Stained Glass Masquerade

If you’ve ever been on a church greeter team or a hospitality crew for a church, you know how much time and effort is invested in making everyone that walks through those doors feel welcome. We want to make the introverts feel like family. We want to get the families with kids checked in smoothly. We want to grab the extroverts and plug them into serving as soon as possible. This effort is laudable. However, what happens when a family walks in with a child who has a significant disability? How often are those greeters prepared to welcome and support that family? Can they offer more than a forced smile and a nervous greeting? Do they understand how woefully unequipped their church might be to support that family?

I’m embarrassed to tell you how many churches we’ve attended over the years. Since Noah has been diagnosed 8 or so years ago, we’ve probably attended 20 to 30 churches at least once. To be fair, some of that was our own insecurity and pickiness. But to be honest, most of it was us trying in vain to find a church that was equipped to support and accept a child with a severe disability. It wasn’t long before they and we realized that we didn’t belong..

Nearly every church we attended meant well. Nearly every church wanted to be welcoming to us. Some would tell us “just bring him and we’ll figure it out”. None of them appeared to fathom how much of a disaster that would be for us, for them and most importantly for Noah. Like it or not, Noah is different. He requires a certain level of support in everything that he does. Flippant, well meaning overtures are worthless in the scope of Noah’s care. These polite gestures always seemed to end with us trying again and failing again. It always highlighted just how far apart our coarse, bruised world of special needs was from everyone else’s solemn, joyful world of wafers and hymnals.

This time has been different. This time we found others who also have family members with special needs. This time we found others to buy in to the vision and indeed take the vision and run with it better than we could have alone. This time we feel people get it. This time we feel Noah has a chance of finding a church home for the very first time. We’re not there yet, but this time I feel a little hope that there is a real light at the end of the spiritual tunnel. This time I feel I can let my guard down a bit with God, resting in his future promise rather than wrestling with him in the present.

If there is a chance Noah can be accepted and supported for who he is, maybe there is a chance that I can be accepted and supported for who I am. If we can be accepted and supported for being a special needs family, maybe we can begin to let others see that we are more than that. Maybe others will stay in our lives. Maybe we’ll stay in theirs. Maybe the love of Jesus is stronger than maybes.