Category Archives: special needs

Bible thumping: how we see beyond the surface

Posted on by June 25, 2024

There’s a kiddo on the deck standing with one hand on the door, and one hand holding a rag. It’s been a rough few days for that little girl; she’s supposed to be working off a consequence but instead she’s just standing there. You can’t force her to move faster (or at all), but sometimes you can remind her what she’s supposed to be doing. And sometimes it helps.

But sometimes it doesn’t.

bible thumping: how we see beyond the surface

She’s not really a little girl, I know. She’s sixteen. But she’s also three. And sometimes seven, and sometimes anywhere in between.

Thanks to our chickens we have a new compost bin arrangement, but she couldn’t figure out how to work it. And in spite of being told not to, she dumped the compost on a small garden bed instead, destroying half the veggies and a couple sunflowers I’ve been growing for two months.

She doesn’t always remember things she’s been told, and sometimes she does but chooses not to do them anyway. Problem solving and critical thinking are really hard for her, and rare occurrences.

As her mom, one of my biggest challenges has been learning to correct her in love, and lead her toward maturity and growth when she has no inclination to go there.

Can we blame her? We often want to do the easy thing ourselves, without the excuse of brain trauma. But look around; we’re reaping the consequences of a culture obsessed with ease, prioritizing rest over righteousness at every opportunity.

Last week on social media I shared a talk by a prominent Bible scholar and translator on women in leadership, and based on the responses of those who have only given the Bible a surface reading, you would have thought I committed the highest form of blasphemy. I can’t begin to tell you the amount of hate and accusations that poured in from complete strangers who have no idea who I am, what our family has taken on, or the everyday situations we deal with (which admittedly are probably a mystery to many of you who are new here because I don’t talk about them as often lately). It was a sight to behold from people who claim to be Christians, who claim to be passionate about the Bible, but are in fact extremely selective on how they actually study or practice what it says.

What is that Scripture? Oh, yes: “They will know we are Christians by our scathing insults, accusations, fragile egos, and self-righteous condescension.” Ain’t nobody got hate and meanness like a so-called Christian’s hate and meanness.

I am giving you a new commandment, that
you love one another; just as I have loved you, that you also love
one another. By this all people will know that you are My disciples:
if you have love for one another.

– John 13:34-35

It’s just easier to not be challenged, to not learn something new, to not think critically about what we believe and what the Bible says and whether or not those two things are actually in alignment. But Jesus is continually leading us forward in love and maturity, even when we have no inclination to go there.

But you denied the Holy and Righteous
One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, and you killed
the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are
witnesses.

– Acts 3:14-15

Do we just want to be right? Or do we want to be righteous?

Pharisees have been bringing death and destruction for a long time; people who miss the forest for the trees and offer to call fire down from heaven have been rebuked by the Lord for their misplaced zeal from the very beginning.

And now, brothers, I know that you acted
in ignorance, as did also your rulers.

– Acts 3:17

You can’t force people to think harder or to love better (or at all), but sometimes you can remind them what they’re supposed to be doing. (And sometimes it helps. But sometimes it doesn’t.)

So we go back to the Word. Not just a surface reading that takes in the obvious, but a daily, deeper study that looks at all the things – the ones that don’t make sense, the ones that seem to contradict, the ones that are inconsistent with the rest of the Word when taken out of context. We take the time to ask Him what they mean, and we take the time to listen.

If you feel threatened by the basics of studying the Bible and learning something you didn’t understand before, why are you reading it at all? Do we go to God’s word only to be patted on the back? Do we only go to church to be spoon-fed what we already know?

For though by this time you ought to be
teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of
the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who
lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is
a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their
powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish
good from evil.

— Hebrews 5:12-14

Friends, with all love, you shouldn’t be reading my stuff (or any stuff) if you just want to be told what you already know. What a waste of time that would be. And if you don’t think women should be speaking, teaching, or sharing about Jesus, I’m not sure what you’re doing here in the first place.

If someone touts unbiblical principles that conflict with God’s word and character, yes, you should call them out on it. But if what you are calling out is just a deeply held belief that is contradicted throughout Jesus’ life and all of scripture, you should look more closely at the context of that.

If it causes insecurities to rile up within you, spewing hateful, holier-than-thou things at others, you should look more closely at that, too.

