Unseen: How We’re Failing Parent Caregivers and Why It Matters made its global online premiere May 20. This is part 2 of the in-depth questions we posed to Jess Ronne to help our readers better understand the issues raised in the documentary and how churches can be supportive of caregiving families. Read part 1 here.
Unseen: How We’re Failing Parent Caregivers and Why It Matters made its global online premiere May 20. We caught up with Jess Ronne to ask some in-depth questions to help our readers better understand the issues raised in the documentary and how churches can be supportive of caregiving families.
How do we obtain the Lord’s favor? Or earn our stamp of approval from the Almighty? We want it, right? Our gold star? I thought about people from the Bible, people with personal lives of pain, hardship and calls to obey difficult circumstances. What was it about them that led to God’s favor?
We have become incredibly angry. We are spiteful and hateful and bored. Jesus, what do we do with this? How do we fix it, Lord? The answer to most of my questions included a simple, time honored truth: we are to bear fruit.
“You have to grieve normal I advised as she cried, You have to grieve normal or you’ll feel like you’ve died.” A poem for a new special needs mama.
It can be difficult to understand the complexities of raising a child with special needs if this calling is not part of your existence. You should care, because children with special needs are the least of the least of the least of these.
Approximately five years ago, my husband Ryan and I began experiencing a mental health crisis. We lived in rural Tennessee with our 8 children, including our son Lucas who has special needs and profound autism. Our experiences in rural America, however, were not in vain. One of the ideas that emerged was that perhaps a documentary was needed to dive deeply into the unspoken mental health crisis that many caregivers silently suffer through.
The more I meditate on the actions of these heroes of faith, the more I see how everything is connected to obedience; actions intertwined with movement forward, and obedience becomes the barometer of faithfulness and even surpasses character flaws, personality quirks, and bad choices.
Anger, guilt, anxiety, loneliness, stress and exhaustion. Pick a feeling and a special needs caregiver has experienced it, and not occasionally or seasonally, but often daily. We could all use a helping hand from a friend or a stranger or a church parishioner, someone who gives us a tiny boost of hope when we need it the most, but special needs caregivers are in an exceptional category. Here are seven tangible ways you might consider lifting their exceptional burden just a bit.