Very often, someone has come up to us and said, “God gave you Mary because He must have known that you would be able to handle parenting a child with a disability,” or some variation of that statement.  While we know that people mean well and are trying to be encouraging to us, it sometimes is hard to hear.  Mostly, it is hard to hear because we respectfully disagree.

We disagree in two ways.  First, and of less importance, we disagree with the statement because it seems to imply that for us, raising Mary has been relatively easy.  And if you are a parent raising a child with a disability, “easy” is not one of the words that come to mind.  Secondly, and more importantly, we don’t think that God gave us Mary because He knew we could handle her.  We think that God gave us Mary because He knew we couldn’t handle her, without His help.  For the first time in our lives, we were confronted with something that couldn’t be solved by working harder or smarter.  This couldn’t be “fixed”.  This was a “God-sized” task, one that required our reliance on God.  It kind of “forced” us into an intimacy with God, because we were desperate to be able to see God as big enough to handle anything that came our way.  Although we might not be able to deal with all the issues of Mary, God was indeed big enough.  Of course, we struggled with why a loving God could allow a child to be disabled; as well as all of those other questions parents seem to have.  But in searching, and asking and crying out to Him, we learned to trust Him.  We learned to trust Him by going to Him with our needs, not because we were super spiritual, but because we had nowhere else to go.  Sometimes, you don’t know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.  Oswald Chambers once said that a strong faith is available only through the door of suffering.  We believe this to be true.  Our faith is strong, not in spite of Mary’s circumstances, but because of them.

It took us some time to get to this place of trusting God with our difficult circumstances.  You may be just at the start of your journey or you may be hitting a difficult milestone, but know that God hears you, loves you and will lead you through your journey.  You are strong enough to deal with the challenges of parenting a child with a disability, because the God who created the universe is with you and in you and promises you that He will be strong when you are weak.