God Speaks Through Special Needs

“Long ago God spoke in many different ways to our fathers through the prophets, in visions, dreams, and even face to face, telling them little by little about his plans.” (Hebrews 1:1, TLB)

The prompt for our June post is a timely one for me. I am going to go as far as to say through this prompt God has spoken to me. A few days ago I was reviewing my blog, Scarred Joy, and decided to refocus it. The only thing is, I wasn’t sure what this refocus would be. I knew whatever direction the blog was to take it would retain my tagline of “touched by grief, held by hope.” The blog would still not shy away from the painful side of life.

Over the past few years my family has undergone life changing and significant experiences. This includes the death of my parents and my wife’s mother, the passing of five grandbabies due to pregnancy loss and the birth of six more grandchildren including two labeled by society as “special needs.”

My daughter and her husband have three children and the two children termed, “special needs” are part of their family. The lives of “special needs” families have a soft spot in my heart. Families with children who are perhaps not considered “typical,” face lifestyles that also are not typical. They are those who walk through life often misunderstood and not always welcomed by the typical world.

As grandparents my wife and I are part of the special needs world of our daughter and son in law. We have set ourselves apart, so to speak, from the typical world of grandparents. We have our times of grief and tears, yet the joy our “special needs” grandchildren hug us with is a gift beyond words. Such gifts remind us of God’s love. He sees beyond our “special needs” and loves us still.

 

The world special needs families live in is an emotional and multi-faceted one. The emotions are raw at times. This is the rawness the typical world of families is most often unaware. Day to day living for many special needs families may unexpectedly change. Plans may have to be altered as caring for a child takes precedence due to some unforeseen emergency.

As I write this blog post, my plan for my Scarred Joy blog is to include stories etc. of families and individuals who live with “special needs.” We may often think of “special needs” as primarily referring to children and other people living with such challenges as autism, cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, etc. A family having experienced the death of a child may also be considered as having special needs.

In using the term “special needs” I am cognizant it applies to people at any age or circumstance. A woman, who is now a widow or a man grieving the death of his wife, may have special needs. I also think of such things as people with acquired injuries or a terminal cancer resigning them to live with a special need.

Since becoming a grandfather a number of years ago I have taken on a greater love and view of life.  Far from being perfect and whole, life is fragile and in a sense enigmatic. As I look through my grandfather filter I see not all of life is black and white, right or wrong, good or bad. Life just is and it includes mystery!

I especially dedicate the Scarred Joy blog to grandparents who may be all too familiar with special needs. I believe grandparents have a unique bond and role to live out if they are part of family where special needs are “normal.”

https://scarredjoy.ca/

My Home and Native Land by Susan Barclay

Point Pelee

I don't know what it's like to grow up as a First Nations Canadian, but I know what it's like for a white Anglo-Saxon protestant whose family has been here two to three hundred years. My maternal grandmother's ancestors arrived from Londonderry, Ireland in 1768, while my grandfather's predecessors emigrated at least as early from Cork. They settled in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland respectively, pioneered the land and fished the sea. We can well imagine, looking from the position of all our modern conveniences, that the hardships were many and life fragile. Most of us take their perseverance for granted, but we stand on the shoulders of their labour.

Grand Pre, Nova Scotia

My grandmother's parents were farmers. Of their eight surviving children, only three were boys and as young men all were keen to relocate to Ontario for work. After a time, they persuaded their parents to move as well. My grandmother, the youngest child, was seven then. When she was twelve, her father succumbed to influenza. Her mother remarried but developed stomach cancer, and by fifteen my grandmother was an orphan. She went to work as a seamstress in one of Toronto's infamous sewing factories.

Heart's Delight, Newfoundland

My grandfather also lost his father at a young age. He too was the baby of the family. His older siblings left the "rock" for Toronto and he and his mother followed when he was fifteen. But my grandfather didn't like it and they returned to Newfoundland for two more years. When he was seventeen, they came back to Toronto for good, but it would be another 25 years before Newfoundland joined with Canada. For years Grandpa worked for the iconic Canadian company Massey-Ferguson.  

