went to the kitchen but my mother wasn’t there with coffee made, breakfast cooked, sitting with my dad at the breakfast room table. If they were here they would have both been reading their Bibles and maybe talking quietly – just the two of them in their bathrobes. When she heard me slide back the pocket door into the kitchen Mother would have turned and said, “O, hiello Merry Sunshine, how did you sleep?” or her favorite greeting, “Darling, how did you sleep?”
There is coffee today only because I brought it all the way from Pittsburgh AND there is no one else here but me and the spiders. There’s a box that almost got packed and then was abandoned to sit on a chair. I opened a drawer looking for a pencil and found a folded list in my dad’s neat handwriting. It was a list of credit card numbers and expiration dates. The most recent date for expiration was March 2007 for my mother’s driver’s license. Interesting as she was still driving while living in this house for at least three years after that year’s end – scary as that was!
Scene 4: Yesterday as I closed and locked the front door, I noticed a little plaque beside the front door, “Love makes a house a home!” O, I thought, that’s why this is just a house. There are no people here to share love in this lonely house on top of a mountain in beautiful western North Carolina. Even the flowers and ferns have a lonely look! Life has moved on to other places and spaces where the same people who lived and loved here live and love and are cared for in another home filled with love.
We live in a broken world where minds and bodies break with age and disease. So - for now - spiders spin their lonely webs on this mountain top.
Hopefully someday soon another family will come to settle in the four walls of this house to live and love once again … the voices of children will ring among the trees and on the "sheep rock" ….. Someday soon love will come to the lonely mountaintop again and, once more, the house will be a home!

Two Kinds of Thistles

It's just past noon and I've spent the last four hours on an almost perpendicular bank that goes from our front yard down about 90 feet to US 19. I've been hanging out on that bank because I have a thriving bed of thistles all along the bank and a good ways down as well. Jeepers creepers! Why is it that weeds seem to grow so strong and multiply so rapidly especially when they are not invited guests in and among my flowers, trees and shrubs on that same bank?

I needed the right tools for my morning project - heavy gloves, a 10-tinned pitchfork, a big wheelbarrow and a good dose of energy and determination! And for all that, I know that at least some thistles will reappear.
I know Genesis 3:17-18 says, Cursed is the ground ... It will produce thorns and thistles for you ..." God spoke those words in judgment not blessing! Those thistles I wrestled all morning are there as a result of sin! I was thinking about that as I tried to dig out each plant with its ridiculous roots.
Actions have consequences. I know that the thistles I managed to get all the root probably, hopefully will not return any time soon or ever. I also know that I probably - almost certainly - didn't get every last smidgen of root. Those roots will sooner rather than later make their thistle presence known.
When I googled "how to get rid of thistles" one solution offered was to chop them off and keep mowing and chopping until the roots would weaken and die. I have a feeling that's not going to work but I can always hope!
There are lots of "thistles" in life; these don't grow in dirt. These other "thistles" are equally as difficult to weed out. There is hatred, judgment, disdain, hostility, betrayal, injustice, lying and on and on! AND interestingly these "thistles" are also the result of sin. We won't be rid of these "thistles" until Jesus brings about the restoration of all things when He makes all things new in His eternal Kingdom! However we still have to deal with these terribly damaging "thistles" with God's help! All these ugly behaviors and attitudes damage our own hearts and our relationships with others. They cause self-absorption and selfishness. They come from the brokenness sin has brought into all of life. ONLY God the eternal Gardener - who made a perfect world back at the beginning of time - can root out these "thistles" as He works His character into one heart at a time!
I don't know about you but I definitely didn't enjoy my morning on my bank among the thistles. Hopefully - if the life of God is really in me and I know it is - I enjoy the other kind of "thistles" even less! Hopefully I will turn to the ONLY One who can help me with these much more sticky "thistles"!

#1 or the King?

Sad but true that our natural tendency is to look out for #1. Given a glimmer of a chance we incline toward building our own kingdom - trying to BEST others. Well, you know that drill and so do I!
Several times recently I have seen stellar examples of Christian ministries selflessly giving back, paying forward (or whatever the current buzz word is) to help ministries beginning or struggling. Most recently my husband and I met (last night) with two key people from a ministry that intentionally exists to help and support churches and pastors involved in special needs ministries. That is SO cool! This ministry is rooted in the concept that there needs to be a "church for every child." They generously share resources and brainstorm ways to build other ministries! Big kudos to Steve Grcevich and Key Ministry!
In thinking with a grateful heart that another ministry intentionally helps other like-minded ministries, several thoughts surfaced:

• Jesus builds His Kingdom and we should all be focused on and committed to building His Kingdom not ours! He allows us to participate to bless us! He doesn't need us but He chooses to use us in this Kingdom-building process!
• It is scary sometimes because we are all sinners so we don't always treat brothers and sisters in ministry with integrity. We should be willing to risk and want the best for others and be willing to assist them any way we can. Remember none of us should be building our kingdoms. Rather we are participating in building God's Kingdom on earth for now and for eternity!
• God sees the intentions of our hearts so we do the right thing, take the high road walking with the King and leave the rest with Him!

Sola Dei Gloria! To God be the glory great things He has done! So loved He the world that He gave us His Son!

Spell or Live?!

This week I read something by a person involved with disability both personally and in ministry - have no clue who as I read a lot these days. In the piece this person spelled stimming as stemming. Being the grammar/spelling queen that I am, my first response was a little "aha!"!
You know what? I don't like this part of me very much and I hope the process of sanctification is gradually whittling away the rough edges and even the heart of my "aha!" responses even if I hide them!
Just this morning I chanced upon stim in a wonderful blog post by the mom of a grown son with a disability - http://specialhappens.com/2012/06/01/a-view-in-the-mirror-a-familys-turn/?
The word reminded me of the other day. Once again - to my shame - I had another "aha!" that this person spelled stim correctly. What a stupid focus!!! Yes, that's exactly what I thought about my own heart and response!
In both cases the stem mom and the stim mom were talking about the same thing*: Both were talking about life as they live it!
Who in the world do I think I am to insert my little "Mrs. Editor" self into their world? It doesn't matter how a word is spelled, for heaven's sake! What really, really matters - in fact, the ONLY thing that matters - is faith expressing itself through love! (Gal. 5:6)

*Stimming is a repetitive body movement that self-stimulates one or more senses in a regulated manner - a continuous, purposeless movement. Stimming is one of the symptoms for autism although it is observed in about 10 percent of young children without autism. Many children with autism have no stims. Common forms of stimming among people with autism include hand flapping, body spinning or rocking, lining up or spinning toys or other objects ... and repeating rote phrases.