Welcome to the first entry of OUR SPECIAL MARRIAGE! This site seeks to give couples who are facing the challenges of raising a child with special needs the tools, insights and most importantly, the hope to have a marriage that doesn’t just survive, but thrives.  We also anticipate that it will become a safe place for you to ask questions and hear from other couples.

We have been married for 33 years and have 3 children. Our daughter Mary is 32 and considered multiply disabled and non-verbal. Our marriage was on rocky ground for quite a while and it wasn’t difficult for us to understand why the divorce rate of marriages when there is a child with special needs is so high. Everything was just harder.  Mary was born 10 months into our marriage. So not only were we new to marriage, we were entering into a life that we felt completely unprepared for. The uncertainty of Mary’s future, the constancy of doctor’s appointments and not being able to do simple things like going to church or on family outings took a huge toll on us. Our struggles were real, and at times overwhelming; but God used those struggles to teach us about who God is in our lives, who we are and how we relate to each other as a couple.

In the last several years, we have conducted several retreats/seminars on marriages affected by disability.  We’ve also done some counseling for couples. In an attempt to provide resources to help couples, we discovered that there is very little out there that addresses the unique circumstances facing  couples who are raising a child with special needs. There is information on parenting children with special needs, but not on the marriage. There is a lot of wonderful marriage resources, but like so many situations we face, it is sometimes hard to apply those principles to us. We believe that our marriage is thriving, only by the grace of God. We desire that through this blog, we can help others receive hope and comfort that we ourselves have received from the Lord.

We believe that your marriage matters ….to you, to your children, to God and it is worth fighting for.  God wants your marriage to be strong and a source of encouragement and joy, but the urgent needs of raising a child with special needs tends to push marriage to the back burner. Parenting a child with special needs puts extra strain on the marriage, our marriages requires extra care. … And that is why OURSPECIALMARRIAGE.com is here.

We hope you find it helpful….Let’s get started!