As you busily plan your holiday celebrations this and every year, what do you consider to be the most critical? How to plan for the many relatives that you’ll visit, the gifts they require, or the food to buy, make, and consume? Or maybe you’ll finally take that special vacation or trip, now that you have a little extra free time.
I’ll bet going to your church’s Christmas service may fall a little further down on your critical list, but for families like ours, it’s not as easy as saying we’ll just “show up to whatever,” since for many of us, church services are not easy on any given week. For larger holiday celebrations like Easter and Christmas, they can present some unique circumstances.
If you’re like our family, you have the benefit of support from your church for your special needs child, which usually comes in the form of an extra helper or helpers in the Sunday School program, but holidays are always a little different. For one thing, Christmas Eve services are always on top of the regular Sunday services, and that means no classroom or student room where you can take your child. It’s every family for themselves. Though we manage okay, our Christmas experience for five years at our now former church was essentially sitting at the back of the church, close to the doors in case we had to take a quick walk to get re-centered, make our share of joyful noises to the Lord, step right back in, and do our best to make it to the candle lighting around the church at the end. My wife and I helped each other so we could always say we made it through another year.
There is another part to this experience though, something that was always tough to swallow in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and it had to do with how our son was included in the student performances. The kids’ choir always did performances during Advent on one or more Sundays. When he was in preschool and kindergarten, it wasn’t a big deal, since most of the kids at that age are distracted or have short attention spans on stage. Many kids needed hands-on help on stage. Our son also needed hands-on help, but as he got older, and the kids got bigger and could handle longer, more complex songs, and sometimes dances, my child stuck out more and more. The church was wonderful in how they handled it, always having a helper or two to guide him on stage, stand with him, and in many cases have a tight grip on him so he wouldn’t run off the stage or right into the band. I never had an issue with my son being up there, I was always proud of him, glad he was included, yet in the back of my head I always told myself maybe next year he won’t need as much help. Maybe he can do more, maybe he’ll just stand there, even if he doesn’t interact, maybe he’ll just stand.
Last year was probably the toughest, as I watched all of the kids his age do a whole routine to a song they had been doing each week during Advent, complete with a little dance routine. I watched the smiling, joyful faces as they did their steps in time with the kids’ leaders, the cell phones snapping pictures and recording the whole event, but my phone didn’t come out for a photo.
When I think about how to resolve these feelings, I go back to a Christmas past: the first one in fact, to see who got the “royal” invitation to the birth of the Christ child—namely, the lowly shepherds out in their fields. Shepherds were perhaps the lowest rung of society’s ladder in those days; they would have probably been dirty, smelly and considered gross, certainly not people worthy of being present at the birth of a King. Yet the King of Kings specifically called these folks to the event of His birth, because they were exactly the ones that He came into this world to save, to bring home, to call to His table. If the Christ Child can welcome these souls to the celebration, then why wouldn’t my child be welcomed to the party on stage at his own church?
This Christmas, we will be celebrating at our new church home, where there is no kids’ choir, no children’s performances. We’ll just show up at one of the services, allow the worship arts team to take us through everything, and if our son needs a break, we can just walk him out anytime.
I can’t help but share something that occurred just as I was finishing this post, that I think illustrates more than anything the power of God in circumstances like these. My wife called me into the kitchen, where she was busily working on our son’s communication program for his Ipad, and showed me what she came up with for the holiday performance at his school. With the help of our son’s music teacher, we’re able to record the chorus to the song his class is performing and place a tab on his Ipad screen, which will allow him to play that part of the song in the program.
He may not ever be able to do all that his classmates or friends at church can do. He may never recite a poem or master a dance step; he may only ever be able to press a button on a screen to be included. But there is no doubt for me that God’s will IS to include him. If I ever forget that, I’ll simply remember the shepherds and the star, and know that our King became human so that He could know us in all of our pain. Even as I write this now, He is watching and listening. He even gave me the perfect ending to this story.
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