Every child has a relationship with God and a valued role in church community.
Special needs children and their families are among the most underserved group in Christian churches today. For too long shunned and misunderstood, such families have felt abandoned and alienated in their faith, both by God who delivered them into unbearable circumstances and by their brothers and sisters in Christ. Fortunately, that’s changing. If you are hurting, find encouragement here that you are not alone. If you are seeking ways to help special needs children, try these ideas to get started.
“To be quite honest, I felt like God betrayed us. We just stepped off the mission field and committed ourselves to full-time ministry, and this is what we got?” When Diane Dokko Kim learned that her two-year-old son was autistic, she was gutted and cried out, “If you’re a good God, how could you let this happen? Why us? Why our child? Is this how you’re going to treat us? How are you going to fix this? And if not, how am I going to trust you again?” She said she was hit with two diagnoses: her son’s and then her own disabled spirit. For the next five years Diane wrestled with God through his Word, searching the Bible for meaning in her devastating circumstance. The result was a phenomenal book, Unbroken Faith: Spiritual Recovery for the Special-Needs Parent. All parents with such questions will benefit from Diane’s experience of how God answered.
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Hear the first-hand experiences of international adoption specialist Erica Ho, as she and Audra Haney discuss private, special needs, and international adoptions—how they work, what the needs are, and why the Ho family’s faith has grown along the way with God’s guiding care.
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Little People
“A dreary place would be this earth
Were there no little people in it;
The Song of Life would lose its mirth
Were there no children to begin it.
No little forms, like buds to grow,
And make admiring hearts surrender,
No little hands on breast and brow,
to keep the thrilling love-cords tender.”
—John Greenleaf Whittier