Equipping Special Needs Parents with Biblical Wisdom and Practical Help.
Welcome to The Way of Perseverance where I talk about educational support, social and emotional growth, adulthood preparation, church belonging, and faith for the long haul when parenting special needs kids.
My name is Melissa. The following blog posts grew from my writings to myself for myself. My story has been shaped by living with challenges forcing me off the well worn path. The prose I wrote anchored God’s truths to my mind facing darkness, confusion, and desparation. The best part of the story story is the wisdom and opportunity revealed along the path. My Wonderful Counselor led me step by step along the way of perseverance.
My Story
The day after my 12th birthday a blood clot lodged in my spinal cord leaving me with permanant damage to the nreves into the muscles of my torso, hands, and legs. In time I regained some function, the right side of my body regaining more than the left. Walking required assistance and a brace on my left ankle. Long distances required a wheelchair.
Simple tasks like buttoning clothes, tieing shoes, or grasping a pen I did without a thought before that pivotal day. Now the last three fingers on my right hand struggled to do the job eight fingers and two thumbs did before. An alternative way to perform each task progress slowly with much trial and error.
Sudden quadraplegia changed the pace and direction of my young life. No child has the resources, maturity or experiences from which to cope with hard realities of life or to reconstruct a life with broken pieces. The new path begins going uphill and the obscured by fog of .
Years later God blesses me with three sons, all requiring parenting skills I did not possess (ADHA, Failure to Thrive, and Autism Spectrum Disorder).
By the time I was 52, my marriage had failed.
The direction my life’s path took me places I could not have imagined.
God’s wisdom and opportunities
I felt compelled to write down the wisdom and opportunities God generously gave me along the way. These written soliloquies anchored my struggling mind and diminishing spirit. He lead the way of perseverance leading to a life of joy, purpose and fulfillment I could not have anticipated. This way led to a quiet strength when life didn’t go as planned.
It didn’t occur to me these words would ever see the light of day.
As a child growing up dealing with special needs and as a parent of three children with special needs, God’s way of perseverance placed me on a unique platform from which to offer real hope and life-learned wisdom.
The Community
Do you feel like God should have given your child(ren) to another parent because they would do a better job?
Do you feel like your kids need more than you can give?
Do you struggle with knowing how far to “push” your child that struggles?
Do you fear for your child’s future?
This space is for anyone who feels the weight of raising special needs kids.
It’s my privilege to offer some God-centered insight shifting that weight to the shoulders of one who can bear it-Jesus.
James 1:2-5
Count it all joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance and.
Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.
Let’s Talk:
Day-to-day life is still a challenge (and in some ways becoming more challenging). I’m compelled to continue to ask for that wisdom as the stages of my life change.
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Count it all joy,
A little bit more…
Melissa is a retired Speech-Language Pathologist working in public schools and hospitals. She and her husband reside in rural Oklahoma. Her time is spent leading a Women’s Bible study at her church. She and her husband serve homeless neighbors under a bridge one evening a week with the City Lights Foundation of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Once a month they co-lead a Colson Fellows cohort. Traveling to see and spending time with kids and grandkids is the best. Between them, they have 5 adult children and 13 grandchildren. One adult child and 2 grandchildren are waiting for them in heaven. Baking bread and weaving are crammed in small cracks of time during the week. She cannot stay out of the Bible, mining the gold of God’s word.
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