| Inspirational |
| Strongest Dad in the World [From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly] I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck. Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day. Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right? And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life. This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. `He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an institution.'' But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to he engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. `There's nothing going on in his brain.'' "Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want to do that.'' Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore for two weeks.'' That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!'' And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with living Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such rd-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon. `No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive ld and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race icially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year. Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?'' How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried. Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think? Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together. This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time'? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time. ``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.'' And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.'' So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life. Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day. That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy. ``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.'' Here's the video.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjPrL3n63yg |
| Dear Heavenly Father, There are times when we feel how helpless we are to make life turn out alright for our children. In our own strength, I am unable to keep accidents, evil, and disease from touching them. There are times when we wonder what the future holds, especially for ______. Lord, in those times when we feel helpless, remind us that all of our hope for this precious child is in you. You have a plan and a purpose for his/her life, and your mercy and power are sufficient. Lord, in this day I pray that you would use us to help mold and shape him/her. Give us great wisdom to know how best to help him/her continue to reach his/her potential. But most of all, help us to always trust you for those things that we cannot control, knowing that your love for him/her is even greater than ours. In Jesus' Name, Amen |
| Prayers |
| Inspirational Stories and Letters |
| Dear Heavenly Father, There are times when the _____ family feels helpless to make life turn out alright for their children. In their own strength, they are unable to keep accidents, evil, and disease from touching their little ones. There are times when they wonder what the future holds, especially for [child's name]. Lord, in those times when they feel helpless, remind them that all of their hope for this precious child is in you. You have a plan and a purpose for his/her life, and your mercy and power are sufficient. Lord, in this day I pray that you would use them to help mold and shape him/her. Give them great wisdom to know how best to help him/her continue to reach his/her potential. But most of all, help this family to always trust you for those things that they cannot control, knowing that your love for him/her is even greater than theirs. In Jesus' Name, Amen |
| For Friends of Exceptional Children Blessed are you who take time to listen to difficult speech: For you help us to know that if we persevere, We can be understood. Blessed are you who walk with us in public places, And ignore the stares of strangers, For in your companionship, We find havens of peace. Blessed are you who never bid us to "hurry up", And more blessed are you Who do not snatch tasks from our hands to do them for us, For often we need time rather than help. Blessed are you who stand beside us As we enter new and untried ventures, For our failures will be outweighed By the times we surprise ourselves and you. Blessed are you who ask for our help, For our greatest need is to be needed. Blessed are you when you assure us, That the one thing that makes us individuals Is not in our peculiar muscles, Nor in our wounded nervous systems, Nor in our difficulties in learning, Nor any exterior difference. But is in our inner, personal, individual self Which no infirmity can diminish or erase. "Expect people to be better than they are, It helps them to become better. But don't be disappointed when they are not; It helps them to keep trying." --- Merry Browne |
Strangers bonded by autism SEVEN YEARS AGO, a doctor looked at my toddler son and immediately recognized autism. Since then, I've seen it countless times in the halls of the mall, in grocery stores and restaurants. I will notice a child who seems a little bit different. Perhaps he's spinning in circles or avoiding eye contact, flapping his hands or repeating phrases from a movie. Right away, I'll sneak a glance at the mom, recognizing her, even though we've never met. But Miss Manners hasn't come up with a delicate way to ask, "Is your kid autistic, too?" And so we pass each other without a word, just a small nod to show our solidarity. But I want to walk up to that mom and talk to her, because even though she looks nothing like me, somewhere inside we're the same: Mothers who know what it's like to lose a child who's sitting right next to you. I want to ask her if she ever thought she'd shop for diapers for a 9-year-old. To know if she's ever sobbed as she scrubbed poop out of a carpet, wondering just how her life turned out this way. If she, too, lies awake at night wondering what it would be like to hold a conversation with her first-born child. I would ask when she stopped speculating about which college her son would attend. I want to know how she handles the dirty looks and even reprimands from strangers, because her child doesn't behave like the other kids. We could almost speak another language to each other, using jargon like IEP, EEG, ESY and FAPE. After a while, the letters roll off your tongue so easily that you forget the rest of the world has no idea what you mean. But this mom would know. She would know that single word with six letters can change your entire life. I want to tell her that I, too, go years in between dates with my husband, because it's too hard to find a