Ain't No Yellow Brick Road

…You are not your own. You were bought at a price. Therefore, honor God with your body. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

When we claim Christ as Savior and King, when we choose to where his name as Christian, we surrender all including our bodies and the right to do to them or with them whatever we please.

We acknowledge we are creature – a lesser being than our Creator. We submit. We give up independence. We quit all claims to choice. We no longer walk in the manner of the world but rather choose to walk in the manner God leads us and into the places and spaces he chooses for us.

What’s more, we admit, publicly and privately, that Christ’s crucifixion is personal – a real, important, intimate event in which we played a role. We admit our sin put him on the cross and that His blood bought our freedom for now and forever.

In other words, we were prisoners of war. We were chained in enemy camps. We were held against our will and lulled into a false sense of understanding about our world and our role in it by Satan. Christ is our liberator, the one who stormed the enemy camp, who unlocked our chains and set us free at the cost of his own life, his own glory, his heavenly throne.

He paid the ransom demanded by the enemy who held us, misled us, used us. After such a transaction, we no longer lay claim to independence. We no longer can think ourselves self-reliant, independent, or the masters of our own fates. That kind of thinking led us to chains in the first place.

We are needy, dependent, and totally lost without Christ. We are safe only when we surrender ourselves to the will and the refuge the arms of Christ provide.

Christ wants not just us, but our child as well. He lays claim to this child’s imperfect body, disabled muscles, misshapen brain. He wants the eyes that don’t see, the legs that don’t walk, the spines that bend and contort in ways not typical. Our Christ, our King, wants this child and expects us to help him or her work through the same struggles we have faced within our spirits.

It is up to us to teach our child of such sacrifice, to tell him our story and the ways we came to claim Christ as our own. Our war stories must be of evil and good, of right and wrong, of mistakes made and the outcomes we wish could be forgotten. We must tell of our day as prisoner and the way in which the King of Kings gave up his throne to set us free.

We must help this child to see the same kind of fight would take him prisoner, that his own tough life and damnable struggles with his uncooperative body, are but one more battleground where Satan works to take us in. We must teach him to be the warrior who understands he can’t win until he lets Christ become his champion and conqueror.

… if you look for (wisdom) as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. Proverbs 2:4-5

God makes it clear that we must search diligently and mightily for wisdom. It will not come to us unbidden, as a stranger at the door.

Rather, we must treat it as treasure worth finding, silver worthy of a lifelong search. That means it is not easily available, nor easily found. It’s hidden, buried, put away for the person who goes in search it.

Our search for such knowledge, our quest to find God’s wisdom for our life and that of our child should spur us to act. The promise of such a prize – the wisdom offered and taught to us by God Almighty – should take us place to place, lesson to lesson, verse to verse. We should hurriedly but determinedly pull out the necessary tools – prayer, meditation, worship, study -- and set about the hunt.

What’s more, our child should see and understand this search. He must be taught that we are in search of God’s wisdom for our life and for his. We must make it clear how valuable and necessary such wisdom is for the working of our life in God’s purpose.

We must take hold of that wisdom as we would silver and other fine treasure, keeping it safe, keeping it close, and sharing the fruits of such wisdom and the story of our search with others, as they express need and interest.

In such searching and sharing, we will find not only God’s wisdom but the way in which we should apply it to our life and to the life of our child.

As we make such application, as God’s knowledge and wisdom transform our own life, we help our child understand the need to seek and search for such treasure. We must foster and encourage his desire for a share of such wisdom, especially given that God has created him as one who walks the path of the disabled.

Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted. Psalm 25:16

Parents of disabled children walk what can be a lonely, isolated path. The journey is one of unpredictable turns and many uphill stretches. Many can imagine but few can know the demands of this trek.

Yet, we can do more than grit our teeth and endure by sheer determination.

We can and we should cry out for God to help. We should cry out loudly, often, and long for his peaceful assurance, his companionship, his healing, soothing touch. His provision can flatten the hills before us, calm the anxiety that develops within, and show us the best way to bring grace and hope to tough times.

