Archive for the Disability
Monday, April 5th, 2010
Why did God create music?
Pretty much all of us recognize the gift that music is for entertaining and stirring or calming emotions.
Last week, on World Autism Awareness day, I was struck once and again by the power of music to reach inside some people who otherwise seem shut off from “normal” interactions.
Yesterday during service we sang the Resurrection Chant, which Talitha and I love.
One of our young friends was there too with his family. I’m guessing that people in the pews around him thought he wasn’t getting anything from the service, but just listen to what he took away.
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
Temple Grandin: Thinking in Pictures
Temple Grandin has become the voice of autism in America. She knows autism first-hand, because she is autistic.
She would be the first to explain that autism is not one condition. It is a continuum. That’s why we often hear the phrase autism spectrum.
I recommend highly her book, Thinking in Pictures, to anyone who wants to know more about autism, in particular Asperger’s Syndrome.
I think the simplest way for us non-medical types to understand Asperger’s is to think of it as a less severe form of autism, as high-functioning autism. But we shouldn’t overlook the fact that many of the symptoms are similar.
Here Dr. Grandin talks about thinking, art, and education for the child with autism.
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
Autism: God knows
At Joni and Friends Family Retreat last summer, there was a gentle boy who doesn’t speak and hardly responds when spoken to.
Autism is a mysterious thing. God alone knows what is going on inside him. And I mean that literally–God does know, and he gave us a peek.
Some might wonder if there’s purpose in the life of a person who can’t speak or respond in a typical way.
Here’s a glimpse at a moment of God’s purpose in this young man’s life. After he’s passed by, see the hands uplifted, inspired by this young man’s unaffected praise.
For him, it is as if no audience exists–except God maybe? God knows what is in his heart. He’s the only audience that matters.
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
Autism? If only that were all
There are a galaxy of questions. Sometimes a person tries to ask sensitively. Sometimes there’s no filter of thought before blabbing it out.
Often a person wants to connect, but knows that acceptable terminology is a shifting swamp. “What do they call children like this today?”
A father reflects on labels.
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
Autism: Loving people more than perfection
Last summer at our Minnesota Joni and Friends Family Retreat, one evening of worship ended with more worship than we expected.
Today, World Autism Awareness Day seems a good time to “rerun” the blog post with the video of those moments.
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
Not my will, but thine
Today is World Autism Awareness Day. What is it like for a parent of a child with autism?
A mother imagines God offering her a heartwrenching choice.
Would she choose that her son no longer had autism so that she no longer had to depend on God in the same way? Or would she keep the autism and keep the dependence?
Which?
(This was filmed at Joni and Friends Family Retreat in Minnesota.)
Friday, April 2nd, 2010
World Autism Awareness Day 2010
Today is World Autism Awareness Day. Here is the official United Nations statement, calling on “all governments to make universal human rights a reality for all who live with autism.”
Amen. Lord, may it be.
If you wish you understood more about autism, you might be interested in a video I linked to from Joni and Friends.
Thursday, April 1st, 2010
Why don’t they discipline that child?
I was a visitor in a circle of mothers who have children on the autism spectrum.”We’ve been kicked out of every place anyone takes their children. The public library banned us,” one of them said. All the others nodded with full empathy because they’re living the same story.
I thought of the times there’s a child screaming in a store. The disapproving faces around them all wear an expression you could spell with the alphabet: “Why doesn’t she control her child?”
I wonder. Maybe it is an undisciplined child. Or maybe it’s a parent who’s ignored the child’s needs and has postponed lunch time or nap time way too long. Or maybe it’s a child with autism.
I expect that, unless autism touches our lives somehow, most of us don’t know much about what it is or how it affects a family. And yet we need to know more, or how can we be the body and hands of Christ to a family affected by autism?
I found this video from Joni and Friends very helpful.
Thursday, January 7th, 2010
Made in God’s image
Patrick Hughes: “God made me blind and unable to walk. Big deal.”
Patrick’s father: “Maybe . . . they recognize, ‘Wow! Imagine the possibilities I didn’t even consider when I saw this young man.’”
(ht: Thabiti Anyabwile)
Monday, July 28th, 2008
Who Would Have Thought?
Summer afternoon. Sisters swimming in the bay. Diving from a raft. Hitting bottom. Broken neck. Quadriplegia. Seventeen years old and life will never again be the same.
Who but God could have thought of this as anything but tragedy? Instead, through God’s strength Joni Eareckson Tada has inspired tens of thousands. Her practical love and ministry through Joni and Friends has pointed people around the globe toward the God who is sovereign and in whose image we all are created, whatever abilities and disabilities we have.
She has told her story more fully in Joni, which is available as book or DVD. And perhaps you heard her speak some time ago with Larry King about her life–how God brought her into a warm personal relationship with himself through friends who treated her “as a person, not a cripple.” In that video interview, she also talks about what that relationship means in her life now, for example when she doesn’t have the strength or personal resources to face another day.
