6 minute read
NOT WIRED FOR THIS WORLD
Not Wired for This World Making a Home for Special Needs
BY KATHRYN BUTLER
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Excitement was palpable on the rst day of Sunday school this year. A table featured notebooks lovingly assembled by hand with verses for children to memorize. Teachers chatted with parents about new songs on the agenda, new curricula, new dramas to unfold over the year. As my kids and I waited in line at the registration table, I glanced at my six-year-old and prayed he could share some of the day’s joy. Yet, as I watched, his enthusiasm ceded to anxiety. He stared at a box of name tags as if they were decayed things. A teacher cheered him hello, but he only blurted, “I don’t want a name tag, please.” en he glimpsed the television in the room. “Please, I don’t want to watch a video!” he suddenly cried. He started to backpedal, dragging his sister and me with him. “I can’t watch a video! Mum, I need to go home!” I placed my hand on his shoulder, but he shrank away, as if my light touch induced pain. Other parents stared in alarm. To anyone watching, the scene was bizarre. But to my family, this was just another moment—just another day when our brilliant, compassionate, sweet boy, who loves Jesus even more than he does Legos, fought to cope with a world he isn’t wired to handle.
Love the Sojourner
God has special concern for those who wander in strange lands. He rst commanded the Israelites to care for sojourners in the wilderness during the exodus (Exodus 22:21; 23:9). In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses reiterated God’s instruction before his people entered the Promised Land: “[God] executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:18–19). e Hebrew word for sojourner, sometimes translated stranger, denotes anyone who resides in a country apart from his native home. e Bible includes sojourners among three other groups who are especially needy and vulnerable: orphans, the poor, and widows (Leviticus 19:10; Deuteronomy 10:18). Like those without father or husband, sojourners had little defense against persecution in ancient times. ose who strayed through foreign dwellings found themselves without support, alone in a land where the language and customs abraded their own, where surroundings o ered little comfort, and where their unfamiliarity exposed them to attacks by criminals. Home meant safety, identity, and grounding. To be a stranger was to dri , wrenched from your roots.
Sojourners in Our Midst
In our modern era, sojourners still desperately need care. e lilt of a foreign accent should prompt us to pause, to inquire, and to o er hope and help. Christian love guides us to support refugees and to open our homes to those traveling from overseas. Yet sojourners who share our accents also dwell in our midst. ey sit beside us in familiar clothes each week and speak our same language. Yet they live like strangers, because every day they wander through a world that their nervous systems can’t manage. In their struggles with autism, sensory processing disorder, and
other neurodevelopmental di erences, they experience life as though perpetually uprooted. ey aren’t journeying from faraway lands, but they o en feel just as scared and alone. My son is one of these sojourners. He wasn’t misbehaving on that rst day of Sunday school. Rather, he was struggling with yet another mundane experience that felt impossible. e sticky adhesive on the name tags made his skin crawl. His jammed brain couldn’t distinguish speech from the din of the crowd. Television threatened ashes and sounds he couldn’t control. Even a mother’s touch—from birth, the very de nition of comfort— seemed menacing in that moment. He was just a startle away from a sensory meltdown. e routine stu of life can feel strange, even hostile to special-needs kids. Hypervigilance and anxiety are the norm. In their own towns, their own churches, even in their own rooms, they can scarcely let down their guard. ey seldom enjoy the ease of belonging. As with those who navigate unknown countries, they seldom feel at home.
Special Love for Special Needs
An hour before panic overtook my son in church, he beamed with the peace of Christ. His love for the Lord and for others in the sanctuary over owed so briskly that I couldn’t keep up with him. Even when he can’t di erentiate between a human voice and a bugle blast, he loves and needs Jesus. Kids who nd daily life a struggle need gospel hope. ey need to draw deep, vital nourishment from God’s love. ey need to know that even though getting dressed and eating and going to supermarkets is hard, God designed their every spark and curve. ey must cleave tight to the truth that while birthday parties are too much and other kids don’t understand their struggles, they belong to Jesus. In Christ, they are home. In him, they are loved. Parents, as you nd yourself becoming an island, progressively isolated from a world that doesn’t understand your kids, know that in Christ, God sees you. He sees you awake in the early morning hours, trying to soothe your child to sleep. He sees you turn down opportunities for fellowship because your little one can’t handle it. He sees you wandering, stumbling, striving to nurture the tender sojourner with whom he’s blessed you. Know that in the messiness and the weakness and your failings, God draws near (Psalm 34:18; 2 Corinthians 12:9). Know that the cross covers even the worst moments, when the meltdowns rage and you crumple to your knees. roughout it all, you are ful lling a calling that God laid down millennia ago, in the wilds of Arabia.
Echoing a Perfect Love
In Leviticus, the Lord tells us the following: “You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). Uphold this calling by seeing the kids in your midst who wander as if homeless. Withhold judgment from the child who bolts from a crowded room. Have empathy for the one who shrinks from a worship song. eir disabilities are invisible to our eyes but complicate their every waking minute. As sojourners in a world that seems too bright, too loud, too harsh— too much—they need our love, as an echo of the perfect love they’ll nd in Christ.
Kathryn Butler is a trauma and critical care surgeon turned writer and homeschooling mom. She is author of Between Life and Death: A Gospel-Centered Guide to End-of-Life Medical Care. She lives north of Boston, and writes at Oceans Rise (blog).