If any issue is so sacred to you that looking at the Bible’s original language, context, and culture actually frightens or angers you because you cannot consider it from any other angle than the one you have held on to, then that issue is a sacred cow and it probably needs to go to the grill. If it causes you to say things to perfect strangers online that would make an atheist smirk, that cow needs put out to pasture until you can examine it without raising your blood pressure and displaying spiritual brain trauma.

Do we just want to be right, or do we want to be righteous?

(One reader pointed out that those who are afraid of a little research, deep thinking, and contrasting perspectives are exactly the kind of people who, yes, shouldn’t be teaching or leading. This is why we can’t have nice things, Timothy.)

If you believe context and culture don’t matter and everything in scripture should be interpreted exactly at face value, you should probably avoid Job, certain Psalms, Ecclesiastes, several sections of the prophets, parts of the New Testament, and most public social settings.

(Oh…and definitely beware of Song of Solomon. SO DANGEROUS.)

Because context and language matter.

Truth matters. Sometimes you need to pay attention to see it, though. And yes, if you’ve read the Bible, you’ve seen women speaking, leading, and teaching in it with approval, in spite of a few verses that seemingly oppose it on the surface.

But wait, should we have to work to understand the Bible? Well, what does it say? Here are just a couple of examples:

It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.

— Proverbs 25:2

In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy
Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth,
that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and
revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your
gracious will.”

— Luke 10:21

Yes, we should read and expect God to speak to us. And also yes, we should take the time to dig deeper when we notice things that don’t make sense, or that we don’t understand, or that are confusing.

Because if we claim to already understand everything we believe, we probably made it up — and we need to consider who we’re bowing down to.

But if you don’t think language, culture, and context matters, fine. No problem at all.

Just know that you ought to greet everyone in church on Sunday (and, well, every day, since it doesn’t specify) with a holy kiss.

No, no, no, it doesn’t say handshake, side hug, or fist bump — it says a holy kiss.

Have fun with that.

xo

turning it up: support for adoptive families comes to audio

Posted on by April 11, 2023

Here’s a confession that those of you who are regular readers here already know: I go in phases of sharing about adoption and special needs. Sometimes I forge ahead in it and share several posts here or on social media, and other times I pull back to recuperate.

It’s hard to share. It’s super personal. The issues are painful. But those issues need to be seen.

Not everyone will stop to notice. Most will probably keep scrolling — no shame, we all need a little mindless scrolling sometimes — and some will click “like” on the posts without even reading them because they’re too long.

I get that. I skim or skip posts sometimes for the same reason.

But we miss things when we’re always too busy to stop and notice them.

And adoptive, foster, and special needs families are collapsing from people being too busy to notice them.

These families are in our churches and neighborhoods — until they’re not. Until they give up on church or they give up on marriage. Until it all becomes too much because people are so busy scrolling past, giving a thumbs up to the concept of adoption but having no clue about what’s really going on in these families.

How do we move upstream to prevent divorce, depression, abuse, and suicide? How do we draw people into the church and community instead of driving them away from it?

By seeing people. But we have to look past the surface and stop scrolling for a few minutes to do it.

So I’ve collected my adoption posts in one place here. They are full of the stuff under the surface, behind the curtain, while we try to walk the line of privacy and transparency. They are by no means the full story, but they are enough to give the respectful, caring observer plenty to think about…and to send a message to other adoptive, foster, and special needs families. Here’s that message:

YOU ARE NOT ALONE. And you’re not going crazy. You are seen and loved and understood. 🖤

I know some of you are done with church. Some of you are done with marriage. Some of you, for the sake of younger children and your entire family, have been done with adoption and had to disrupt.

(If you’re not one of those families, that means they had to give up their adopted child to be adopted by another family — and face all the judgment, condemnation, and assumptions from a society that doesn’t know what goes on behind the scenes and is also unwittingly ignorant of the role they may be playing in the disaster and heartache these families endure.)

None of this should ever happen. Adoptive families should never feel alone and be left by the communities around them to quietly implode behind closed doors.

We can intentionally be part of the solution. 

And we need to be, because there are plenty of people who seem intent on being part of the problem, too busy reveling in their know-it-allness that they cannot fathom there might still be something to learn about this — like the Goodreads reviewer who gave Upside Down a mere 2 stars because I am “only an adoptive mom” and not a trained, lettered professional who actually (smirk) knows anything about attachment issues, mental health, or adoption.

