Ministry to those with Disabilities

This is part two of a two-part series with Chris Maxwell.How has your near death experience and now your life with epilepsy helped you to learn to live what you are writing and speaking about—learning to pause?Seeing my healthy body become so ill and almost dying from encephalitis, I finally began to appreciate what I too often ignored. I had to learn to do things again—things that had been simple for me before the illness. For a speaker and writer to struggle to read and write and speak and remember names was humbling. Embarrassing. Frustrating. But it was also healing, as I began to value things that mattered less before.I need self-time. I need rest. I need to deal properly with stress. I need to drink water and eat right. I need naps. I need to say no. But, that isn’t just for those of us with epilepsy. That is good practice for everyone.How can people, businesses, and churches help people with epilepsy and other health issues?We want our churches to look good and sound good while not realizing what some of those lights and sounds might do for people in need. We shouldn’t ask only, “Will applying this new trend help our church grow?” We should ask, “How would this have an impact on a family who has a child with special needs?” And, “How will the use of this technology affect a person with epilepsy?”Find a ministry that focuses on special-need families and invite them to help you make decisions in your business, your school, your church. How would your church respond if someone had a seizure during a service? Do your staff, board, and parishioners know how to help and care for people who are facing major depression, who are suicidal, who need a ride to see the doctor, who have no insurance, who are facing addictions, who are blind? Do you have trustworthy referrals?Each local church can’t do everything. Each person can’t do everything. But each can obtain a better awareness of needs, and become willing to cohort with groups who do know what to offer. Learn from them. Partner with them. Each of us can do something.Those of us who are patients with epilepsy need to know we are accepted. Be patient with our process of learning. Understand our emotions and mood swings. Know what to do in case we have a seizure. Offer to drive those who are not allowed to drive. Understand our issues, but treat us just like you would anyone else.Churches could also help caregivers of those who have epilepsy and the caregivers of patients who have any health issues. Many family members are exhausted. Give them time off. Care for us for them. The meals, the conversations, the nights away. The laughter together, the tears together, the prayers together. Refuse to let the patients or their caregivers experience life alone.Support a ministry that trains workers to support families with special needs. Ministries are bringing wonderful change in our churches to help care for those with disabilities.You can visit Chris’s page on Amazon, his website, www.chrismaxwell.me, and follow him on Facebook and Twitter: @CMaxMan. They can also email him at CMaxMan at aol dot com.

Outreach to the Deaf

In the Writing for Publication class I teach, a student I had last year—Sarita Fowler—wrote a good article about how to reach out to the Deaf. PRISM magazine ran it in the final issue of their publication. Congratulations to Sarita for getting published!

Two Articles Worth Reading

Two students from the Writing for Publication class I taught last year got published this week at Converge Magazine. Check out their good work: 

Finding Healing through Flannery O’Connor: A Profile of Dr.Tim Basselin

By Nathan Chan

Why Bother with Lent?

By Shannon Gianotti

Surrogate Refuses Offer of $10,000 to Abort

Bioedge reports that a couple in the Northeast offered their surrogate mother (CrystalKelley) $10,000 to abort their baby because it had acleft lip and palate, a brain cyst, and an abnormal heart. When Crystal refused, the couple's lawyer sent a demand letter insisting that she abort the baby, along with the financial incentive. The attorney also said the couple would give up custody to the state if the childwere born. 

Crystal didn't want the child going to state care, so she moved to Michigan, where surrogates are considered the children's legal parents. She then found adoptiveparents, to whom she gave the baby shortly after birth.

Some argue that Crystal's rights over her own body trump the rights of the legal parents: "If we have any pretensions about defending a woman'sright to choose, then we must defend that right even when, likeKelley, she chooses to change her mind."

Another commentator disagreed, arguing that the parents' legal rights trump any concerns ofthe surrogate: "It seems absurd to make demands on the parents andto further those demands by claiming emotional attachment to the child youare carrying." 

Crystal herself says that she stands by her decision and ishappy the child has lived, despite its disabilities.

  

What If I Told Them?

Meet my friend Lacie. In this shot we're in her back yard in Colorado Springs, which looks out on Pike's Peak. Lacie is on staff with Cru, and she spends her days reaching out and opening her cozy home to Air Force cadets. She even has a good friend who's a female fighter pilot. (Can't say I've ever even met one of those!) We had a fascinating phone conversation this week about women in the military and today's decision about raising the restriction on allowing them in combat. But I digress.

The night this photo was taken (last May), Lacie built a bonfire, and a bunch of young folks showed up with food. We had a blast. They even got me to play "Bloody Red Baron" on the ukelele. And sing it. No alcohol involved. I swear. They had me reading the lyrics off somebody's iPhone. Those crazy youngsters!

When Lacie was fifteen, her neighbor was on his way home from a bar one January night, and he hit her with his truck. She lost her leg at the scene. Her mom saved her life, but the next eighteen months involved so many surgeries that Lacie can't really remember the day-to-day experience of that time.

But one thing from then she definitely does remember. After Lacie came home from the hospital, that neighbor called to apologize. And she heard her mother tell him, “In light of all Christ has forgiven us, how can we not forgive you?”

Having her mom's example of what it looks like to forgive, Lacie told me, is "what set me on a course for accepting it. And in turn, with lots of time, I could see God’s grace to me....  I would not trade being an amputee for anything."

One book that has encouraged her a lot is called The Cure. She told me about this video she loves that goes with that book: