A friend pulled her family of five out of church this week because her ADHD son was too disruptive for sunday school. Too embarrassed to demand that they accommodate him the way all schools are expected to, too tired to be defiant, she chose to leave quietly and find a better church for them.
I feel like we have failed them as a church. The world is getting better at being inclusive, so why is the sunday school so far behind? Why was she made to feel like her son was a problem for not being able to sit down? Why was his experience of church a rejection of how he was made?
And yet, what is this familiar knot in my conscience as I sit here in Rainbow, trying not to be afraid of the anxious children screaming and flinging themselves to the floor? That same knot when we received the rejection email from Pathlight, telling us our daughter needs to be in a special school? That stone of guilt in my throat, guilt that I'm fighting my impulse to reject her too.
"I'm afraid I will love her less," I sobbed as the guilt wrecked my body. "No, you won't," K sobbed back, holding me tight as our child slept on obliviously.
It's convenient to have a classroom full of attentive children who can memorise Bible verses. It's convenient to have a child who remembers what she learns in school and understands how to do her worksheets. It's marvellous to have an impressive child.
But convenience is not what we are called to. There was nothing convenient about how You loved us. Nothing marvellous or impressive about us that You should make us Your treasure.
Help us to learn that the "inconvenient child" is precisely who You want us to love.
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