That’s right; instead of studying for years behind a desk, I have only lived this out in my own home, 24 hours a day, for more than twice the amount of years it takes to get a bachelors degree. Clearly I have no expertise on the subjects of adoptive family support or adoptive parenting worth sharing.* #blessherheart

When I originally wrote Upside Down as a series of posts, I got emails, messages, and phone calls every day from adoptive, foster, and even biological parents who were going through the same stuff — but they thought they were alone. These were their most common responses:

“I thought we were the only ones who went through this.”
“I don’t know who to talk to.”
“I didn’t know how to explain this.”
“I thought we were alone.”
”I wish everyone we knew would read this.”

But you know what the most common response is from non-adoptive/foster families? It’s this:

“Whoa. I had no idea.”

No wonder these families feel alone.

It’s past time to change that.

And now there’s no excuse not to, because Upside Down is now available in audio (as you read that, you should hear it in a victorious sing-song voice, like TA-DAHHH!) and the first three segments are totally free and full of the inside scoop people needed yesterday, before they did that thing that triggered the adoptive kiddo to regress. So grab them here and share them with your friends, teachers, pastors, nosy neighbors, favorite aunt who stillll doesn’t get it, and anyone else who needs to know how they can truly support adoptive and foster families without unintentionally causing further harm.

Because we’re gonna change this thing. The world will see that what adoptive and foster families are doing is vital, but the work cannot be done without understanding and support. And we shouldn’t have to anymore.

*In case you’re wondering, I have similar inept, unprofessional, raw, untrained experience in pursuing God while being a mom of many, dealing with special needs and fighting depression and encountering other messy life circumstances in motherhood — so you should *definitely* stay away from Oh My Soul and ABIDE and Work That God Sees too, since I don’t have the right letters after my name and therefore have nothing worthwhile to share in those, either. Seriously, those books are only for the rest of us. xo

not the same: confronting demands for conformity with love and truth

Posted on by January 26, 2023

I’ll be honest, the last post blew me away. I guess maybe the feeling was mutual.

Thank you so much for the support you’ve shown our family. Little Kav is in his hard cast and the five (!) pins are scheduled to be removed next week, when he’ll get a new cast for a few more weeks.

not the same: confronting demands for conformity with love and truth

We’ve gotten texts from friends and emails and messages from strangers offering to help and it has been super encouraging. We’ve also gotten a few (literally, a few) forwards of ignorant, rude, or outright nasty comments (from a social media platform we no longer participate in) opposing what we did.

It’s so miniscule, less than 1% of responses…or, you know, about the same as the actual danger of Covid. (Smile.)

But just for kicks because I think it’s fun (and often funny), let me tell you what they were. They all basically said the same thing, though in different ways: “Why don’t you just do/say/parent/think the way I do?”

The short answer is: Because we are not the same.

I don’t think they should have to do things the way I do. They should have a choice in how they parent their kids and make decisions for their future and their health. They should have a choice when they go to the ER to do things to protect themselves, and protecting ourselves doesn’t always look the same for everyone because we have different health histories and values. I think they should benefit from laws that are in place for patient care, and we should, too.

They apparently don’t think that. We are not the same.

Hospital staff, including security, nurses, a staff supervisor, and a surgeon, acted in direct violation of the Patient’s Bill of Rights, the Americans with Disabilities Act, HIPPA, and EMTALA, just to start, because of a “mandate.”

Quick legal review: Mandates are not laws. Laws are laws.

They were wrong. According to an email we got this morning, they’re being investigated.

They refused care to our injured three-year-old who needed emergency surgery. Defending them because of a political agenda in spite of law and basic ethics exposes some serious heart issues. If you think other people need to voluntarily relinquish both their rights as citizens and responsibilities as a parent because that fits the narrative you’ve come to believe, that’s not political. At the core, that’s a wholeness issue.

When loyalty to a job or company or person or a narrative leads to demands of others at the expense of truth, love, and justice, the result is an exposure of pride and insecurity. And those are two sides of the same coin that show up in different ways, including people pleasing, virtue signaling, narcissism, greed, selfishness, attention seeking, and cowardice.

