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Can Faith Really Strengthen Parents for the Autism Journey?

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Yes, Yes, Yes.

Faith and autism was the topic of Sunday’ Spreecast (a webcast) with fellow author Patty Myers. (If you missed it, you can view the recording here: Strength For The Autism Journey Spreecast. Not Alone Parents set up the Spreecast, and if you do not yet know about this website, make sure you visit this wonderful community of support for special needs families. I’m so blessed to be one parent of many in this encouraging place.)

Now what about faith and autism? Well, there’s so much that I’d like to share with you, especially if you are a loved one of a special needs child.

I’d like to tell you that being a special needs parent is easy, but if you are the mother or father of a such a child, you know that it’s not. More than anything, I’d wish I could give you a hug and tell you that God is very able to help you and your sweet child.

Not only is He able, but He desires to surround you with His strength, patience and love.  He’s proven that love by giving us an inheritance of promises that we can count on to make it through the hard days.

Better still, God sent the very best advocate we could ever have for our child! This advocate is one that we don’t have to seek out. We won’t need to place a second (or third) mortgage on our house to afford His services. He knows everything about our child: their innermost thoughts, the words they say (or cannot say), and the structure of every cell in their body.

This advocate hears them when they cry and whispers comforts to them on long, restless nights. He is the voice that they do not have. The Peace that they seek. The arms that never tire, even when our own arms, as parents, do.  He sits at the right hand of Almighty God and has His Father’s ear. He knows that we will encounter trials and hardships, but He has already overcome them, promising rest, guidance and wisdom when we need it.

Our Advocate—Jesus—longs to help you. I know, because He helped me, and He helped my son.

He was there when I’d had enough. He listened when I felt lost and alone in a crazy, messed up world with a child I didn’t know how to communicate with.When I would have given up, He promised a better day for my son … and for me.

I am convinced that God’s ears quicken to the sound of a troubled child’s cry. I know that He listens to every prayer that rises from the lips of a mother.  I know that He is for us.

This is what I want to tell you: Our God and Jesus, our Advocate, are standing by. I want you to know that God will honor every promise, and I mean every promise, that Scripture gives to His children.

I want you to know that you can have joy again, overflowing, spilling out, and never running dry… if you will surrender your cares to Him.  It won’t happen in a day, but trust me, it will happen.

The truth is that we are blessed
to love a special needs child.
Blessed to experience the beauty of that love.

Yes, that’s what I wanted to tell you.

If you would like to know more about what the Bible has to say on the topic—and there is so much more—that’s what my book Autism’s Hidden Blessings: Discovering God’s Promises for Children with Special Needs is about. It is a love letter—one that was whispered to me by a God who cares VERY MUCH children with special needs—to be passed along to parents who need to know just how much they are loved. You can also preview it on Kindle by clicking here.

Thanks for stopping by! May God bless you today, and don’t forget … God is for you!

Kelly 

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God-Inspired Dreams (Part 2): Dreaming the Impossible Dream

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This is Part 2 of my blog series “God-Inspired Dreams.” Read Part One here.

Has God given you a special dream or task, one that seems impossible to achieve? Has it been so hard that you are considering giving up on it, even though you believe God has called you to it?

If so, I can relate. In fact, the Bible contains many stories of people struggling to reach a God-inspired dream or mission. So if you are about to throw in the towel on achieving your dream, please read this blog series before you do. The good news is that you just might be CLOSER to it than you think.

I suspect that God is up to something amazing in your life. The question is, are you ready for it? If so, I am writing this series to encourage you!

Hiker Sunset

Photo credit: Paxson Woelber via photopin cc

The Birth of My Dream:

The moment I am about to share with you is vividly recorded in my memory. It happened on an ordinary day, with nothing special about it except what I am about to share with you. It happened like this:

Driving home, I turned into my neighborhood and stopped at an intersection. Thinking of nothing in particular, my mind rambled through the odds and ends of my life when a simple prayer came to mind:

“God, I don’t have a dream for my life
right now. What is Your dream for me?”

