Our good friends and wonderful supporters of Rising Above, Jimmy and Kim Thorpe, are in a Cincinnati hospital expecting to give birth this week to their first child. Some you who follow this blog may have attended one of our By the Brook retreats this year and met the Thorpes. They are caring, giving, selfless supporters of our special needs community. They have a heart for all of us.

They have given so much to our ministry. Jimmy wrote the song, “Hope is Rising” as our ministry theme song and performed it live for us at several events including the By the Brooks this year. Kim was our production manager at the events. But that’s just a small fractional part of what they do and mean to us.

Today I’m asking for you to help my friends.

Their daughter Ruthie will be born in the next few days. Ruthie has a rare and very complicated mass crushing her lungs. The doctors will have to deliver Ruthie, and operate on her immediately to remove the mass while her umbilical cord is still attached.

In other word, Kim will be her own daughter’s life support system during the operation.

The procedure is so rare only a handful of hospitals even perform the surgery, and even those that do only see a few cases a year. More than likely, this will happen Tuesday.

After surgery Ruthie is looking at a long time in NICU, potentially several months.

Many of you who read this have been there. You remember the anxiety over life and death surgeries, rare diagnosis’s, and excruciatingly long hospital stays away from home.

You remember the dazed, tired, and wearily overwhelming feelings from such ordeals. You remember wanting to cry but being too tired to find the tears.

You remember putting on the brave confident face on for everyone else, and then lying in bed scared to death at night when the lights are off and no one can see.

I think that is why I hurt and ache so bad for my friends this morning. And why I can’t get them off my mind.

But I also know that the Thorpe’s have a faith that few people have. And I know they are clinging to our God with all their might right now. Because God is good, all the time.

It’s when we are in the very furthest heights of the storm that we often find ourselves the closest to the hand of God. And it is through the thickest, darkest storm clouds that we clearly see God’s presence.

And I know that Ruthie is wonderfully made, created for a plan and a purpose, and destined to glorify God somehow through all this.

This is God’s story, and this is Ruthie’s part in His story.

Would you stop for just a moment today when you read this, and say a prayer for little Ruthie and the Thorpes?

He went on to say that he is not an ethicist but that this is the way he understands and believes. He does however purport to be a man of God.

I am not an ethicist either so I can’t speak on the subject from that frame of reference myself. But I am a man of God and I can speak from that point of view.

He’s wrong.

He’s beyond wrong. He is, no pun intended, dead wrong.

Most of the other words I would wish to use to describe his thoughts are best to not even be uttered or written.

And I suspect that the overwhelming majority of spouses of those with Alzheimer’s would agree that he has missed the mark on this one. Their lives are unbelievable hard, emotionally draining and difficult beyond imagination. They deserve our honor, respect, and gratitude.

And if I could be as bold to speak for those of us who try to live our lives under the sovereignty of God, who teach and preach the truth of scripture, allow me to make this disclaimer for the rest of us.

“The views and opinions of this individual  do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of followers of Jesus Christ or scripture. Much less the view of those caring for a family member stricken with a terminal condition.”

Where would he have us draw the line? If divorcing a spouse who has Alzheimer’s is OK in his book, what about leaving a family because a child has a special need?

After all, isn’t the birth of a child with a special need or lifelong disability, “kind of like a death” to use his own words. Death to dreams. Death to self. Death to the expected life.

Whatever happened to “in sickness and health?” Whatever happened to the idea of making a covenant or taking a vow?

This morning I stared at the television mortified as this minister, this “spokesman” for God, made those statements. And I turned to my wife and said “some of the big name evangelists and  well-known ministers should speak out on this.” And I hope some will.

Because I’m afraid the unchurched world, those who don’t follow Christ, will think this man speaks for us. Or even worse, that he speaks for God.

Well I’m not well-known and I’m not a big name minister.

But I do have a voice and right now it’s full of righteous indignation. And I’m using it today to say those remarks were reprehensible, repulsive, and repugnant. And he needs to repent and recant what he said.

