Special Needs Parenting #1 — with Tirzah Birk
Every family touched by special needs walks a unique path, filled with its own distinct challenges, moments, and daily realities. But in the midst of these circumstances, is there room for joy?
Janet and Jocelyn welcome Tirzah Birk, a mom of 4 whose husband is a pastor at Faith Church in Lafayette, IN. Tirzah shares her heart about the everyday challenges faced by parents of children with special needs, showing just how many families walk this path together. With gentle wisdom, she turns to scripture's comforting words, finding hope and guidance for parents processing the unique struggles, stress, and grief that come with caring for children with special needs and disabilities. We pray this two-part series brings comfort and encouragement to all families walking the special needs journey.
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Resources
Episode Transcript
Resources
Books
Dark Clouds, Deep Mercies - Mark Vroegop
How Long O Lord - D. A. Carson
Parenting and Disabilities - Stephanie Hubach
When Disability Hits Home - Paul Tautges
Finding Your Child’s Way - Laura Hendrickson
Podcast
Apologetics 2: Science - Joyful Journey
Biblical Lament - Joyful Journey
Sharing Hope Podcast Joni Eareckson Tada
God’s Providence - Joyful Journey
Websites/Social Media
Just Another Wife and Mother - Courney Alison
Handout
2025 Scripture Reading Challenge
Transcript:
Jocelyn: I don't just need to feel better. I need the truth. And ultimately that will make me better.
Janet: I just want to make it as totally simple as possible for ladies to see that the Bible is really applicable to their everyday life.
Jocelyn: When they understand theology, the application flows out of it quickly with joy.
Janet: It is a journey, but even the journey itself is joyful when I'm doing it, holding the hand of my savior and trusting him all along the way. This is the joyful journey podcast, a podcast to inspire and equip women to passionately pursue beautiful biblical truth on their journey as women of God. When you choose truth, you're choosing joy.
Janet: Okay. Welcome back. This is Janet with my trusty cohost, Jocelyn.
Jocelyn: Hey friends.
Janet: Welcome to 2025 and the beginning of season five of Joyful Journey podcast. Can you believe it?
Jocelyn Happy New Year.
Janet: Yes.
Jocelyn: I can't believe it. We're in our fifth year. That's unbelievable.
Janet: I know. Tell us a little bit about what's going to be unique this year, Jocelyn.
Jocelyn: We're going to introduce our theme and that theme for this year is Jesus in the Gospels. And we're going to be focusing on reading the Gospels and studying them together over the year. So we want to encourage you to join us as we look at Jesus in the Gospels.
Janet: Excellent. I'm looking forward to being able to do that. But for today, we have a special guest with us, returning is Tirzah Birk. A good friend of ours and fellow pastor's wife here at, I guess fellow for me, not for Jocelyn, she's not a pastor's wife.
Jocelyn: I just get to enjoy both of you
Janet: And if you remember in a couple of seasons ago, Tirzah came and talked to us. She has a science background and talked to us about apologetics, which was a really great episode. But today is a little bit different. Tirza, tell us a little bit more about who you are and what you want to share with us today.
Tirzah: Hi ladies. I am just so thrilled to be here again with you. I'm so thankful for the blessing of this ministry. And I'm just really excited to talk about this topic. It's an emotional and a really just precious topic that the Lord has done a great work in my heart over the past four years. I'm going to be sharing my story a little bit later on about my youngest of four children who has severe disabilities and yeah, I'm a fellow pastor's wife at this church
Janet: Excellent. So we are really glad that you're here and we've asked Tirzah to come and share with us, parenting a child who's disabled, help us understand how to find joy in it when you're the parent and how others of us can come alongside.
Tirzah: Thank you. Yeah. The question that I want to address in our two episodes is.
Janet: Yes, but I didn't mention, but we have so much we want to say on this. We're making this a two part series, yes.
Tirzah: The question I really want to just begin to answer is can parents of disabled children find joy? And I really have been praying a lot for you, my listeners, and I really hope everybody will listen because being a parent of a disabled person can be very isolating and discouraging and just there can be some unique hardships and temptations. And I really, my prayer is that this would encourage you and I would just want you to consider what's the next step for you in growing in joy and trusting the Lord as a parent of a disabled child. And if you are not personally a parent of a disabled child, I really hope that you will also listen to these because I learned, this is according to the internet, which we know never lies.
Janet: It has to be true.
Tirzah: Yes. That 30 percent of families in this country are affected by disability.
Jocelyn: That’s pretty amazing.
