Loving families of kids with medical needs

As he went along, he saw a man blind from birth. ² His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
³ “Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.- John 9:1-3

I have clung to that passage so many times in the last 4 years. There has been more then one time since having Jillian that someone either insinuated or outright asked what I did to cause the girls to be sick. It is heart crushing to sit at a party and here the next table over talking about you and your kid and coming up with the laundry list of things they thought you did wrong to cause her medical needs. They decided on over antibiotic use which in all honestly is rather funny because I don't take any while pregnant with Jilli and am one of those people who will push out using an antibiotic as long as possible, I had C-diff in college, and once you have C-diff once you work hard not to get it again. 

I just kept reminding myself of the Biblical truth in the end of that passage that the things going on in our life is so the works of God might be displayed in my kids. My prayer for the girls since before they were born is that God uses them for His glory and I see Him doing that all the time. 

Being in the special needs world I have made it a priority to be involved and love on others. This blog is one way, facebook support groups and making time for people in this community. I want to invest in others and use our life events to help others. One of the parts of doing life with people is being invested and celebrating with them when they are happy and morning with them in the hard times. 

But there is one thing I just don't understand.... why is the Church not teaching John 9:1-3? Did we forget about it? I mean I see so much "feel good Bible" online, and this verse fits in with feel good Bible memes, so why is this getting lost? 

There are tons of Bible passages that we leave out of normal life, I mean most people can quote John 3:16 but ask someone to quote you a verse from Leviticus and they will likely have a harder time. Its a big book, doesn't mean we shouldn't be in it and reading it, but there are always going to be more popular sections. 

So why does it matter if we are highlighting John9:1-3... because I have heard the story over and over and over from so many special needs families that the opposite is be preached all over the world. 

Imagine you are a family with a little boy who loves to ride on trains, so you get tickets to a church's Christmas Train. You are all excited to go and get on the train and then on this train ride they start showing pictures of people that are sick and malnourished and then say that if these people had faith this wouldn't happen to them. WHAT!? Now imagine you are sitting on that train with a little boy who is sick, who has a feeding tube and needing organ transplants. 

Imagine if you are going to church someplace and you get the results back that your child needs open heart surgery. You go to your church looking for love and support. They say they will pray for you but do nothing else. They pray for a miracle for your child and insist that you get another echo done right before surgery to see if their prayers worked, but then when the child still needs surgery the church abandons the family because what the church prayed for didn't happen and they only wanted to be involved in this families life if they could use it as "inspiration porn" 

Imagine you are a family who has a baby that is born with a rare genetic disorder and the baby dies very shortly after birth, now imagine you are at your baby's funeral and the preacher says that if the family just had the faith of a mustard seed their baby would not have died. 

Imagine you have cancer and it is nearing the end and the members of your church come to visit you and tell you that they thought you were such a good christian but things like this don't happen to good Christians and they question if you have faith.   Imagine you are left laying there crying because you thought you were a good Christian but now have been told if you have cancer you must not be. 

Imagine those stories... now realize they are all true stories. Each one of them. Shared with me from different families, from different areas who didn't attend the same church or even same denomination. 

How would those situations make you feel? 

All of those situations pushed the families away from the church. In times when those families needed the church the most they were pushed away and their faith mocked. Being pushed away from your church because you have a sick kid.... sounds like the opposite of what Jesus says. 

But it also makes it so that you would feel as a Christian that you don't need to do anything to help the widows, orphans or sick because if those people just prayed hard enough and had faith then they would no longer be hungry, cold, lonely, or hurting. We are rather quick at blaming someone for their problems instead of helping which is not what the Bible calls us to do. We are good at using the judge verse, but we forget the the judge verse is to be used with other Christians not the rest of the world and that God is not a magical fairy in the sky just granting our wishes, He has the whole world in his hands, every person, and it is our job to pray for His will and sometimes we go through hard stuff and going through hard stuff doesn't mean that God doesn't love someone. God has taught me so many things in the midst of hard stuff. But sometimes the church portrays that once you accept Jesus that all the hard goes away but that is not Biblical, instead now we have God to walk with us during the hard and help to ease the burden and one of the places that should be helping to ease the burden is the church. 

So my goal now is to share the John 9 story with as many special needs families as I can because I do go to a church that does preach John 9 and I have seen how it works when people support others with the view of this passage. I also watched the relief on someone's face recently as they were telling me their story and I shared the the John 9 passage, they had just heard from churches that it was their fault for their child's sickness but this verse was a change from the guilt and a freeing of chains. Special needs parents blame themselves for so many things already and are always wondering what more they can do for their child when they are already giving over 100%, the last thing they need is the church saying it is their fault and they don't have enough faith. I get the want to pray for healing but sometimes in that then we miss the amazing people these individuals are. We discount them because they are sick. My kids are still amazing people despite their genetic disorder and because of their disorder they have learned things many kids at their age have not. Jilli is so compassionate! She understands doing things you don't want to do. Her sickness has shaped who she is today. I want to help love people and lighten their load, I'm not always good at it but I try to focus my eyes back there. 

We need to remember ALL PEOPLE are children of God. He loves each one and longs for them to be close to Him, so lets love people more so that they see the Father working in us.So if you know a special needs family please share the John 9 passage with them and let them know that you are there to support them, love them and do not judge them.