I wish he could meet my friend John. John’s wife battled multiple sclerosis most of her adult life and spent her last years bedridden in a nursing home. John was always there for her and by her side. He would make arrangements to bring her to church every Sunday.

At her funeral, I asked him how he did it.

He turned to me and gently said, “I took a vow.”

That’s what a real man of God would say. “I took a vow.”

With Jon Alex being non-verbal, haven never spoken, I joke that I have the only teen age son who has never talked back to his dad!

It is difficult though to watch him grow up physically while we know mentally and cognitively he remains such a young child. I have this young man in my house in so many ways, but yet I have an infant son too- all in the same child.

We are blessed to have Becky’s sister Susan, who loves Jon Alex like her own child, live near us to keep him overnight when necessary. We also have this one care giver Tina who has worked with Jon Alex for so many years now. She is our trusted babysitter on the rare occasions when we get a break for a couple of hours.

Those of you raising a child with special needs know how rare and treasured those moments are! Those of you who follow this blog, one of the biggest blessings you can give to a special needs family is the gift of a couple of hours respite.

When we do get a chance to go out to dinner together, or have a date night, we have noticed that Jon Alex typically will not go to sleep until we return. He might cat nap, play in his bed, or such- but he will fight to keep his eyes open until we get home.

Often his babysitter will say upon our return “‘he keeps sitting up, I can’t get him to close his eyes and fall asleep.”

And yet when we do return and go into his room everything changes. Once we say good night and hug him, he will usually turn over right away and go to sleep.

It’s like he was just waiting to make sure we get home before he could rest himself and call it complete.

It strikes me ironically how this is the reverse of the typical arrangement between parents and teenagers. Usually it’s the parents who stay up restlessly waiting to make sure the teenager returns home safe.

I remember as a teenager always seeing a lamp on in my parents bedroom until I returned home at night. Now in my house it is the other way around.

The whole thing reminds me that my God is the same way. He isn’t going to rest or call it complete until all His children find their way home as well. That’s why He is always watching, always hoping, always doing whatever He can to get all of us home safely too.

Scripture speaks of a  God who does not sleep nor slumber.

We have a God waiting to hug us when we return home as well.  Go ahead. He will leave the lamp on in heaven for you.

Friday morning on the way to work I was listening to my favorite sports radio talk station. They were having callers call in to talk about their favorite sports memories involving their own dads. It was kind of a Father’s Day tribute show to dads.

I actually grew up with an awesome dad. Some of my favorite childhood memories involve sports and my dad.

He coached my little league baseball team.

He put a basketball hoop on a telephone pole and managed to find time to play with me every day.

He was a high school basketball coach and from the age of two and up I followed him around the gym all the time.

He coached my high school basketball teams. I got to play on the team that won his 500th game as a coach. We have conflicting memories of that night. I remember having the game-winning assist. He remembers a controversial referee’s call on me that almost cost us the game. (I like my memory better and it is my blog after all.)

Some of my favorite times involved the two of us going to University of Tennessee football games together. We have our standard things we do on every trip and I have a boatload of great memories. It’s a tradition we’ve continued until last year when I had to stop because of my foot injury.

So why the funk every year?

Every year at this time I replay those memories in my head and I get a little melancholy and a little sad.

With my son’s developmental disabilities and special needs, he and I won’t be able to continue those traditions.

We won’t go to UT football games together. We won’t play basketball in the driveway together. Those opportunities, like so many others I once dreamed of, aren’t going to happen. We really can’t even watch a game together.

So I can’t seem to help but get a little sad at the thought.

With so many limits on what he can actually do, one of my son’s favorite activities is swinging on his therapy platform swing.

We have a therapy platform swing mounted from the ceiling in Jon Alex’s room, and he loves swinging in it a couple of times a day.

Saturday morning, in the middle of my little pity party that no one but me attended, I went into his room and swung him for the longest time. I made race car sounds and plane noises and whatever sound effects I could make to get him to giggle and smile.

Jon Alex can’t talk. Never has. So I did most of the talking. I just talked to him interspersing my sound effects and goofy noises.

