Questions of Concern

Have you noticed how bad parents can be with the comparing game?  For instance, you walk up to a couple of your friends in the hallway at church and they are totally involved in a conversation about their kids.  You stop and listen for just a moment as one says “my little Johnny just rolled over all by himself and he’s only four months old” and the other person replies, “oh how sweet, my little Suzie just said momma and she just turned three months old!”  You walk away thinking “Yeah right!  But secretly wonder what’s wrong with your kid, because he seems to be developing much slower.”  You feel hurt, rejected and you’re left wondering if you’ll ever fit in or will your friends decide to move on leaving you to question if you’ll ever be accepted.

It happens more often then you might think.  We can be cruel and hurtful people at times and not even know we are doing it.  At times pride and self promotion seem to overrule any possibility of a normal, healthy, and humble conversation.  We constantly compare, size up our competition, and promote, all in the name of the god of individualization.

When we were new parents we were so proud of our son.  He was so sweet and precious and was such a good baby.  But we got sucked into the competition with all of our friends when he was about four months old.  It was clear every Sunday that our child was way behind all our friends’ kids.  You could just stand at the door of the nursery and it was obvious.  We mentioned our concern  to our doctor, but he felt it was too early to be alarmed.  His answer was “all kids develop at different rates.  Maybe he’s just a late bloomer.”

So, we continued along as if there was nothing to be concerned about.  Eight months comes along and our son is obviously being left in the dust.  All his little friends in the nursery are blowing past him at record breaking speed and here we are standing alone with questions and concerns.  Thinking back on it now, I wonder how many of our “Christian” friends saw the same thing we did and discussed it with their spouses.  Why didn’t anyone have the courage to say to us, “I think something might be wrong with your child?”  I know that would be hard to do and it would even be hard for me to do with someone, but I have to believe we would have welcomed a friend speaking up and agreeing with what we obviously could already see.

Our doctor was finally convinced something is up.  At eight months it was as obvious as an obnoxious loud mouth yelling through a bull horn.  THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH YOUR KID!  Duh!  And we had plenty of questions.  We were frightened and hurting.  We love our son so much and only want the best for him, so we were anxious and eager to get to the bottom of this.  We wanted to get him some help and we desperately wanted everything to be okay.

We were new parents and didn’t have much of a clue what we were doing, so we obviously had to trust the parade of professionals that were about to march through our lives.  The next ten months was a crazy, heart wrenching, gut punching and utterly frustrating battery of appointments with one specialist after another.  Our son had MRI’s, X-rays, blood tests, and doctor after doctor poking and prodding him.  We had a mountain of paper work that just led to more and more confusion, frustration, and questions.  I can still remember the day one doctor said “your son might have Cerebral Palsy” and how we drove to our church as fast as we could, found our pastor and his wife, and fell on our knees in his office to pray.  We just broke down and lost it.  We had no idea what this meant for our family or what the future would look like for our son. 

I think I questioned God more than my wife.  Why is this happening to us!  Can you hear the comparing and self promotion screaming from that last question?  I have to ask myself if my life would have been easier these past nine years if the question for God would have been why is this happening to our son?  I’m not sure my wrestle with God was about what was happening to my son as much as what I would be giving up and that makes me feel ashamed, sad, and angry that I wasn’t compassionate enough to see the beauty in the situation as clearly as God did.

Life lessons can be hard and crazy at times, but I have to believe if the human nature wasn’t always so self promoting, God would have an easier time teaching us the lessons we need to learn.  It’s amazing how quickly we fall out of rhythm with God when we don’t get our own way, leaving God holding the bag and expecting him to work another miracle when all he really asks from us is to trust Him with everything.

It’s taking me a long time to learn this valuable lesson, but I do believe God is starting to break through my stubborn, prideful, heart and oh how beautiful life can be when we are truly in relationship and rhythm with our wonderful creator.

Retread Sadness

One of the initiatives of Retread is the Jubilee Kids Club, which has partnered with a homeless shelter in McKinney, Texas called The Samaritan Inn.  Our club is pretty basic and very simple.  We just show up on Saturday’s and play with the kids at the inn from 10 – noon.  We take juice and cookies and all the balls and fun toys we can carry.  Our motto…”We love to play!”

We’ve been doing this club since February and it’s really been fun.  This past Saturday was our biggest group so far and we just had a blast.  Judging by all the smiles we saw from the kids, I’d say they had a pretty good time too.

One of the tough things with volunteering can be growing attached to the people you are serving.  We are simply serving through play and attention to the kids, and giving the parents a little time to spend alone, to take a deep breath, and unwind for a few minutes.  Some weeks it’s hard to say goodbye and you just want to give them all big hugs, but there are boundaries and rules in place and that’s not always possible.

It doesn’t keep us from falling in love with the people we meet there and it causes us to think about them throughout the week.  I often find my mind wandering and when I reel it back in I realize I was thinking about the kids at the Inn, and wondering how they are doing.  It’s a perfect opportunity for me to offer up a prayer and ask God to watch over them.

This past Tuesday we received some sad news.  One of the boys we met the very first week of our club, died in a swimming pool accident.  We couldnt’ believe it!  A seven year old so full of energy and life is gone.  We won’t ever get to see him at our club again and that’s sad.  His twin sister, older sister and mom may never return to the shelter, so we may not get to see them again.  No closure, no goodbye’s, but plenty of finality.

This week has been heavy as a result of this news.  I’ve struggled with my writing and my desire to check in on the social networks and blogs I frequent.  My mind has been on Christopher and his family.  I’ve been asking questions and wondering why certain things like this have to happen.  I can only hope and trust that God is holding Christopher today!

God I pray for your grace and peace.  I pray that you will be with this grieving family, who already had it so tough they were living in a homeless shelter.  Where do they go from here?  How do they continue on from this point?  Please be with them.  Show them your love.  Be close to them and give them peace today.