There have been two times in my life when I asked God a specific question and received an answer that changed the direction of my life completely. This was the one of those times. I had no idea as to the depth of the question I was asking, nor did I understand how specifically and powerfully God would respond to it. That old saying, “be careful what you ask for” … is true.

Point #1: When God gives a dream or a special task, more often than not, it will seem impossible to achieve.

Over the next few days, a dream formed—to write a book for Him—as God whispered it through prayer, scripture and quiet times. You might think that I excitedly started pecking out words on a keyboard in a hurry to pursue it. But the truth is,

I didn’t. I walked around in a fog, unable to get started. Immobilized and restless. Why? Because:

My dream was completely beyond my ability to reach it, given my current circumstances.
It was too much for me and I knew it.

Oh, I had a million reasons why that dream should never come to pass. Here are just a few:

1) I am the mother of a daughter and an autistic son, so I had very little time to write

2) I didn’t have a platform, and everyone knows that a platform is necessary to be considered by a publisher

3)  My consulting business that was essential to pay our family bills (not to mention Alec’s health costs!), so how could I scale back?

4) Who did I think I was, anyway?  I couldn’t write a book. What did I have to say that would matter to anyone?

Impossible Dreams and Missions in Scripture

Struggling with self-doubt, I began a search of Scripture for stories of people who were following their God-given dreams. I wanted to learn from their journeys and sure enough, I found them. When I studied the Biblical accounts that I found, some striking similarities began to emerge.

Today, let’s look at two examples of a time when God whispered a dream into the heart of a servant.:

  • The dream of a child is promised to Abraham and Sarah: “The Lord said, ‘I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.’ And Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him. Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in years. The way of women had ceased to be with Sarah.” ESV – Genesis 18:10-15  
  • Joseph dreams of ruling over his older brothers:  ”His brothers said to him, ‘Are you indeed to reign over us? Or are you indeed to rule over us?’ So they hated him even more for his dreams and for his words, … So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore. And they took him and threw him into a pit.” (The story continues…) “Then Midianite traders passed by. And they drew Joseph up and lifted him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty shekels of silver. They took Joseph to Egypt.” ESV - Genesis 37

In these stories (like others that I found), the dream that God inspires seems impossible to achieve, given the circumstances in the story. For example:

  • Sarah was past child-bearing years. Literally, she had reached the age of menopause!  How, then, could she have a child?
  • Joseph’s dream of ruling over his older brothers was so outrageously offensive to them that they sold Joseph into slavery. Not exactly the career path of an up-and-coming ruler, right?

Point #2: When God gives a dream or a mission, it will require His power to achieve.

I’m talking about  a God-given task with insurmountable odds. Consider these people who stepped out to attain an impossible, God-inspired mission:

  • God gives Moses, an exiled, 80 year-old stutterer, the mission of demanding the freedom of his people from the slavery of a great Pharaoh. (Slavery, by the way, was an integral part of the Egyptian economy at that time.) 
  • Noah accepts a mission to build a ship so vast that it will save his family (not to mention creation) from a deluge destined to wipe out mankind.
  • David, a shepherd boy overlooked by his own father, dreams of becoming king of Israel.
  • Esther, an orphaned girl made queen, is given the mission of saving her people from Haman’s evil plot to destroy her people.

Each stepped out in faith against great odds.
Each left their comfort zone for a place that was unknown.
Each went through a time when all seemed lost.
Each surrendered their dream to God’s ultimate power and glory.
And each time, the impossible was achieved,
and God was glorified.

What about you? Do you have an impossible God-given dream or purpose?

If God is urging you to do something that seems beyond your reach, that’s a very good sign that God is indeed calling you!

Before you step out, however, you must seek God’s heart through Scripture and prayer to know that God is calling you to follow your dream. Only then can you can be certain that you will reach your dream in God’s power and to His glory. He will give you what you need to reach it. 

In the next post of this series, I’ll look at why God allows a time of great struggle in the pursuit of a dream.

Kelly

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