He never spoke but he communicated back to me his own way. He loved our time together and showed me at the end by hugging my neck and flashing me his big toothy grin.

And then he leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

I’m pausing here to wipe the tears off my keyboard because I cry every time I think about it. It wasn’t what we did, or couldn’t do together.

We just spent time together.

That’s when God spoke to me, reminding me that it’s not what I do for him either. He just wants me to spend some time with him, Father to son.

And that’s what I should do when I let my emotions affect me like that.

I should spend some time with His Son. I’ll do the talking just like with Jon Alex, but He will find a way to communicate with me in His unique ways.

And I’ll leave knowing He loves me and that our time together was significant.

These insects burrow out every 13 years for just a few weeks. But boy do they make an impact in just those few weeks! They line the trees, cover the sidewalks, smack into your windshield, and make the seemingly loudest noise non-stop.

Last week we visited my in-laws who live in Nashville. When we got out of the car at their house, the noise was literally deafening. We were practically shouting at each from just a few feet away in order to be heard over the cicadas in the trees.

My father-in-law has suffered some partial hearing loss in recent years. For whatever reason, frequency or pitch, he can not hear the cicadas at all. Even though he is standing beside me having a conversation, all he hears is me. But I can barely hear him over the din of the cicadas.

The experience made me think about hearing from God. I’m always desiring to hear more from God, to recognize when he is speaking to me and discern what he is trying to tell me. But the background “noise” in my life is too much of a distraction.

By noise, I mean the influence of popular culture and norms today. There is so much competing for my attention that it blocks my ability to hear his voice sometimes. Things that shook us to our core, shocked our sensibilities, offended us as followers of Christ– now so many of those things are cultural norms that we don’t “hear” them anymore.

Deep down it’s not that we accept them so much, it’s that we have just grown complacent. We are letting influences into our minds that are so far from God and his ways and thoughts. And we don’t even realize it. Or like my father-in-law and the cicadas, we just don’t hear it anymore.

But you can’t ignore it anymore than you can ignore the noise from the cicadas.

If we are going to be tuned to what God is speaking into our lives, we have to learn how to tune out the noise from our culture today.  We have so many voices competing for our attention. Which one will we listen to and which ones will we tune out?

Take this challenge with me. Try a one-day “noise fast.” For one day, no computer time, no Facebook, no social media, no email, no cell phone (set on vibrate for emergencies,) no phone calls, no texting, no television or radio, and no ipad, ipod, iphones! At our house we call it a technology fast. I typically will do it on a Saturday.

Throughout the day just whisper to God to speak to you, reveal things to you, demonstrate his presence, just to be with you as you go though your day.

See what happens when you can’t hear the noise anymore,

A condition I have caused it and from his standpoint there isn’t really any way to fix it. My best option was to learn how to live and cope with it and hope for the best. The foot would be permanently deformed as the bones would just haphazardly fuse back on their own.

Faced with that prospect, I decided to seek out an expert specialist and have him take a look. So I made an appointment with a foot and ankle surgeon at a well-known medical university hospital for an evaluation.

I went in and had the foot examined and a whole new series of x-rays were made.

While I waited for the surgeon to come in and give me his opinion, I must admit to a certain amount of fear and trepidation. What if I have to just deal with this condition all my life? What if there is nothing that can be done? What if this is just hopeless?

When the surgeon came in, we exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, and then he got right to the point.

“Your foot is an absolute mess. It’s a wreck. But I can fix this. I know how to treat this and we’re going to fix your foot for you. That’s what we do. It won’t be easy, but I deal with this all the time and I can take care of it.”

All of the apprehension, fear, worry and dread just drained off of me. In an instant I just felt so much relief to know it wasn’t hopeless, that it could be fixed.

That started me thinking. So many time we make a mess of things in our lives that need fixing. But we buy into the lies that it’s hopeless, that we just have to learn to live with it.

And so we go one feeling like our life is too messed up, that there is nothing that can be done.  We keep going, trying to do life, while holding onto conditions that we could get relief from.

