by jphilo | Mar 29, 2010 | Books and Resources, Different Dream, Spiritual Support
The previous posts in this series (Part 1, Part 2) focused on how to pray for your child with special needs. In this final post in the series, we’ll explore ways parents can pray for themselves.
Pray for the Fruits of the Spirit
Remember the list of fruits of the Spirit and character traits listed in Part 1 of this series? You know, the ones to pray for your kids? Well, you can pray for God to multiply those same fruits and character traits in your own life. Your prayer could go something like this:
God, I don’t know how to find joy in my child’s illness. Please show me how to be joyful in the midst of trials. Put joy in my days and teach me to recognize it. Grant me a joyful spirit that will encourage and comfort my child.
You can also pray about your marriage, job, financial needs, health, and anything else. God loves it when you acknowledge your dependence upon him and come to him with your petitions.
Enlist a Prayer Team
One of the best things you can do is start a prayer team. Ask friends and family members if they would commit to praying for you and your child on a regular basis. Once a month, send an email of specific prayer requests for them to pray over. If creating the monthly prayer letter is too much for you, ask someone on the team to write it for you. You call once a month to share the requests, and your scribe can take it from there. The scribe can also print out the email and snail mail it to members of the prayer team who don’t have email.
After the first month, you can send praise reports about answered prayers along with the new prayer requests. You and your prayer team members will be encouraged as you see God answer your petitions.
Keep a Prayer Journal
Along the same lines, you might want to keep a prayer journal. You can list the things your praying about by the day or week and check them off as God gives his answers. Once again, answered prayers are a mighty encouragement and source of hope.
If you have other ideas about how to pray for yourself, please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.
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by jphilo | Mar 24, 2010 | Books and Resources, Different Dream, Spiritual Support
The first post in this series discussed general ways to pray for kids with special needs. As promised the second post provides specific ideas of how and what to pray.
How to Pray
Finding time to pray while caring for a child with special can be almost impossible. Nevertheless, God commands us to pray, and whatever he commands us to do, he also enables us to accomplish. With that provision in mind, here are a few suggestions about how to honor God’s command:
- Pray daily. If you can set aside even a few minutes to sit down and pray, great. But if your child’s care doesn’t allow for that, be creative. Maybe you can pray while doing a mindless, daily task like making the bed or washing dishes. One mom interviewed in A Different Dream for My Child got a large print Bible so she could read and pray while pounding her daughter’s back, which was part of the little girl’s respiratory therapy regime.
- Start small. If you haven’t prayed on a daily basis for your child before now, set a small, achievable goal. Commit to praying five minutes a day for your child. Once you’re comfortable with that, increase the amount of time. In addition to praying for your child’s health, pray for caregivers and teachers, too.
- Start slow. Research shows it takes six weeks to form a new habit. So don’t add anything to your first small, daily goal until the six weeks are up.
What to Pray
You can pray for your child in many ways. Here are a few of my favorites:
- Each day of the week or month, ask God to develop a different character trait or fruit of the Spirit within your child. Ones that apply to children, no matter their ability level include love, joy, peace, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control and kindness.
- Pray scripture for your child each day. When my son, Allen, was at the height of his struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder caused by early medical trauma, I realized II Timothy 2: 21-22 spoke directly to his situation. So I began praying it for him every day. When God began fulfilling those scripture promises, I added II Timothy 3:14 – 15. As you find scriptures that speak to your child’s situation, begin praying them back to God.
Thirty Day Prayer Guide
One of my goals this year is to create a thirty day prayer guide for parents of kids with special needs. Each day would include a character trait or a fruit of the spirit to pray for your child, along with a pertinent scripture. If you have suggestions about what should be included, leave a comment. The more ideas the better.*
*The prayer guide is now available at Different Dream’s Free Stuff page.
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by jphilo | Mar 22, 2010 | Books and Resources, Different Dream, Spiritual Support
If you’re the parent of a child with special needs, you may have questions about how to pray for your child. This three part series will suggest ways to pray for a child whose future may look quite different from that of a typical kids.
Different Prayers
How to pray depends, in some measure, upon your child’s condition or prognosis. Your petitions on behalf of your child will vary in different situations, such as:
- delayed cognitive development
- a chronic physical condition with no cure
- a highly curable physical condition
- a mental or behavioral disorder
- a learning disability
- a terminal condition
In A Different Dream for My Child: Meditations for Parents of Critically or Chronically Ill Children, parents of children with a wide range of special needs explain how they prayed or pray for their kids. Their advice can provide both guidance and comfort as you begin to pray for your child.
Similar Prayers
But no matter what your child’s condition may be, some of your prayers will be the same as other parents’ prayers. This is doubly true if you are a Christian and pray God’s promises to his children on behalf of your children. So you can pray:
- asking God to grow your child’s knowledge and love of Jesus at whatever level they can achieve.