baby sitter. That I've been a mother for nine years, but my family has taken only one vacation. Our time, energy and money all go elsewhere. I want to talk about how my husband and I decided not to have any more kids, not because we don't want a bigger family, but because after having two kids with autism, the genetic odds just don't seem to be in our favor. Mostly, I want to know if she ever noticed the moment autism stopped being a tragedy and simply became a fact of life. Of course, this mom and I are not exactly alike. In fact, besides autism, we might have nothing else in common. That's the reality of autism: It can strike in just about any family. As parents of children with autism, we cross all races and nationalities. We're rich and poor, single parents and married couples, conservatives and liberals. Some of us are shy; others are loud. Just about anyone can be inducted into our club. In 20 minutes, there will be a new initiation. That's how often a parent hears "Your child has autism." This year, doctors will say that 24,000 times. That's a lot of parents who know just what I'm talking about. Date published: 4/18/2006 To reach AMY FLOWERS UMBLE: 540/735-1973 Email: aumble@freelancestar.com |
| Subject: Purpose You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer and him having "wealth" from the book sales. This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren,"Purpose Driven Life " author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California People ask me, What is the purpose of life? And I respond: In a nutshell, life is preparation for eternity. We were made to last forever, and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven. One day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body-- but not the end of me. I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity. This is the warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God wants us to practice on earth what we will do forever in eternity. We were made by God and for God, and until you figure that out, life isn't going to make sense. Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're just coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reason for this is that God is more interested in your character than your comfort. God is more interested in making your life holy than He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not the goal of life. The goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness. This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life was hills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you go to the mountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than life being hills and valleys, I believe that it's kind of like two rails on a railroad track, and at all times you have something good and something bad in your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always something good you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. If you focus on your problems, you're going into self-centeredness,"which is my problem, my issues, my pain." But one of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and others. We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was not going to heal Kay or make it easy for her. It has been very difficult for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people. You have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life. Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy. It also brought a lot of notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72. First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases. Second, about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the church. Third, we set up foundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free. We need to ask ourselves: Am I going to live for possessions? Popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be driven by God's purposes (for my life)? When I get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God, if I don't get anything else done today, I want to know You and love You better. God didn't put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do list. He's more interested in what I am than what I do. That's why we're called human beings, not human doings. Happy moments, PRAISE GOD. Difficult moments, SEEK GOD. Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD. Painful moments, TRUST GOD. Every moment, THANK GOD. This is beautiful and food for the soul. |
| I thought it was thunder rumbling in those late hours of the night… The calm, peaceful thunder that keeps you slightly awake, but yet relaxed enough to still rest, and sleep. But when the wee hours of the morning came, that thunder became not so peaceful. Clanging and banging, but not in the rhythmic smooth way that thunder is. That's when I knew it wasn't thunder. It must be my son. He's up again. I tried to ignore the sounds, thinking they would stop. I was so tired…. Weeks in the summer when school is out can seem like months when you cannot find attendant care. But, the mommy alarm in me wouldn't let me ignore it for too long… What if he's wet… dirty…. hurt. Then, as I lay there longer still, I became angry. Why me. Why again. Why not wait and see if my husband gets up to check…. That made me angrier. Knowing that really, even though my husband does his share, I should get up and do all that needs to be done, because my husband has an important job to go to early in the morning. He has responsibilities, meetings. A paycheck to earn. He must be fresh to do a good job, so he can keep his job. Me, I don't have a job, at least not one I get paid to do or can get fired from. I stay home and care for my son and my family. I don't have to clock in. I don't even have to get dressed. And apparently, I don't have to sleep either. So it was with that anger, (and perhaps a bit of self-pity), that I trudged upstairs to my son's bedroom to see why he was awake. I didn't need to turn on lights, I could follow the banging and clanging of toys being thrown, a bed being jumped on. And by the aroma that met me when I opened the door, I didn't need lights to tell me the reason why my son was up clanging and banging. So in the dark I changed my son so I wouldn't disturb the rest of the family. I perhaps grumbled too loud as I tried to maneuver a diaper on and off in the dark. I perhaps grabbed a stray arm that was in the way of me cleaning him, a bit firmer than necessary. And when diapers were changed, clothes changed, and sheets were changed, and he went back to banging and clanging, I know that perhaps I said to him way too angrily, "Go to bed!." I'm not sure when he finally did go back to bed, but the next morning at 9:30am when I was to pick up my other son from swim