Guilt, shame, anger, bitterness, fear and anxiety, jealously, depression.

Or we think our lives are just too broken to be fixed.

When all the time, God is sitting there saying to us, “I can fix this. This is what I do. No matter what the condition of your life, no matter what is broken- I can fix you. That’s what I do. I deal with this all the time, it’s my specialty, please let me fix this for you.”

But it’s up to us to make an “appointment” to go see the “Great Physician.” I happen to know his office is open 24  hours a day, seven days a week. He never closes.

Go ahead and call him today. You don’t have to keep living with it one more day.

Go ahead and call him.

Unfortunately, my “good foot” has now developed the same condition in the last week as I learned I have five broken bones in it and must wear a cast for the next three months while confined to a wheelchair or walker. Again.

So I spent my 44th birthday this week getting CT scans, fittings for a cast, and procuring a wheelchair. Again.

I started having flashbacks to two years ago and how much of an ordeal that was. And in honesty, I got pretty down about going through yet another setback. It’s easy when faced with a long-term hardship to slip over to the “dark side.” And if you are not careful, you’ll stake out your cave and line its walls with depression and negativity. You’ll decorate with bitterness, anger and frustration.

Becky and I have experienced so much together in our life already raising a mentally and physically disabled son. We have experienced sorrow and suffering by the sovereignty of God. And even as a pastor, sometimes I have to catch myself from going over to what I call “the dark side.”

As a result I want to share 5 quick things that I focus on that help me.

1. Focus on serving God and others. When I get over my “it’s all about me” mentality, and remember that I was created and exist to glorify God, it changes my whole perspective. I realize that all my struggles are ultimately part of his plan to use my life and he will use them to accomplish his greater purposes.

2. God is telling his story, not mine. I can’t look at “snapshots” of my life and try to figure out what God is ultimately doing. God is telling a story a that started long before me and will end long after me- I’m just privileged to play my part.

3.  Don’t go the dark side without a lifeline. My wife and I have recognized that sometimes you can’t avoid periods of depression in real life. We have made a pact that when one of us struggles, the other will stay strong and be there to “throw a lifeline” to the other. Surround yourself with friends and loved ones who will be there to do the same for you.

4. Control your thoughts. Take every thought captive and line it up with the truths of God’s word. If it is contradictory to what you know to be true about your identity in Christ, reject it as a lie from the devil.

“We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

5. Celebrate and remember the good times. Throughout years of exile and persecution, the children of Israel would always make it a point to take time for festivals and feasts remembering the good things God had done for them in the past. We tend to focus so heavily on the negative things in our current situation or past experience that we easily lose sight of the countless times God has delivered us and provided for us.

It’s not like Jesus didn’t warn us. He not only warned us of hard times, but in the same breath declared our ultimate triumph because of his ultimate triumph. So it ultimately comes down to our choice. Do we focus on our troubles, or do we focus on the fact that Christ has overcome!

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33).

I know which one I choose.

The report runs several pages long and lists in detail all these goals and skills they are working on. Then each entry gets a numerical score to indicate whether progress is being made and, if so, to what degree.

I use to cringe when the report came out.  I knew what it would say.

I dreaded it to the point that I quit reading it.

Page after page of seeing the same things mentioned over and over along with notations of no progress being made. The entire process was just so depressing and demoralizing.

Over the years I’ve come to terms with it and can now accept it.

As parents of a profoundly developmentally challenged child, I’ve come to terms with a lot of things over the years.

My son will never excel at athletics. He will never be a scholar. He will never paint a masterpiece, solve complex math problems, write a novel, play a musical instrument, or score the winning basket.

And I’m OK with all that.

What I want for Jon Alex is for him  to realize the love of Jesus Christ and then allow his life to be a mirror that reflects that love to others and draws them to Christ. In other words, just for his life to reflect God’s glory in every way and point them to Jesus.

That’s what matters most. That’s a life of true significance.

And from the moment of his birth I have seen God’s hand on his life, giving him a plan and a purpose and a destiny that glorifies God.

