Author: carlos

When my firstborn little girl was diagnosed with a disability I started to doubt a lot of what I thought I knew about the world. I am a rule follower by nature and had mistakenly thought that if I followed all the “shoulds” and “should nots” during pregnancy that I would deliver a perfectly healthy little person. How naïve! Even though I never would have admitted to this, I think that in some part of my mind, I believed that bad things did not happen to good people. Now I look back and think that I was so young and unaware that life is definitely not all so easily defined or understood.

My precious, sweet little toddler named Luci might not ever have a conversation with me, she might never go to college, she might never get married, she might never tell me that she loved me. It was almost too much to bear in the beginning, and I will tell you that it took me to my knees. I really doubted God and His purpose in giving Luci to us. I was so overwhelmed by the feelings of guilt, despair, and just wondering what I needed to do to help my little girl that I couldn’t take a step forward. It was during this time of personal darkness for me that I held on to one truth. The truth was that the little girl I loved with all my heart going into doctor appointments, tests, and assessments was the same little girl that was riding home in my car with me after the devastating news and diagnosis. Many doctor appointments came and went with more bad news and discouragement. But as I would look in my rearview mirror and see Luci’s beautiful little face staring out the window from her car seat, I would remind myself of the one thing that I did know, I loved that little girl with my whole heart before the doctor appointment and I was driving home with the same little girl that I loved with my whole heart. No matter what a doctor said, I had Luci and I loved her beyond a diagnosis that didn’t define her. She was just my little girl, and for those long rides home, I would find comfort in the one thing I knew for sure.

Her face is sweet, her eyes are blue, her hands are beautiful.

I’ve had to come to terms with the reality of this diagnosis. How can it be God’s will for my beautiful blonde granddaughter to be in a special-needs class? How can it be fair to watch her challenges and how hard it is on my son and his wife? How can God give a special needs child to a couple who are in full-time ministry? It doesn’t seem fair.

I’ve put my hands over this child’s head for 12 years and begged God to heal her, but at 58 years old I’m finally getting it. I am finally seeing the true gift of Luci in my life and in my family. One of the things that has done for our family is my six other grandchildren reach out to special needs children in their schools. Also, my son and his wife now are involved in ministry to the special needs community in churches and connecting families to each other.

So now, 12 years later, I wonder where would I be without Luci in my life. Every day with Luci is difficult and beautiful, heartbreaking and heartwarming, painful and powerful.

Our whole family is blessed because we have Luci in it and I believe our pain is never to be wasted but to draw our hearts closer to each other and to our Heavenly Father, who knew that Luci would change the world by changing me, her grandma, and everyone she touches.

My heart was challenged with our special needs coordinator when we noticed what we were doing for Special Needs in our own church. God helped us build this amazing Children’s Facility for kids which looked like Disneyland with all the bells & whistles, yet for our special needs children we had two ordinary rooms with very little equipment, no appropriate curriculum, being taken care of with fewer resources, while a few special needs family members could have a couple of hours off to enjoy the service. Please do not misunderstand, I’m thankful we had a least something because I would later hear stories of family after family being turned away from churches who could not handle or did not want to deal with a special needs child. Most families are shut in because it is just too difficult to fight getting your child together to go to a service & then fight the challenge of what can happen once you get there. I begin to hear about multiple families that would watch our service over the internet because they felt like there wasn’t anything for their child. They many times feel forgotten. They feel like the church does everything for the quote “normal kids” but they feel many times special needs kids are the last ones thought about.

We began to pray about it, talk with parents of special needs, talk to other churches, & ask God how we could not just provide a place for children with special needs, but actually see them being developed while their parents were getting a much needed respite to go to church & be inspired to have hope in spite of their circumstances. So through prayer, the grace of God, research, & the love & hard work of our team we developed what is called The Champions Club. A state of the art facility with each room built for a surprisingly affordable amount of money where special needs kids can be developed while their parents go to church. It has a “educational room” where kids can learn to read, write, spell, & do different educational games. It has a “sensory room” with equipment that expands all the senses to help kids respond in multiple ways. It has a Physical Therapy room with an obstacle course, swing, specially made trampoline, a parachute, & much more. It has what we call the spiritual therapy room where we teach kids who struggle expressing feelings, or speaking, to communicate through music, bible stories, sign language, & a christian special needs curriculum in Spanish & English that we have developed through our relationship with 252 Basics & their curriculum.

The response has been overwhelming. We now offer the Champions Club in 6 different services in both Spanish & English. We give God all the glory for He has done it all because He loves these children & families so much. We now have over 200 special needs families that have been a part of the Champions Club. Now new Champions Clubs are scheduled to launch in 2012 in New York, Texas, California, Illinois, and Washington DC. If you would be interested in starting a Champions Club at your church I would love to connect at craig@lakewood.cc. Let’s let kids and families with special needs know the they are not forgotten anymore.

As a parent, you understand the importance of being powered up and ready. After all, if you don’t have something ready for your kids, they will have something ready for you; right? Pause and think about everything you have to do to be ready on a given day. You start running from the minute the alarm rings. And then you do the same thing the next day, and the next day, and the next day.

As a parent, you are a giver – it’s the nature of being a mom or dad. At its core, parenting is attending to the needs of your children. You give yourself away.

Here’s a question for you: How well are you doing receiving so that you have something significant to give your kids? One of the unspoken realities of being a Christian parent is that if you aren’t intentional, your own spiritual life will suffer as a result of giving yourself to your family.

As I look back on my childhood in the church, it seems like the Sunday School lessons I remember the most are the object lessons. I remember one of my Sunday School teachers using a sponge to teach a lesson about the importance receiving before you give. A sponge doesn’t have water when squeezed unless it has taken in water first. Simple concept I know, yet 30 some years later I still think about it often.

How many parents go through the motions week after week, nothing more than a dried-up sponge? They look like a sponge, act like a sponge, and even muster up something spiritual to share with their kids now and then. Yet, they often give without taking in themselves.

A.W. Tozer said, “Worship is the missing jewel of the church.” (Pause and think on that.) Let’s zoom in a little closer. Is worship the missing jewel in my life? In yours?

Personal worship and time with the Lord is critical in the life of the Christian parent. It will make or break you. Pastor Rick Warren said recently that one of the main reasons pastors fall is because personal worship dries up. (They are walking sponges – dry as a bone.) The same can be said for parents like you and me. We must make our personal walk with the Lord a priority!

How can you keep your sponge full? Ultimately, that’s a decision only you can make. Maybe you need to get disciplined and start saying yes to the right things and no to the wrong things. Perhaps you need to come up with a plan for personal worship. The YouVersion Bible app can help you do this. Maybe you need to get some rest, or find a Bible study partner, or schedule regular appointments with God in your calendar. How you keep your sponge full is up to you and the Lord. The critical thing is that you start… now!