REENTRY

By Joan

Oh, where to begin! Our family is fresh back from our Joni and Friends (JAF) Family Retreat. What a week! As many families have said this past week: “For those of us with special needs kids, this is the closest thing to heaven there is on this earth!” I agree – a family vacation, with trained help for our kids, incredible meals, programming, and spiritual worship all in a refreshing mountain setting. Amazing!

From the moment we arrived until we wrapped it all up yesterday, my eyes had a rare break from tears of joy! So many God-sightings – some I won’t be able to express here (for they were just for me), but others I will try to pass on.

In our debriefing session as parents yesterday, Samwise from “Lord of the Rings” was quoted. Watching Frodo struggle under the weight of being the ring-bearer, Sam says, “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you.” That is how we parents feel. We wish we could carry the disability for them. It is a heavy burden watching our children in their 24/7 battle with great limitations and we can’t change that, we can only come alongside and help them. And then JAF made our burden lighter by coming alongside our families and helped us have an incredibly great vacation. For five days they “lifted” what they could while celebrating the abilities and joys in each of our kids – what a blast!

That is what so many of you do for Ron and I. You carry what you can through prayers for our family, finances that made this vacation possible, friendships to us when our family is hard to connect with, and just a boatload of understanding that is so refreshing when many in this world look at us as odd. So, THANK YOU – it means everything!

At JAF, we do not feel different. One mom pointed out, that despite the normal world of extreme divisiveness, for five days, we felt incredible unity – no matter our background, religious or political differences, our children with their lack of filters break down walls and we meet at the same level – at the feet of Jesus. And there is so much joy in this place. Wholly weak, wholly dependent on Him, Wholly, a worshipful place to rest!

Matthew was a definite bolt of sunshine in the whole camp. Of the 300 people at camp, pretty sure there was not one person who had not interacted with him. So many laughs and happy moments because of his intense need to love-on everyone! The last evening at the talent show, they assigned him and Ron as the closing act – Ron was Matthew’s pianist. Matthew brought down the house with his song and tears were flowing liberally. It was sheer joy. But what got me the most was a comment he made into the microphone right before he started singing. He wanted the audience to know that Kari was his sister and he pointed to her, and he wanted them to know he was her brother. (Tears flowing again at this point). In Matthew’s mind, it connected that his sister can’t speak or do anything, and he didn’t want people to miss her.  And he is proud of her!

I am going to let pictures of our week say the other thousands of words I can’t. But as I enter back into my normal world of cooking, laundry, cleaning and all the “heavy” work of childcare – please know that Jesus is carrying us, and I will be OK as soon as I am able to see out of these blurry eyes of mine!