Meanwhile you and I still struggle. We think we have to earn something- achieve something- accomplish something.

We measure our success in life by the size of our paycheck or house, by our title or career, by what we accomplish, build, or master.

And so we go on wasting our lives on things that just don’t matter.

What if every one of us got up every day determined to do nothing else but receive the love of God, and then be a mirror that reflects his love to the world?

What if?

I believe we would change the world one day at a time.

Smoke billows from Japanese nuclear plant as school kids still wait on parents.

Radiation found in Japanese milk and vegetables.

Foreign plot foiled in Bahrain.

Death toll in Japan tsunami disaster climbs to 21,000.

Forty-eight miners die in Pakistan.

I came back from lunch today and those are the news headlines on my laptop.

As I go about the rest of my day, those things will linger in the back of my head.

When I get home tonight I will sort through vast medical bills from my son’s recent hospitalization and my own eye surgery earlier this year. I’ll try to figure out what I can pay this month, knowing I’ll be paying in more income tax next month as well.

That remind me, I need to start organizing my documents, statements, and receipts to get to the accountant right away in preparation for doing my income taxes.The yard needs mowing, Becky’s computer has crashed, and I’m pretty sure one of our fish in the aquarium is eating the other fish one by one.

As I get ready for bed tonight I’ll be thinking about all the meetings, deadlines, and responsibilities I face this week.

Meanwhile, in his bed room, Jon Alex will kiss his mom on the cheek, roll over so I can cover him up, and will be asleep before we can even slip out of his room.

He doesn’t even know Japan and Libya exist. Today when he was hungry, all he knows is someone made sure he had plenty to eat at every meal. His every need was provided for all day. He never even thought about what would happen next.

He spent his time surrounded by people who love him unconditionally, take care of all his needs, and make sure he lacks for nothing. He enjoyed a day with no stress, no anxiety, and no worry.

He rode in the back seat of the car trusting his Dad to plot the course, and get him safely home. He never questioned the route or the manner in which I guided us.

He was grateful for every meal, every act of kindness, and every sign of provision.

He found joy in the simple things, contentment with a few things, and celebrated love above all things.

His approach to life epitomizes the way God wants us to relate to and trust in him.

So I lay in bed wide awake while he slips off to dreamland within seconds of climbing into bed.

No wonder.

My son Jon Alex is completely non-verbal. Caleb does have some limited language, mostly sounds.  Sometimes, even though the rest of us don’t understand them, they communicate together in a way only they understand.

I’m convinced one day they will write a tell-all book together and discuss what they’ve learned from riding in the back seat together.

When something isn’t right in Caleb’s world, he will shake his hands vigorously and say, “fix it daddy.” Often no one knows what has got him so upset, but something has clearly triggered him into repeating over and over, “fix it daddy.”

Last week Caleb’s mom told him how sick Jon Alex was and that he was in the hospital. Together Caleb and his mom prayed, “fix it Daddy.” When I heard about the prayer I cried because I knew God had heard that sincere prayer from the heart. I was pretty sure that all heaven stopped in silence and leaned towards earth to hear Caleb, praying for his little friend, “fix it Daddy.”

Books have been written on prayer. Countless books, essays, teachings, and sermons have been produced on faith. For hundreds of years, theologians have debated prayer, faith, and God’s interaction in our world.

Caleb doesn’t read books. Caleb doesn’t know any theologians.

Caleb knows God.

And that’s all Caleb needed to know. So Caleb turned his head towards heaven and politely asked his Daddy, “fix it.”

No wonder Jesus, in referring to children, said we must become like one of these. Caleb’s figured out the simple truth that the rest of us try to over-complicate, over-analyze, and over-think.

My friend needs help. My “Daddy” in heaven can help. When Jesus prayed “abba Father” it literally translates, “Daddy.”

“Fix it Daddy.”

I’m a pastor who every week meets someone struggling with faith, searching for answers, and wrestling with doubts. I try to explain faith, belief, and prayer. I try to provide the answers.

But next time I’m going to just send them to Caleb. He can explain it better than I can.