Mentoring

Mark 2

¹³Once again Jesus went out beside the lake. A large crowd came to him, and he began to teach them. ¹⁴As he walked along, he saw Levi son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax collector's booth. "Follow me," Jesus told him, and Levi got up and followed him.

¹⁵While Jesus was having dinner at Levi's house, many tax collectors and "sinners" were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. ¹⁶When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the "sinners" and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: "Why does he eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?"

¹⁷On hearing this, Jesus said to them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."

We all are aware of what is called the great commission in Matthew 28:19, that is, to “go and make disciples…”  And, as followers of Christ, we should be doing that, though I suspect many of us, including myself, have fallen short in attempts to follow His directive.  But, when thinking about Jesus’ encounter with Levi, he was at his place of work.  Much of Christ’s earthly ministry was spent mentoring, especially the 12 that he called to be his disciples.  Because many of us spend a majority of our waking hours during the week at our place of work, we, too, should be looking for opportunities to mentor others, whether they are already followers of Christ or not.  We know that our Savior is concerned not only with the spiritual part of our being, but the whole of it.  Mentoring may only start out as teaching about work related things and guidance in the person’s career, but can often lead to the spiritual as well.  I am thankful for the opportunities He has given me over the last several years to mentor others at work.  Investing oneself in others takes a lot of time, but is quite rewarding.  The most recent person I was mentoring just left the company, so I’m praying for the next person to mentor.  Are you?

Prayer for Special Needs

One of the regular reminders from @worldPrayer is as follows: “Families, that have special need kids or handicapped or terminally ill members really do need our prayers, so please.”  But, “How can I pray more specifically?” you might ask.  These are some of my own observations and thoughts.  Parenting special needs children brings with it additional stress that manifests itself in various ways and changes as the child, or children if more than one, grows.  Sadly, many parents buckle under the pressure and let it affect their marriage, often ending in divorce.  Pray that parents will heed the exhortation in 1 Peter 5:7, “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.”

There are many decisions parents must make about their special needs children, such as “Should we have this surgery or treatment for our child?”  Or, “Should we take our child to an out-of-state physician for treatment?”  Or, there is this question we may have to make a few years from now: “Should we have our child live with us as an adult or place her in an assisted living facility?  These are just a few; there are many more.  Pray for wisdom for making these decisions.

There are extra financial needs that accompany special needs children.  Sure, insurance covers many expenses, but there are others that aren’t covered.  Certain equipment that is deemed “not medically necessary,” such as a potty/bath chair often isn’t covered and can cost over $1000.  A wheelchair accessible van is a major expense that we are likely to incur soon.

Parents, especially those with younger children, may still be going through the grief cycle and need strong emotional support.  Even after reaching the “resolution” or “acceptance” phase, there are still emotions that one deals with.  Seeing typical children playing outside with their friends and knowing that your child can’t do those things and may not even have friends to come over for play is hard emotionally.  The extra time spent caring for your special needs child makes it more difficult to take time for you to pursue hobbies or interests.  When there are other siblings in the home, and in our case a twin with his own special needs, balancing time between them is a struggle.  Needless to say, once we get the kids into bed, we don’t have much energy left.

With the added demands on time, it’s easy to neglect physical needs, such as exercise and eating right.  It’s also a struggle to maintain consistent quite times in the Word and in prayer.

So, the next time you see that tweet from worldprayr scroll down the window of your favorite Twitter client and you take time to pray, hopefully, you will be able to pray slightly more intelligently for those dealing with special needs.  And, we can be thankful that we have a great intercessor, the Holy Spirit, praying for us on our behalf.

An Early Start to Life

And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. Matthew 18: 5

Seeing this picture stirred up emotions and reflections back to the birth of my twins. The picture is of one of them. Though my memory retention isn’t as good as others, there are many details that I do remember. My wife’s pregnancy progressed along normally, except for some light spotting. Two months later, on a Thursday, my wife felt like she was having contractions. We were scheduled to attend birthing classes that night at the hospital, but instead we went to get checked to make sure everything was ok. There was a flurry of activity to attempt to stabilize things. After spending the night, we were informed that she would have to remain for the rest of the pregnancy. Over the next few days, I spent a lot of time at the hospital, but toward middle of the next week I did go to work some. That Friday morning, January 14th, 2000, I was at work and a little after 8:00 am received a call from the OB/GYN that I needed to get to the hospital, a 30+ minute drive away, and quickly departed, speeding much of the way.

Upon arrival I quickly donned the normal attire of hospital scrubs and headed to the OR for the emergency C-Section. My son was brought out first, followed by my daughter. At just over 26 weeks gestation, there was much to be concerned about as the chances of survival are lessened when born that early. There was a flurry of activity in the OR as teams of nurses and others hovered over each child to provide life support to stabilize and evaluate their conditions. I believe their weights were 2 lbs. 7 oz. and 2 lbs. 2 oz. Within minutes they were whisked away to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), and I went to the recovery room to wait for my wife. It was a couple of days after that we had some time to think about names for the kids, and we chose Tyler and Rachel. Rachel was named after my wife’s mother, who passed away when my wife was 8 years old. We chose Tyler for our son's name.

Tyler’s stay in the NICU was 9.5 weeks, and Rachel’s 12 weeks. It wasn’t until about 2 weeks after their births that we were actually able to hold the kids in a special way knows as Kangaroo Care. (That’s Tyler below.)

While in the NICU, Rachel had heart surgery on my wife’s birthday. Rachel got very sick at one point and we weren’t sure if she was going to make it. For premature infants, it is common practice to conduct a cranial ultrasound at 10 days following birth and then just prior to discharge. Rachel’s scan didn’t show anything at day 10, but did show PVL just prior to discharge. It was at that point that we learned there would be a possibility that she would have Cerebral Palsy, though it was too early to know the impacts.

We are all faced with difficult circumstances that make or break us. I came across this quote the other night from Albert M Wills, Jr., and it has a lot of truth to it: “Life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it.” Many marriages fail when there are special needs children involved, usually because one can’t handle the stress involved. Thankfully, by God’s grace and His enabling power to keep commitments, mine isn’t one of them. Yes, we struggle at times, and endure a lot of stress that comes with twins that have special needs. However, we love them very much, though not nearly as much as our Father loves us. Our children are gifts from Him, and we have welcomed them as such. Though we are far from perfect parents, we do our best. Just this past Monday night as we were getting them in bed, Tyler made a statement about doing good things and getting to heaven, which provided another opportunity to explain the gospel to him. We pray that he will understand soon what it means to belong to Christ and understand his grace.