Once again I had a conversation with a mother of a child with a diagnosis. Her son is now a young adult, and wants nothing to do with the church. He has hidden disabilities and was considered a behavioral nightmare throughout his childhood years.

Predictably, his mother shared how she is still dealing with the vestiges of bitterness left over from fielding the judgments of her peers and leaders from church... judgements against her son, and judgements against her parenting.

"Dealing with the judgment was almost as hard as dealing with my son!"

It's true. I experienced the same dynamic during those difficult years. It's a lament shared by many parents raising children with hidden disabilities.

​I want to remind the church of a few truths.

Christ died for us while we were sinners. (Romans 5:8) It's easy to have vision for "good people" to come to Christ. But the truth is, God doesn't just come for really nice, well adjusted people. He came for all of us, even those of us who are dreadfully broken, and emotionally unhealthy, and egads, even those of us who may parent poorly. So even if every single negative assumption you have made about my parenting is true, I am the object of God's attention, affection, compassion and love. As such, I should be yours too.

Christ Himself, the One who never sinned, didn't come into the world to condemn it. He came so that through Him, the world might be saved. (John 3:17) The focus is on offering a nail scarred hand up. Jesus came to destroy the works of the enemy, and you share Christ's mandate. (1 John 3:8)

Among other things the works of the enemy include marginalization, exclusion, the voice of accusation, diminishment and demoralization sown into the lives of entire families coping with hidden disabilities.

How will you serve to offer a hand up and destroy the works of the enemy?

Toppling the Idol of Ideal
Raising Children with Special Needs

The stats are changing. It’s no longer just the rare family who has the autistic child we read about in some magazine article or see on television. Behavioral issues in our children have catapulted out of the realm of child raising and psychology and into the realm of neurobiology and psychiatry. Whether resultant from neurotoxins in the environment, dietary criminals or some other etiology, more and more families are receiving diagnoses of ADHD, autism, or other legitimate neuro-psychiatric disorders.

Is the church late in constructive response? We may be unintentionally too quick to offer counseling or deliverance with no real grasp that neurology is not necessarily a spiritual problem and definitely not a parenting problem; it’s brain chemistry. This leaves Christian Moms and Dads potentially susceptible to the myriad of uninformed voices, voices that decry the pharmaceutical industry as evil drug pushers for profit, and voices blaming lack of quality parenting for most if not all behavioral challenges. 

It’s not sympathy that’s needed, but rather hearing from somebody who “gets it”, somebody who can discuss practical issues like fighting despair, judgment, and educational challenges, deciding about medications, labeling our children, IEP’s and 504 behavior plans. Perhaps most importantly, what is needed is not only assurance that our children will be alright, but that we will survive intact spiritually while grappling with why me, why us, and why my baby? If you are that parent, You will enter into a new season, a season of discovery that launches you from a battle-weary position dodging the fiery darts of the enemy, to a position of protection reclining in the strong tower of God’s abiding presence. 

The church has bought into a lie. It’s a distinctly Western lie, one that’s intricately intwined into our benefits based Christian faith. We protest loudly when we suffer the harsh realities of life, realities like our own mortality, or the mortality of those we love, or flesh based laws of inheritance, or we become victims of an unjust and corrupt system. Our pleas before our living God can become like fetishes we rub for favor, with no real submission to the God we claim to serve.

What is our response when our child is born with differences that reflect poorly on us, our genetics, or our parenting? It’s one thing to adopt a child with brain chemistry or developmental problems, but it is quite another to physically birth one, or even several. What is our response beyond the horrific dark abyss of grief when we lose a child? What did we actually mean when we surrendered our child to God in the first place? What we meant was never surrender, but actually protection unto perfection. Anything less is perceived as a breach of promise, and a crisis of faith ensues.  

On a flight this week, I sat next to a Chinese college student with Christian heritage. She marveled that her grandfather was a believer throughout the Revolution, wondering why he did not lose his faith. I suspect that during that season was when a truer faith was born, a mature faith with abandoned need to control, a faith that lacked the demand for an explanation. The result of fire in our lives is solely dependent upon our own constitution, not the source of that fire as being from heaven or hell.  The same fire that consumes stubble, purifies gold. 