Basically, here’s the demand: Why don’t you just give up your choice and your rights to conform, like me?

And here’s my answer: Because I’m not like you. We are not the same.

We come from different worldviews. We’re using some of the same words, but with different definitions.

For example, take the concept of responsibility. I think responsibility means being accountable for your own choices. Other people think being responsible means getting double (or triple, or whatever) jabbed for a virus that’s 99.97% safe. They think we’re irresponsible for refusing the Covid swab for our healthy toddler, even though the swabs are unreliable, have been shown to cause injury, and are being discontinued by the CDC. We are not the same.

Their definition doesn’t sound like responsibility to me; it sounds like fear. And fear is the most pandered sin in the church.

Why don’t you just do what the hospital says? Why don’t you just let them do what they want with your children? Why ask pesky questions instead of leaving your brain at the door?

I’ve been reading The Vision of the Anointed by Thomas Sowell, and he gives a great answer: “…Third-party decision making by surrogates for ‘society’ offers no a priori reason to expect a closer approximation to omniscience.”

Thomas Sowell is crazy smart, and I admit it helps to have a drink handy while reading him (I mean coffee, not wine, or don’t bother) so here’s a translation in easier English: Third parties who think they’re doing society a favor by making decisions for them are playing God, and they’re not very good at it.

“On the contrary, such surrogates not only lack the detailed and direct knowledge of the innumerable circumstances surrounding each of the millions of individuals whose decisions they are preempting, they lack the incentives of direct gain and loss from being right or wrong, and they have every incentive to persist in mistaken policies (from which they suffer little), rather than admit to being wrong (from which they could suffer much).”

– Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed

Translation: Third parties who attempt to play God not only lack the information necessary to do it right, but they tend to persist in the inevitable errors that result because those errors do not directly impact them, and admitting fault would.

Or, a quicker summary: Decisions should not be made by those who don’t have to live with the consequences and cannot be trusted to admit fault.

Why don’t you just mask, and get admitted yourself a day or three later? Why don’t you just allow experimentation and ineffective tests on your children?

Translation: Why don’t you just roll over and do everything you’re told? Why don’t you just make the same choices I would? Why don’t you just think like me?

This is only a few steps away from “Why don’t you just tell the Germans where the Jews are? Why don’t you just slap that yellow star on? Just put the sign on your window? Just take the thirty pieces of silver?”

I’m a nurse and don’t you know I’ve sacrificed so much as a frontline worker? Haven’t you seen the commercials? The heroic dance routines? Why aren’t you bowing to my revered, new celebrity status like all the other virtue signalers?

I have friends who are nurses. I love nurses. One in particular has walked closely alongside us in this situation with support and inside knowledge. But, sweetheart, moms and dads were frontline workers first. We are the first frontline when it comes to our kids. Consider that.

And my favorite: “Why didn’t you just git yer shots and protect yer kids?!”

Wait, wait, wait – the shot that doesn’t protect people from Covid can prevent toddlers from breaking their arm while sledding? Bless your heart.

If you fall into any of these camps, there’s no getting around it – you are saying that it’s okay for nurses, surgeons, and hospitals to strip patients and parents of their rights. You probably won’t like it put in those terms, but let’s be honest about it.

And if that’s the case, you probably justify it by saying you’re willing to relinquish those rights for “the good of society” because you’re convinced that society needs to be upended for a virus that’s 99.97% safe for the population — so many times safer than the normal flu we’ve lived with all our lives. If you’ve chosen to believe liars and ignore data, I can’t and won’t argue with you.

But I will point out that your decision to relinquish your rights does not obligate me or anyone else to relinquish those same rights.

My willingness to do (or not do) certain things does not obligate you to do (or not do) the same things. This works two ways, friends. You’re not being selfless or righteous if you’re demanding others to make the same decision.

And, just a warning: Whatever rights you relinquish so easily now, there will come a situation when someone tries to take something from you that you do care about.

There will. And you should think about that.

When that happens, you’ll have every right to fight for it and stand your ground.

But it might be too late. Because by then, those whose rights you’ve thrown under the bus might not be there to stand with you.

_________

P.S. Should the Lord allow, next week I plan to get back to my normal cozy, quirky writing and off this soapbox. Grab your favorite clicker pencil and put your nerd face on: Best books of 2021, coming right up.