Janet: That's actually far larger than I would have thought.
Tirzah: Me too. And I just wonder if our churches, we have 30 percent of our families are affected by disability. So my prayer is if you're listening and you are not directly affected by disability that you would just prayerfully consider what is one step to take toward just loving and reaching out to a family that is around you that's affected by disability. I want to ask you, Janet and Jocelyn, when you think of, in particular, a mom of a disabled child, what do you think are some of the stereotypes you might have? Or people might have?
Jocelyn: None of mine are very flattering.
Janet: I would say the first one that I thought of is, I hear people say this, wow, I just couldn't do it. They must have more patience than all the rest of us. They're just somehow magically able to do something that I couldn't.
Tirzah: Superhero.
Janet: Yes.
Jocelyn: My mind went more to a stereotype of a mom of a disabled child Is that they're frazzled and preoccupied with the one child in their family and their health and a little tired and often absent from church. like when that happens, they just become not there.
Janet: You stop seeing them.
Jocelyn: Yeah, they just become not there anymore. And they might've been super active, but suddenly they're just like nowhere.
Tirzah: I'm glad for those answers because there's some truth in those stereotypes. That we can, as parents of a disabled child, we can want to be a superhero and kind of want to present ourself as if we've got it all together and everything's fine. And then there can be that I really can be frazzled on the inside and I don't know where to turn. And because of the unique circumstances. The other question I had for you in starting is when someone sees a disabled person who maybe looks disabled, and I know not everyone who is disabled looks to be disabled, what do you think the typical responses of someone who, when they see someone who looks disabled, what's the natural response you think most people have?
Janet: I think uncomfortable.
Jocelyn: I think the reaction is to immediately say, oh, I'm so sorry. What a shame.
Janet: So pity.
Jocelyn: Yes.
Janet: Or uncomfortable.
Jocelyn: I feel sorry for you.
Janet: And then we don't want to be when you see someone that seems to be clearly disabled, you don't, you want to act like you didn't notice they were disabled.
Tirzah: Yes.
Janet: I don't want you to think that I think of you any differently, so now I have to act like I didn't notice it. Or because I'm so uncomfortable and I don't want to say or do the wrong thing, I act like I don't see you and I ignore you.
Tirzah: That describes pretty well my experience before being a parent of the disabled of, yeah, I don't want to say the wrong thing. I don't want to do the wrong thing. I don't want to make them feel uncomfortable.
Janet: So I'm going to act like I don't even notice and just say nothing
Tirzah: Exactly. I'm not going to reach out or pursue them in communication or friendship or anything like that. Thank you for those responses. I want to begin today by just acknowledging some of the difficulties and challenges and I am only one person, one parent, and it was just important to me to communicate with other parents and hear from them. So what I would, my answers here would represent a variety of parents. And this is also my background when I was working as a scientist is this kind of educational survey work where you're gathering this kind of data. So obviously I had to put together a survey and.
Janet: The Lord uses gifts.
Tirzah: I did not do statistical analysis of this, so I will say that. But I put together a survey that I shared on several social media pages where I asked for specifically parents of disabled to answer, and I received 80 responses
Janet: That’s quite a few.
Tirzah: And yeah, I, yeah, I was thrilled by that. And one of the questions I asked was, what are the unique challenges of being a special needs parent, and I categorize those responses and I just want to share the top three areas that parents reported from that survey. About 15%. So about a sixth of the parents said that loneliness or isolation was a top challenge. One parent says, I've been utterly exhausted for 20 years and now my husband is ill as well. No one, except maybe other special needs parents, know how exhausted I am, how sad I feel, how hard it is to do this, and how hopeless I feel sometimes.
Jocelyn: That’s rough.
Janet: That's heartbreaking.
Tirzah: It is heartbreaking. A second area that was represented by about a fourth of the parents, 26 percent, was a lack of being understood. One parent said, no one in my circle understands our unique circumstances. Another parent said, no one truly understands. And then the top area that parents felt was a challenge, according to my survey, which was roughly a third of the parents, a little more than that 37 percent was the all consuming nature. One parent said, it's a 24/7 job that you never asked for. Another parent said, having to be on 24/7. Another parent said, your whole life is different, and it affects everyone in the family. Jocelyn, there was one quote that really stood out to me because it really represented the challenges at so many levels, and I'm just going to ask Jocelyn, would you read this for us
Jocelyn: Sure.
Tirzah: From one parent.