With your head in the sand, you are unable to open your mouth and speak life to your child. 

My son attended Sunday School at our mega church and made a delightful new friend. The boy was homeschooled, disturbing no one with his obvious tics. I took this child to Chuckie Cheese's and observed his struggle to transition between tasks, distractibility, hyperactivity, and obsessiveness. I tested the waters by casually mentioning that his playmate, my son, had Tourette's Syndrome and that's why he had certain unusual (aka identical) behaviors; think nothing of it. No lights went on, so I decided it just might be time to have a careful chat with his mom. I'm no doctor, and I don't diagnose, but certain symptoms are profoundly evident to the experienced eye. Response? Very little...

The message I couldn't speak to her son: "I see the shame on your face when you turn away to try to hide your tics. You need to understand that you're not crazy. I know you are not doing those things because you want to. There is a spot in your brain that sends errant signals. No big deal. It's just chemistry. That's all it is. It's why you struggle to transition from one task to another, why you perseverate, why you lose the battle to sit still even though you try so hard. If it bothers you so much that we need to explore treatments, just let me know. In the meantime, I want you to know that I understand how hard it is for you, and I am giving you full credit for efforts as well as for your successes. I see your heart, even though in other settings you may endure harsh corrections, know that I am on your side."

I’ve been there. I was convinced that my daughter needed to be home-schooled. She struggled with extreme volatility, excessive obsessive behaviors, sensory issues and incontinence as well as lacking the emotional maturity of her peers by several years. Additionally, although only in the second grade, she was already decoding words on an eleventh grade level cracking jokes with the sophistication of a young adult. She was horribly vulnerable, completely oblivious to the impact her behaviors had on others. She internalized the messages from the scowling faces not in light of her rages, but instead as a reflection of her own lack of worth or like-ability. I knew this, and hated myself for failing. I was about to mainstream her in our neighborhood school. 

What does failure look like for a Type A mother?  Anything that falls short of “the ideal”. The ideal was home-schooling. I had already home-schooled her for half of kindergarten, all of first grade, and now half of second. Meanwhile, I had a new baby, lived in a new town with next to no friends, and could not attend church functions or social events to create them. After all, who can babysit a newborn and a screaming volatile child at the same time? 

I made the right choice. I put her in school. I didn’t do it for her. I did it for my mental health. I did it for my other daughter with whom I continued to homeschool and build relationship for the next 5 years. I did it for my son. I did it for my husband. And it was the hardest thing I had ever done because it wasn’t what was best for her and I loved her just as desperately as I loved all the others. But it was right, and the Idol of Ideal came crashing down. 

I'm a Christian. Please don't hear that I am culturally part of the Judeo-Christian mindset adhering to standards of religious ethics. Rather, I am a passionate follower of Jesus Christ cultivating a reciprocal dynamic in relationship with the Most High God through the sacrifice and resurrection of His Son.  As such, I attend church and fellowship with others who do also. THAT I am much less passionate about. The problem with the church is that it is full of people, real live people who sometimes spiritualize their ignorance into dogma. A friend posted this short sermon on Facebook recently, and I couldn't help but contrast it against an article posted a few days earlier discounting ADHD as well as all mental health disorders as a ploy by pharmaceutical companies and unscrupulous doctors who desire to drug our children and reap the profits, preying on our gullibility. The article was scarfed up by well meaning church members and reposted as authoritative, after all, it ECHOS what is being taught either consciously or unconsciously in our churches: Failing mental health is a character defect, not a legitimate physiological medical condition. Christians moralize it, and scorn treatment.  I love this man's willingness to SAY what no one else in the church is saying. 

No, I do not suffer from depression. But my children have wrestled with it in its ugliest form. As parents, we cannot buy into the lie, no matter where it is espoused, that any condition not measurable via venipuncture lacks credibility. 

Published on May 8, 2012 by dallasseminary

Pastor Tommy Nelson, Senior Pastor of Denton Bible Church, shares his experience of depression.