Category Archives: special needs

turning it up: support for adoptive families comes to audio

Posted on by April 28, 2025

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.

made to grow: why we surrender to win

Posted on by November 22, 2021

There are seasons of motherhood when I spend all day saying stupid things like “No, you may not swing the cat in the pillowcase,” and “No, you may not take the cat outside on a leash,” and “No, you may not put the baby overalls on the cat,” and also (lest you think every wild idea around here involves a cat) “Why are you on that part of our roof?” By the time we make it to bedtime, our sons think putting pajamas on is a contact sport and I am so sick of refereeing the game that I want to eject everyone from it.

made to grow: why we surrender to win

That’s just normal parenting. Throw in special needs or health issues or a major home repair, and everything feels overwhelming and out of proportion. Life is hard, full of real problems that platitudes have no answers for. In those seasons, we dread the morning and the new day. We do not know what the future holds, but if past performance is any indicator of future results, it seems safer to just stay in bed.

Some of my kids have special needs, and usually those needs are far more behavioral than physical. Sometimes they just refuse to grow and move forward, and there is nothing I can do to move them past the place they’ve dug their heels in.

And the thing I have learned — and am still learning — is that parenting, adoption, and special needs are not necessarily pass/fail endeavors. Because the child makes his or her own choices, and eventually the child has to learn to clean up their own mess. We all do, right?

We’re all meant to grow. And the more a child refuses to grow, the more God grows me. Either way, God brings healing and wholeness. It’s just more fun when we don’t resist it.

If God is giving you the opportunity to grow and heal in these days, to rip something out and start over again, then for the love of all that is holy, do not squander it. Do not shy from the Lord’s probing questions, gentle correction, or nudges toward alignment and surrender. Our joy is at stake in these opportunities to clean up the mess.

We have to do the heart-work of wholeness and forgiveness, of understanding our triggers, of maturing past that old, unattractive hang up, whatever it is. The healing can come in just a few minutes or it can take years, but the timeline rests on our own willingness to surrender.

Here’s a good word for us: The sun doesn’t insist on shining on everything all the time; it surrenders every day. It yields to clouds and isn’t diminished by the presence of something that blocks its light. It’s not in competition with any other light or any other thing that gets in its way and creates a shadow. It just keeps shining, doing what it was made to do.

Every night, it is beautiful in surrender. And regardless of how cold or cloudy it was the day before, it never fails to rise the next day. That might be a word for us, too.

Sooner or later things start to take shape and we can see what the Maker is up to. And it’s always good…eventually.

But surrender is hard. Haaaaarrrd, say it with me in four syllables. If it wasn’t, would it be surrender at all? But it is also powerful, because surrender is also birthing, bringing new life. And when we see the fruit on the other side of it, we see the beauty and joy and breakthrough that come from laying down our agenda for His.

It doesn’t matter if it’s homeschooling, writing a book, parenting, learning anything new, or finally mastering the act of getting dressed in the morning without tangling up your pantleg and tripping yourself (hey, I only write about what I know), we are always learning and growing.

Or, we ought to be. There are those who choose to stagnate, but that’s probably not you.

So, a word of encouragement: If you are feeling the burn of an uphill climb, it’s because you’re going somewhere. Stretching. Moving. Making strides. Gaining ground. Advancing. Moving forward. Going places.

Once you surrender, the unexpected won’t stop you. Mistakes, once realized, confessed and yielded to God, will only advance you further.

So, press in – there is no setback God won’t use to move you forward when you walk in surrender to Him.

____________

This is an excerpt from ABIDE volume 6: Surrender to Win. The ABIDE series is now complete, and it’s available here and everywhere books are sold.