practice, he was still sound asleep. He looked so peaceful, so sweet. Nothing like what I heard just a few hours earlier. The guilt was quite a mouthful as I recalled what I was thinking about him in having to be up most of the night because of him. I hated to wake him up, but knew I couldn't leave him to sleep while I went. So I woke him. Once downstairs he was confused as to why he was turning to go outside to the car, instead of in my bedroom to the tub, his normal routine when he wakes up. As I drove to the pool, I was now mad at myself, and not him. Mad that I was mad about having to get up at night. Mad about being tired all morning; and even madder that I had no one I could call to stay with him when I have to leave - or just to give me a break now and then. I was mad that my back still hurt after two weeks of pain. I guess a decade of bending and changing and chasing and dressing had started to take its toll. Along with nearing forty, adding ten extra pounds; not to mention the lack of exercise because of taking no time for myself, even when I have it to take. Too many other more important things to do… Then I happened to look in the mirror … Not the rear view mirror, but the special mirror I have attached to my rear view mirror. The one that allows me to watch my son like a hawk while I'm driving. So I can see and hopefully dodge a drink he has launched my way. So I can see when he's escaped from his seat belt and can pull over before he gets to the front seat and grabs the wheel. What I saw in that mirror humbled me. I saw a little boy with blonde hair, sleepy eyes, and disheveled hair. I saw my child in pajama bottoms that were inside out and backwards because I had hastily dressed him in the dark in the middle of the night. I saw a man, with a man's body, in a sleeveless t-shirt. A man I admired and who was worthy and deserving of my respect. I saw a child who tries so hard to navigate a world he doesn't understand, and that doesn't understand him. I saw my child who could not talk and who has autism, sitting there as pure and vulnerable and as sweet and as innocent as a human being could possibly be. And I saw the real reason for my anger. It wasn't the little boy in the back of the van sweetly grinning and swaying his head to the beat as a song he likes came on. It wasn't the little boy who couldn't sleep last night because he was wet. It was society. It was how society had slowly eroded my sense of self worth into thinking that it was a burden to care for or clean up after someone else. That the job of doing that, wasn't worthy of respect or an honest wage. It was those subtle messages I am exposed to each and every day, that say that to be worthy, you have to be beautiful, perfect, smart, rich. I am none of those things in the world's eyes. It was those messages I am exposed to everyday that say that I must be self-sufficient and have a career. A title. A degree. The more initials after my name, the more important I become and the more pay I earn. I have neither, and get paid nothing. So what does all that make me, or the job I do at home? It was those messages that if you do have some sort of specialized training or position, that you have to do something the world deems worthy with it. I did go through a policymaking class that trains you how to be a professional advocate. I am a part of an important state agency council. But am burdened that because I have no help in caring for my son, that the training and position is going to waste because I am not able to go out in the world and put that training to use. All I can do is stay home and feed, change, and clean up after. No traveling to important places to work on important policies to help pass important laws. No, the most important thing I do each day is to remember to lock all the doors in my house so my child doesn't run away or flood the bathrooms. And it was that knowledge that had built up, that made me feel the angry way I did in the middle of the night as I changed yet another diaper, yet another set of pajamas, and yet another set of sheets; in caring for my son. It was that knowledge that had built up that made me wonder if that is all I would ever get to do. And if so, was it worth it? I was sad at how society places value and worth on so many other things, except those things or people that matter most. I was sad at how the jobs where you care for others, are the most underpaid, understaffed, and ill-supervised. I was sad at how society teaches that no, it's not worth it. I was sad that at the realization that I had become a part of that society. I was so consumed with finding someone to help me care for my son so I could go out in the real world and get a "real job", a "real paycheck" and do "really worthy things", that I saw caring for my own son as a job that didn't matter. And by seeing what I did as just a job that didn't matter - the person I was working for, my son, became an object. One that didn't matter. One that had no feelings. By falling into that trap, I understood why there was abuse in state schools, nursing homes, and institutions. Some there probably felt as I felt. That their job didn't matter. They were working for clients or consumers, and not people. So what if they talked to them rudely. It was just a client, not a person. So what if they moved an arm out of the way bit rough. It just belonged to a consumer, not a person. So what if they made them lay there wet or soiled a little longer…. After all, it was the middle of the night, who would know? Who would care? I do. And my Legislator should. My state should, and my federal government should. And above all, society must. I am not angry anymore, I am humbled. At how God used my son, the least of these in the worlds eyes, to teach me a most valuable lesson that all the beautiful, smart, rich, degreed, important, initialed people in this world, could not ever have taught me. He taught me that all I have to do to define worth, is to look in the special rear-view mirror of my car - and see what is worthy in God's eyes. To see what's beautiful, rich, and intelligent in God's eyes. My son's worth is that he is simply a child of God. Not enabled, not disabled. Just a child. An individual. My worth is further defined by knowing that in loving and respecting that individual that God thought important enough to create, I am doing what is most important in God's eyes as well… Caring for him… ~ And that is something I will never let society take away from me again. Ever. ~ Yes my son, if caring for you is all I ever get to do, it is worth it; and I'm honored to do it. Please forgive me for the times I ever felt otherwise. Written by Michelle M. Guppy For all the Brandon's of the world and those who care for them ....... |