Our Church Just Doesn't Get How Hard Life Is

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Our Church Just Doesn't Get How Hard Life Is

by Monique

James 5:11

Hi Kathy, my name is Monique Berrian and my husband and I have 3 children. Our youngest is 4 and he was diagnosed with autism at the age of 2.

Ronald and I were in leadership at our church in 2 major ministries and because of this, we were constantly at several meetings or rehearsals every week and we would place our youngest son on our oldest son who is 16 now. My husband and I were struggling because we were bearly getting any sleep and we were also really not attending to the needs of our youngest or our other children because we were always at church.

We felt that God was moving us to help individuals with autism and their families. So, we spoke with our Pastors about this and about the needs of those of us with special needs children. In the beginning they were excited for us but once we could not perform all of the duties that were placed on us, they began to look at us differently.

My husband and I have to alternate every Sunday so that one of us can receive the word because our son does not tolerate church at this time and there are no Sunday school classes or anything geared towards our child and there are no other children there with special needs because they left due to either the response of people to their child and also there is nothing set up for us.

My Pastors are not interested at this point with starting any ministries for those with special needs. I'm not angry with them however, I feel very alone and I feel that my husband and I are not able to do things right in their eyes. When we bring our son to church and he can't tolerate it, then our Pastors want to know why we can't make him stay a little longer.

When we alternate for church they are disappointed in the fact the we are not bringing our son with us. So, I just wanted to reach out to someone who can give us some type of advice who knows what it is like to raise a precious child with this disorder.

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Our Church Just Doesn't Get How Hard Life Is

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Dec 29, 2011
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autism
by: Angela flokstra

Hi,Monique
We have four children.The second one has a mild form of autism.pdd-nos.
From his 4 to 6 year he had difficulties attending church and sonday school.
Every sonday there would be another sundayschool leader.As you know a child with autism doesn't handle changes very well!
We had to walk him there and talk to the teacher and explain what ben has.Sometimes it went well other times we had to keep Ben with us during the service.We bought an nintendo-ds for him.
We allowed him to play on it at the bad days.
Now Ben is eleven and used to go to church.
We changed church though.Very near our house.
We can bike to it!It is asmall community and Ben has found his place.Our church leaders believe in healing and vasted and prayed with us for ben.
My advice to you would be to be in an environment of .love and believe..You will need all your strenght to keep this child going and your other children and your marriage! Ask God his will.

Oct 20, 2010
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LIFE IS HARD
by: G HUBBARD

LORD knows life is hard, but He offers daily help...just talk with him on these hard life qauestions. He is there 24/7/365. We just have to ask that first question. Our mission is to SPREAD THE WORD...TALK WITH THE LORD. Autism is no cake walk, but talk with the lord..today our programinfo/lyrics g. hubbard p.o. box 2232 ponte vedra fl 32004 blog http://talkwiththelord.blogspot.com/

Oct 07, 2010
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We'll Pray And Press On
by: Anonymous

I truly believe what you are saying is right and we really do thank you for taking the time out to write back to us.

Through all of this, God has told my husband and I the same thing and that is, we all make mistakes and that most people who are not in our situation find it pretty hard to relate to what we go through.

I do believe that God will see us through this difficult time and I believe that something great will happen as a result of this.

I will keep in touch and let you know how things are going. We will keep you and your family in prayer and please do the same for us. God bless you.

Monique

Oct 07, 2010
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Comments Continued - Part 2
by: Kathy Medina

(continued)

My advice is to keep going to church. Don't apologize for not volunteering. Your priority is to be there, to have your family there and get fed the word of God. Pray for God to change the hearts of people there to help. Or to bring a person with a heart to help to your church. In the meantime, you and your husband take turns going or walking around with your child.

No church is full without us and our children being there. I do think that we have to use good judgement and not disturb services or classes.

Joni And Friends is everywhere. They will go into any church anywhere and set up a special needs class and train volunteers at not cost. They are the ones who helped our church. When your church is ready, just contact them, they have some great ideas with their program called, "Through The Roof".

Remember that the church is filled with regular people. And people make mistakes. And I don't think that anyone who isn't directly affected by a special needs child can really understand what we go through. Don't let anyone make you feel bad for not doing more in the church. This is a season that your child really needs you and you really need to be plugged into the word of God. God will carry you. And I promise, this season of very difficult time will pass.

Oct 07, 2010
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Perservere - Part 1
by: Kathy Medina

I know EXACTLY the feelings that you described and are going through. My husband and I go to a huge church with about 4,000. We have been there for just over 20 years. We have 3 children, and our middle son has autism. We were very involved in church prior to autism coming into our lives.

Our church has an adult special needs sunday school but they are not set up for kids. I always thought "1500 children in this church and I am the only one that has a child with special needs?!" Somethings wrong here.

I went to the pastor and they had no desire whatsoever to start a special needs class for children when there was only 1 child...mine. Yet, I was frowned upon for not volunteering more of my time in the childrens department. We attempted 5 times to have a class start up over a four year period. Nothing. No help or encouragement from the church at all.

My family and friends encouraged my husband and I not to give up and to make a change. Yet its pretty hard to make a change when your child is not in a good place. So here is worked for us.

We prayed ferverently for 4 long years for God to lay it on someone's heart to help us with Zack on Sunday mornings. Every Sunday morning we got dressed and went to church. We would take Zack with us. We had him sit with us. Some Sundays he would last 5 minutes and sometimes longer. If he disturbed service or class (we brought him with us to Sunday School class and sat in the back row) either my husband or I would take him out. We would walk around the church campus until church was over.

If Zack was really bad, one of us would stay home with him and the other would take the other kids to church. It was hard, no doubt. We felt very alone. But we knew we were teaching our other two children that you don't drop out of church when life gets hard. We honestly felt like the devil was trying to run us out of church.

It took 4 years and then we got a call that someone in our church..who we did not know...they called the church and said, "we have 4 grown children. One has multiple disabilities and she is now married." They took a year off and came to the church office to ask if they knew of anyone in the church that had a special needs child. They were offering to watch that child for one service while the parents went to service.

What a great call! So for 4 years, this couple walked our son around church and just babysat him while my husband and I went to service together. Then we took Zack to our Sunday School class.

Then we got a new childrens pastor. The first thing he did was start up a special needs Sunday School class for Zack. It's been 2 years now and there is one other child with Zack.

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Our Church Just Doesn't Get How Hard Life Is

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Our Church Just Doesn't Get How Hard Life Is