Such a cry requires us to admit our suffering, our fears, our struggles. We must submit our will to his. We must set aside our own plans and seek his purpose for us and our children. We must admit our defeat.

But the moment we do, the minute our hearts truly break, the moment our will truly surrenders, he provides all we need: light to chase away the darkness of the unknown and unwanted; companionship for the journey; help for the passages we cannot traverse alone.

What’s more, when we cry out, we teach our child there is no shame in calling out to God in times of need, in times of hope, in times of suffering. We teach our child he must not suffer in silence but rather he has the freedom to call out to a God that knows him intimately and understands completely the tough times in which he lives.

No good tree bears bad fruit. Each tree is recognized by its fruit…Luke 6:43

One thing we so easily forget on the journey of the disabled parent is that our children are our fruit – they are living demonstrations of what is taking place inside of us.

The true, unvarnished, most transparent measure of me is my son.

He is an indication of my work, a manifestation of what is taking place within my heart, the fruit of my own walk with Christ. I speak here not of his physical impairments or the deficits that limit his brainpower. I am talking about his spirit, his still-developing heart, his yet-to-be-finished persona.

The good in me cannot be hidden. Neither can the bad. My mouth cannot cover up the truth about who I am and what kind of heart is living inside me. Bryson tells all.

The truth of me is not his uncooperative limbs or his impaired brain. The truth of who I am and what is going on inside of me is in the essence of who he is becoming: the way he treats people, life, and his own tough circumstances point to me.

If I teach him about the beauty and the power and the grace of Christ, he will be fruit worth while. But if I let the dark spaces of my heart dominate, if I let my spirit wither, if I frequently ignore God – my truth will be known in the way my son acts, behaves, lives. Nothing I can say will change the truth of what goes on inside me and, ultimately, my son.

People know good fruit. They see its luster, its fetching color, and its unmistakable glow. Likewise, they know when it’s infected or soft or when it’s been left too long on the shelf. When it becomes bitter, it’s useful only as animal feed.

I must be willing to give up myself to Christ in such manner that his goodness, his mercy, and God’s grace can reach my son and take root.

That doesn’t mean I won’t have long walks through parched valleys or that I won’t let doubt and my own desires steal some of my days. But it does mean that most days, I will be about the business of Christ, living as his disciple and trying to teach my son to do the same.

…Now choose life so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God. Listen to his voice…hold fast to him…Deuteronomy 30:19-20

When we become the parents of a disabled child one of the most critical choices we make – for us and for our child – is whether we will be pitiful or powerful.

When we choose pity, we choose to be less. We choose to diminish ourselves, our hope, our very spirit. We look for pity, choosing it over the envy, the admiration, the respect of friends and neighbors who see might see our plight and smile at the pluck with which we tackle it.

When we choose pity, we teach our child that it’s OK to be less than all of our potential; it’s OK to be small; it’s OK be enveloped in our own misery. We say it’s OK to let the trials and the tough conditions in which he or she must live to control them, enslave them, intimidate them.

When we choose pity, we diminish the very power and plan of God.

But when we choose to be powerful, we expect God to empower us in ways we cannot always understand or even imagine. (Jeremiah 33:3). We say, I cannot, I will not, I choose not to let this tough stuff defeat me.

When we choose to be powerful, we refuse to surrender. We acknowledge the tough place in which we live and the tough times that will surely come but we refuse to let them diminish the power that God breathes into every human life.

When we choose power, we expect God to lend his hand to our endeavor and to provide us with what we need to endure and even overcome. We see our friends and neighbors lend a hand not out of pity but out of compassion and a desire to be a part of something unusual, something bold, something special.

When we choose power, we chose hope. We choose a life not yet imagined; we chose to be enlarged by the power and love of God Almighty. And, in making such choice, we become witness and we teach our child to do the same.