- to give a child’s life, no matter how short or difficult, purpose and meaning.
- giving thanks for the gift of your child’s life.
- for your child’s provision and protection when you are not with him or her.
- for the fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, faithfulness, goodness, kindness and self-control to dwell within your child. (Galatians 5: 20-25)
- to use your child’s struggle to build perseverance, develop character, and bring hope. (Romans 5:1 – 5)
Examples, Please
If these ideas seem more like theory than practice, more abstract when you need concrete examples, don’t despair. The second post in this series will provide specific examples of how to pray for your child with special needs. But until then, leave a comment about how you pray for your child.
Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.
by jphilo | Feb 1, 2010 | Books and Resources, Different Dream, Spiritual Support
Though I’m not a natural at Twitter (as compared to Facebook which is my kind of social networking), the service has been a great way to find other people who assist families of kids with special needs. Using the prescribed 140 characters or less, it recently brought Barb Dittrich and me together.
Barb Dittrich
Charlie, one of the Dittrich’s three children, has hemophilia. So his parents are familiar with quick trips to the hospital, doctors’ waiting rooms, and having a typical day quickly become atypical. Like many parents of kids with special needs, they started looking for support to help them deal with the challenges they faced. Here’s what Barb says about their search:
“In the days ahead we struggled with countless visits to the hospital, financial burdens and a lack of support. All that we read or sought help with was so lacking in Godly influence. We knew that He had to be part of the mix if we were going to survive life with this child. Another couple at church had a wheelchair-bound son several years older than ours and we sought to connect with them. We thought other parents of special needs kids could really help one another through this difficult journey.”
Snappin’ Ministries
Their desire eventually turned into Snappin’ Ministries, which provides a variety of services and support resources for parents and kids with special needs in Wisconsin. You can read more them at www.snappin.org. Be sure to check out their resources page. It is full of great stuff!
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by jphilo | Jan 18, 2010 | Books and Resources, Different Dream, Spiritual Support
The previous post in this series shared five ways to encourage families with special needs kids. The ideas came from Lisa Copen’s book, Beyond Casseroles: 505 Ways to Encourage a Chronically Ill Friend.
Further Beyond Casseroles
Here are five more tips from Lisa’s book, which you can adapt for families with chronically ill children:
- Ask your church youth group to come over and clean up the yard during seasonal changes.
- Don’t ask her, “How are you able to make it financially?” If she wants to share a burden she will.
- Don’t gossip about others. She’ll wonder what you say about her. “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29).
- Send tapes of church services your friend misses to her with a copy of the bulletin and a note.
- If your friend misses a special event in your life, call and say, “I wondered if I could bring some photos over and share it with you. You’re very special to me, and you were part of this day whether you were there or not.”
Buy the Book at Rest Ministries
If you want more of Lisa’s ideas, you’ll find them at www.restministries.com. You can receive the first forty pages of the book free, just by signing up for Lisa’s weekly email newsletter. The entire book and several related products are available at the Comfort Zone Online Bookstore.
While you’re at www.restministries.com, browse around a little. Lisa has lots of resources for people with chronic illness and their caregivers. It’s worth your time to take a look.
Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.
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by jphilo | Jan 15, 2010 | Books and Resources, Different Dream, Spiritual Support
When I hear about parents of kids diagnosed with a chronic illness or special needs, my thoughts and emotions get tangled up, they tie me in knots.
Sound Familiar?
I want to do something to help – take a casserole or send a card maybe – but invisible, tangled threads hold me back. Doubt sets in, and my good intentions seem feeble or silly. Pretty soon, I talk myself out of doing anything and sit home feeling guilty for not reaching out.
What a shame!
Does my predicament sound familiar to you? If it does, you will appreciate these suggestions from Beyond Casseroles: 505 Ways to Encourage a Chronically Ill Friend by Lisa Copen.
Lisa Copen
Lisa Copen is a young mom with chronic arthritis. Though her book is written for friends of chronically ill adults, if you change the wording just a little, most of the suggestions work for families with special needs kids, too. Here are five of her ideas to get you thinking:
- Just listen . . . until it hurts to not say anything. And then listen some more.
- Ask, “What do you wish people understood about your illness?”
- Instead of saying, “I will pray for you,” say, “I’d like to pray for you right now, if that’s okay.”
- Ask if she would be interested in writing something for the church newsletter, maybe even about the subject of living with chronic illness.
- Ask, “Do you have an errand I can run for you before coming over?”
Beyond Casseroles
In the next blog post, you’ll find five more of Lisa’s ideas and learn how to order the book. Until then, leave a comment about your favorite from the ones listed above.
Do you like what you see at DifferentDream.com? You can receive more great content by subscribing to the quarterly Different Dream newsletter and signing up for the daily RSS feed delivered to your email inbox. You can sign up for the first in the pop up box and the second at the bottom of this page.
