special needs children

Today I'm so pleased to have with us Kimberly Drew, my co-author on the recently-contracted devotional book for children with special needs. Whether or not you find yourself in this category, I pray her words will bless you just as much as they blessed me. Take it away, Kimberly! [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1224", "attributes":{"class":"media-image aligncenter size-full wp-image-3133", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"560", "height":"315", "alt":"home is not wherewe think it is"}}]] The last four months, our family has been displaced while waiting for a short sale to go through with our new home. We put an offer on this house almost seven months ago, sold our home, and were living with relatives and out of suitcases until March. It’s been a whirlwind for sure! During this time, I haven’t spent much time thinking, blogging, or writing about life because I’ve been too busy trying to survive it. [[{"type":"media", "view_mode":"media_large", "fid":"1225", "attributes":{"class":"media-image wp-image-3024", "typeof":"foaf:Image", "style":"", "width":"350", "height":"395", "alt":"Drews"}}]] Kimberly Drew and her family.   But now I’m finally sitting in my new kitchen surrounded by boxes and the smell of fresh paint. Still, I can’t help but be reminded that this new home is not my true home. My husband just got called to meet a family friend at the hospital whose wife has suffered a massive heart attack. It’s shocking when our loved ones get hurt, or are sick, and we don’t know if they will recover. We feel this pain even more acutely when our own children lie on the sterile white beds on wheels. They are pushed toward a door that we don’t want them to enter…and there are no guarantees that they will come back out. I recall with vivid and painful clarity my daughter being resuscitated. It’s not something I want to remember, and very few people can understand what that felt like. Or what it still feels like to give our daughter the care she requires as a lifelong result of those moments. Many parents of children with special needs often find themselves on the pediatric floor in their not-so-favorite hospital far too frequently. We make appointments, we go to follow ups, we call the therapist at school, we check in with the nurse, and we talk to our insurance company to get things squared away. We even go to great lengths to grow tiny babies in incubators and to teach their organs how to function. Why do we do this? We do it because life is so very precious! We are in essence, setting up our homes. Each medical hurdle is a box unpacked, every medical moment is a picture hung. We do our very best to make this house a home. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It is completely natural. I just wonder sometimes, if we forget that this world is just a temporary home. The Bible says it’s like a vapor that appears for a little while and then is gone. As a dear pastor friend said at our wedding, “We are not in the land of the living going to the land of the dying, we are in the land of the dying, going to the land of the living.” I hope, friend, that you can find great comfort in that. This world is not your home, it’s not our children’s home…it’s just a temporary tent. We want to make it beautiful, and we should. But I pray we never loose sight of the hope of a perfect eternity. If you don’t know what you believe about death, heaven, and how God fits into all of that, I invite you to visit the website www.juststopandthink.com to learn more. Or if you have questions, leave them in the comment box, and I’ll answer them the best I can. In the meantime, I will keep unpacking…both physically and metaphorically!