Care and Support

Caregivers, Mental Health, and Mobilizing Church Support: An Interview with Jess Ronne Part 2

 Caregivers, Mental Health, and Mobilizing Church Support: An Interview with Jess Ronne Part 2

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.

Caregivers, Mental Health, and Mobilizing Church Support: An Interview with Jess Ronne Part 1

 Caregivers, Mental Health, and Mobilizing Church Support: An Interview with Jess Ronne Part 1

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.

Part 3: How Churches Can Accommodate Adopted Children and Teens with Disabilities

Part 3: How Churches Can Accommodate Adopted Children and Teens with Disabilities

In the final part of this 3-part series, Sandra Peoples shares age group-specific strategies for churches to welcome, include, and create a place of belonging for adoptive children and teens with disabilities and traumatic backgrounds.

Part 2: How Churches Can Provide Long-Term Support for Adoptive Families

Part 2: How Churches Can Provide Long-Term Support for Adoptive Families

God's directive for adoptive families is the same as it is for every family. But adoptive, special-needs families experience extra challenges to meet this calling. In part 2 of this 3-part series, Sandra Peoples shares practical tips for churches to provide places of inclusion and belonging for families.

Rest Is A Weapon

Rest Is A Weapon

The Lord knows that always feeling tired keeps us in a weakened state. Rest, on the other hand, strengthens and sharpens us. Here are a few small strategies that the Lord helped me implement to feel more rested, and grow stronger mentally, physically and spiritually.

Churches That Encourage Adoption Should Be Trauma Informed and Disability Accommodating

Churches That Encourage Adoption Should Be Trauma Informed and Disability Accommodating

Churches rightly encourage adoption and support families going through the adoption process, but are they prepared when the child or teen comes home and is diagnosed with special needs or trauma-related issues? Sandra Peoples shares three-part series on a theology of disability that can serve as a motivation for churches to meet the needs of these families.

Learning to Sit at the Feet of Jesus

Learning to Sit at the Feet of Jesus

I have spent my entire life as a servant. My entire life I’ve been a caregiver. But in recent years, with moment after moment of near mental breakdown, I’ve realized something: I have grown tired because I have spent my entire life running from just ‘being still.’

Finding Hope When Caregiving Stress Leads to Faith and Mental Health Struggles

Finding Hope When Caregiving Stress Leads to Faith and Mental Health Struggles

When I learned my daughter would be born with a more severe genetic disorder than my son’s, the news devastated me. After her birth, I began to experience debilitating symptoms of PTSD. Months later, I made what should have been a lethal suicide attempt. My case was extreme, but is it that uncommon for caregivers to experience clinical mental health conditions?

The Sweetest Gift

The Sweetest Gift

I serve as a special needs pastor at a small church in Kansas. I have had a mentally trying time for the last three months. It was on a particularly-defeated Sunday morning that I received the single greatest gift I’ve received all year.