Dad, when you were little did you have Special needs?

I came home the other day and my wife says Hey Cory, Char has a question for you. My lil girl comes up to me and in the sweetest voice possible asks “Daddy when you were little, were you special needs?” I didn’t know quite how to take or handle that one but then I looked at her reality. You see my son her older brother has special needs. My brother her Uncle also has special needs and to her as well as the rest of my kids this is just the norm. She was just being curious. Down deep she was wondering if this is something her brother will grow out of. If her uncle, will someday be like everyone else.  We like to say that nobody is normal, that everyone has their differences, weaknesses and strengths but the truth is that those with developmental disabilities are harder to figure out. In a day and age when we are all striving to be treated equally, what do we do with an adult who has temper tantrums and sometimes acts like a 6 year old child? Or a child whose only way to communicate is with his hands using a language we don’t know? A group of people whose advocates are parents siblings and friends because even though they have a lot to say and even more to show they are dismissed because they walk funny or look different or speak with a lisp or speech impediment. We don’t usually know how to handle these things. I admit even as a parent and a sibling I often get it wrong. I baby when I shouldn’t or try to force independence when they aren’t ready. I can become as frustrated as they do when they want to say something but don’t know the words to use. I looked down at my little girl and gave her a hug and just laughed off the question but as I’ve had time to think about it I believe my answer is now yes. You see Char,

I was born into a world that instead of appreciating its differences and celebrating its diversity it exploits it.

It chooses to segregate and divide

instead of educate and align.

It turns its back on good and holy

to look to the wealthy and glitzy.

Those who are beautiful are dismissed

as we write books and magazines on superficial bliss.

My brother and my son are the ones who were born with their eyes wide open.

They see the beauty inside,

the love in one’s eyes.

They know what’s right and wrong

and care not about race, creed, party and so on.

They know they have challenges and they push hard every day.

With a strength that very few know.

Hearing the laughs and the jeers,

the mocking and sneers,

Living in a world that cares more about its rights,

Than what’s right

They put trust in us,

The incomplete, the ignorant, and arrogant.

They forgive us no matter what and love us unconditionally.

They are always there with a smile and a hug.

A better anti-depressant than any drug.

They are the hands and the feet,

The eyes and the ears,

Without them we are incomplete.

Oh to see them as God sees them, as he sees us. Char they, just like you, are an expression of his love.

1 Corinthians 12:12-13:13

The Message (MSG)

Spiritual Gifts

^12-13 You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything. (This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptized.) Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain—his Spirit—where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves—labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free—are no longer useful. We need something larger, more comprehensive.

^14-18 I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.

^19-24 But I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self-importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are a part of. An enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn’t be a body, but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place. No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Eye telling Hand, “Get lost; I don’t need you”? Or, Head telling Foot, “You’re fired; your job has been phased out”? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way—the “lower” the part, the more basic, and therefore necessary. You can live without an eye, for instance, but not without a stomach. When it’s a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honor just as it is, without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher. If you had to choose, wouldn’t you prefer good digestion to full-bodied hair?

^25-26 The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.

^27-31 You are Christ’s body—that’s who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your “part” mean anything. You’re familiar with some of the parts that God has formed in his church, which is his “body”:

apostles
prophets
teachers
miracle workers
healers
helpers
organizers
those who pray in tongues.

But it’s obvious by now, isn’t it, that Christ’s church is a complete Body and not a gigantic, unidimensional Part? It’s not all Apostle, not all Prophet, not all Miracle Worker, not all Healer, not all Prayer in Tongues, not all Interpreter of Tongues. And yet some of you keep competing for so-called “important” parts.

But now I want to lay out a far better way for you.

13 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

² If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

^3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

^8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

¹¹ When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

¹² We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

¹³ But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

Adventure in the ER

So I was planning on going to the movies the other night and then it happened. All parents sense it, that feeling you get early on in the day when you just have an inkling that the plans you had for later just might not happen. We had all just survived the flu bug and I figured I was good to go so I contacted my buddy to go see a flick. But there it was, the ear scratching, I tried to convince myself that it was just part of a cold. There was no fever no cough, really no other signs that he was sick but as the night got on it became clearer and clearer that this may not end up the way I had planned. So I got them all fed and ready for bed. Gave him some Tylenol and headed to the movies. Yeah, not winning father of the year here I know. But I got there and the guilt started to set in. The multiple texts helped the guilt set in but it was there all the same. So I called, and when I heard the voice on the other line, and the voice behind her, I knew that I was going home. Then off to the ER and that is where the adventure begins. The ER in Chilliwack never seems to disappoint. It is always quite entertaining and tonight was no exception. It was packed. We were greeted warmly, temp taken, weighed and then we sat down in the lobby. It didn't take long and then we heard it, “SECURITY, SECURITY” A gentlemen must not have liked what he had been told and proceeded to pound on the glass, fall back into his seat, then pound on the glass, puke on the floor.... Well you get the picture. So I'm expecting Paul Blart and his Segway to come blasting around the corner and save the day but nope, not quite what happened. Two elderly gentleman who before the put their security hats on looked like they had been waiting with the rest of us. In fact I had been worried that we were waiting so long one of them might not make it. Well they jumped up and 5 minutes and 20 feet later they got to this guy and with one shake of the finger he was out of there. They puffed out their chests went back to their seats and for one of them back to their nap as well. Either that or he was pulling the old Clint Eastwood hat over my eyes and pretend I'm asleep move. Well after that excitement and two hours of playing on my iPhone I noticed that my son was finally starting to fall asleep on my shoulder. I was in that critical moment where if I moved I would ruin my chances for the rest of the night so I sat there motionless staring over his head and watching Sportcenter. Then to my surprise I felt something on my other shoulder. I slowly turned my head so I wouldn't wake him up and sure enough the lady sitting next to me was fast asleep on my other shoulder, and even snoring. So I did what any good Dad does I turned my head back and finished watching the highlights of the day.  

As I look back on that night I find it funny that my wanting to go to the movie to escape a bit and to just “be with me” would have robbed me from who I really am. You see God gave me my kids not as a nuisance or a burden, not even because of how responsible he knew I’d be. No he gave them to me so I could realize what it is to be loved unconditionally to be able to comfort them when nobody else can. To learn to see things as they do. To see the “Cops who took down the bad guy!” and to be able to sit in a room full of strangers and just sit and smile at everyone who walks in no matter their race, gender, orientation, or level of intoxication. And to even share a shoulder with a stranger who as I looked over had tears in her eyes and tracks on her arms and who knows how long it had been since she’d had a Dad’s shoulder to lean on. Thanks lil Man for the adventure, and for keeping that smile on your face. If only everyone could see the amazing world that you do it’d probably be a better place.