In trials, we come to cling more tightly to the precious promises of the gospel and the steadfast character of God—which can transform our deepest fears into an even deeper joy.

Remembering God’s perfect design and care for our children and us—from the womb—comforts our hearts even as we lament a hard diagnosis.

Imprinting our children’s hearts with rich songs and hymns of the faith is one way we can help prepare them for inevitable trials ahead.

When contentment in our circumstances seems impossible, we can be encouraged by Paul’s example of learning to depend on Christ and find ultimate joy in him.

Having intentional conversations with our kids about special needs is a way to love our neighbors and honor the Lord.

As Christians, we’re called to make disciples and as moms, it starts at home. But how exactly do we do that?  

See miss, he’s not even looking up at me,’ the doctor bluntly observed. ‘All the signs of autism, and that is my diagnosis. I will go write this up.’ He shut the door behind him, and the numbness set in.

I was not surprised at his words—they were confirming something we had been fairly sure of for the better part of a year. But I also knew in the moment they left his mouth that everything was changing, and changing for the long haul.

So many mothers know this moment, when the paradoxes of walking with a perfect Savior in a far-from-perfect world set in. Everything changes and nothing changes. Your dreamed of future fades quickly out of sight for one that is impossible to picture, but your day-to-day life goes on as it always has—changing diapers and making dinners and folding clothes.

And then the hard questions come: ‘If God only does what is right, why would he allow something so wrong?’

Rest assured, mamas, that we are not the first to ask the hard questions.

This is our bent as humans: we want the answers. We want to know why God would allow us to carry hard things; we want the reason he feels far away, and we want someone or something to blame. But God does not always answer us with why.

He does, however, always remind us Who.

Jesus’ response to the limited perspective of his disciples introduces an entire new paradigm when it comes to disability. It’s as if Jesus is telling us to think about the circumstance differently. ‘Don’t look for the cause,’ he implies, ‘look for the future purpose.’

For a special needs mama, the parenting journey does look different, and in so many ways it is uniquely challenging. But God is completing his work for his perfect purposes so that his glory might be displayed in the broken vessels of an unqualified mom and a differently-abled child.

The most beautiful and honoring thing we can offer to a perfect Savior is not well-performing children but simply the acknowledgment that apart from Jesus, we can do nothing.

When we are at the end of ourselves, which is easily where special needs parenting—well, all parenting—can bring us, we are right where God wants us.”

As moms, we hold our tiny, new babies and wonder what they might do in their lives, what their giggles may sound like, who they may marry, and if they’ll live near to or far from us one day. We dream and we hope from our cultural understanding of a productive or contributive life.

Once we become a mom of a child with special needs, we are often reassured by others of the unexpected achievements, or performance, that may await. Our children with special needs may speak and write, act or compete in sporting activities...But is that the basis of their value and their worth? And what happens when they don't, or indeed can't?
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To be a human being is to carry what C. S. Lewis called 'the weight of glory,' the imprint of the 'I AM who I AM' God. We will never meet, talk to, or care for a mere mortal...We have value not because of what we do, but because of who we are, and whose we are.

So we look towards the one who made our children in his beautiful image. We find the hope and standard of worth in the words of the Almighty.

I’m sleep deprived. You probably are, too.

I’m sleep deprived because we have a four-year-old son who struggles with sleep due to disability. You might be sleep deprived because of an infant or a toddler or a teenager or hormone problems or anxiety or never-ending piles of work or too many Netflix binges.

...I’ve heard all the admonitions about how we’re not God and how sleeping is recognizing our dependence on him. I couldn’t agree more. I agree with my whole heart, even as I beg God to allow me the privilege of those precious hours of dependence each night. But sometimes he says no to the sleep we long for and he asks us to depend on him in a different way. 

...Ask God to make his fruit overflow at all times and in all circumstances, so that we can say with Paul that we know how to be brought low and how to abound, in little sleep and much, and it’s not by negating all the effects of sleeplessness. It’s by being content in him and slogging through the fog with kindness.