At the New Brunswick border

During my growing-up years summer vacations included only a few destinations, and unless we were camping in Ontario they all began with the letter N: Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and New Jersey (where my aunt lived with her husband and family after marrying an American). No one in my family traveled by air and it was a long drive to the east coast, but we entertained ourselves with I Spy, the Alphabet Game, and I Packed My Grandmother's Trunk. And thank goodness for the radio, though it wasn't much help in Quebec when you only had grade school French!

Quebec City

These were the years that included the grade 6 class trip to Ottawa and the grade 8 trip to Quebec City. Memories were made indeed! I have a photo of Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau just after he emerged from his limousine on Parliament Hill, and I'll always remember my first taste of tourtiere and the visit to Ste Anne de Beaupre. 

Pre- Confederation Bridge days

After university, and as my grandparents aged out of long car trips, my Canadian travels expanded. My mother and I drove to Prince Edward Island one year and took the Ontario Northland Railway to Moosonee another. I took my first plane trip and went to Vancouver alone. Several years later my husband and I took our children to Alberta. We drove through the northern United States, then up through Lethbridge and Calgary to Banff and Lake Louise. We came back to Ontario through the prairies and Manitoba. All of it was beautiful and very different. We are blessed to live in a country with such diversity.
 

Capilano Suspension Bridge, British Columbia

Alberta badlands

At the RCMP Headquarters in Regina, Saskatchewan

Margaret Laurence House, Neepawa, Manitoba

I am proud to be a Canadian through and through, born and bred. I am fortunate, I know, to have visited all ten provinces, though there is so much yet to see. My bucket list doesn't include the territories and Nunavut - I don't expect I'll ever make it there. But my husband has never been to British Columbia and I wish I'd gone as far as Vancouver Island when I was so close. This summer I get to go back to Gros Morne National Park in Newfoundland, then up to the Viking settlement and across to Labrador which I've never seen before.

Moosonee, northern Ontario

I could go on and on about my love for this great country, all that it represents and all that I've been privileged to see. Instead I'll conclude with this final thought: it's so easy to take what we have for granted. Let's do something different in honour of Canada's 150th birthday this year. Every person has a voice. Every Inscribe member has a gift for words. Let's take up our pens (or whatever tool you prefer) and make a stand for what we believe is required to keep Canada one of the best places in the world to live. Write articles, blog posts, letters to the editor, your member of parliament, your MPP or MLA. Canada has a great past. Let's do our part to shape its future, that God's hand of blessing would continue to rest here.

God keep our land glorious and free.  
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In addition to her posts here Susan maintains a website at www.susanbarclay.blogspot.com

A Legacy of Faith - Susan Barclay

My grandparents weren't perfect people, but they got the main thing right, and in so doing left a legacy of faith that continues to impact the lives of their children and grandchildren today.

I am thankful.

I am thankful for their example of what it looks like to actively seek a deepening relationship with Christ through daily prayer and reading God's Word. I am thankful for their great love for me and for their constant presence in my life, important investments that my earthly father was unable or unwilling to make.

Does their legacy live on in me? Ah, that is the question. I know I have a long way to go in gaining the crucial disciplines of regular prayer and Bible study. I can argue that I have a busy life as a wife, mother, employee, volunteer, and (aspiring) writer. But don't we all have time for the things that really matter to us? If Christ matters most to me - and I say that He does - won't I make time for Him? I'm not sure He buys the "I go to church, I give to the Lord's work, I write on Christian subjects" line. I know I don't.

I am thankful that He is patient with me. I am a work in progress and He knows it. Today, if you struggle as I do to be a disciplined follower of Christ, will you join me in turning over a new leaf? Let us commit to reading God's Word and praying on a daily basis. Even if when we start it's a mere ten minutes, I believe God will bless us and encourage us to spend more time with Him. Suddenly we will "find" time we didn't know we had!

As Steve Green sings in Faithful, may those who come behind us find "the footsteps that we leave, inspire them to believe." There can be no greater legacy.