Jocelyn: The quote says this, the unique challenges are felt at every level. Physically challenging, lifting the child in the wheelchair is physically demanding. Mentally challenging, the cognitive load of tracking her appointments, daily medications, extra issues that crop up, deciding how to address her needs with my husband is a huge challenge for us both. Emotionally challenging, I can't fix what hurts. Spiritually challenging, it has challenged my faith in ways that nothing else in life could have prepared me for. Plus there are questions of how to care for my child spiritually.
Janet: Wow. I hear that and think that's parenting is a heavy weight for all of us, but that's like on top of the heavy weight of parenting, all of that, and the skills involved in that, like coordinating calendars and schedules, not just the physical, all of it is, that's a lot
Tirzah: It sure is a lot. And what great hope I really want to present today. My heart for you parents listening is that none of this is beyond God's hope and help. And we're going to get to some of that, especially in the part two, some of the specific answers God's word offers us. But we really need to begin with acknowledging our fears to the Lord. And the reality is all parents of disabled children report fears. That's what I found from my survey that every parent at every level, no matter the number of years that this has been a reality for their life, all of the parents reported different fears. On this survey I, wrote out six statements of fears that were ones that I had personally experienced, and I asked parents to rank how overwhelming that fear was to them on a scale of one to five. And here were the six fears. One was, what kind of a life will my child have? How will we pay for everything? What will my life and future be like caring for them? This is just so unfair. There has to be another answer or treatment out there to find, and why did this happen to me and my family? And again, all of the parents responded that they were some level of distressed by these fears. And one interesting thing I found from my data here, was that actually it was the parents that spent 100 percent of the child's wake time with them. Who had the lowest fear for their own life and future. And that was surprising to me.
Janet: That is interesting.
Tirzah: And my theory on that is that when you are that close to severe special needs, maybe you have no choice but to deal with it because it's the day in, day out reality of when the child's awake, I'm with them. That's been my personal experience as a mom of a severely disabled child. And I hope it can encourage us that to be a parent of a disabled child, it can put us in an unavoidable position of facing suffering. And what this data suggests is that it may not be a bad thing to have to face and deal this new reality of circumstances. It may be able to put us in a position to lead to greater peace, hope, and joy in trusting and knowing God.
Janet: I think that's actually, it's so counterintuitive. You would think that the ones who had zero time for themselves would be the most overwhelmed.
Tirzah: Yeah.
Janet: But it makes me think about what did we see even in the life of Christ that it's our privilege to pour out our lives for others. That's what we were designed for. That's what's most beautiful to God. And it's almost like these special needs parents that are doing this 24/7 at least have the opportunity to live that out more and have less time to think about themselves and how they wish life were different and maybe in there is a severe mercy
Tirzah: I love that word opportunity, Janet. We're gonna be coming back to that for sure. I wanna share my story briefly. This is obviously just the introduction to my connection with disability. I had a healthy and normal pregnancy with each of my four children, including our youngest, and everything seemed fine until he just was not developing.
Janet: After birth.
Tirzah: After birth. Yeah. And it was around, roughly around five months, that we were just observing, he's just not doing the things that he should be doing developmentally. It was a long journey of testing. And the long story short is that just a little bit after he turned one years old we learned the devastating news that he had a rare genetic mutation. The name of it is just the name of the gene, which is IQSEC2. And I vividly remember the day that I finally had time to look up, okay, what is this mutation? What is expected for my son? And what we found out from the research is that he would almost certainly never be able to walk. He would never be able to talk or communicate with us. That he would be in his own little world for his whole life. And there didn't seem to be any shortening of his lifespan so essentially, he will be the size and shape of an adult, but developmentally like a small baby till he dies. And in that moment, I felt that was the worst possible news I could have ever imagined. It was even worse than I had feared. And in that moment, I felt that there was no worse outcome. I was incredibly angry at God in that moment because I really believe God's word very seriously, that God is in control of absolutely everything. So I understand that God chose this deletion in his DNA and God was fully in control that God could have stopped this from happening, but He didn't stop it. I think God's kindness that day was the Monday of vacation Bible school week that I had already been asked to prepare a teaching lesson that I was going to do the same lesson every day for five days and the lesson was to teach about John 3. And in John chapter 3, there's a story of a religious teacher who comes to Jesus to find out how can we be right with God and how can we know that we're going to receive God's benefits and His promises? And Jesus's answer in John chapter 3 is that it's not by human effort, that just like birth, you have to be totally dependent on God giving new spiritual life. And the story culminates in arguably the most famous, verse of all, scripture, John 3:16, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life. And in that moment that I was so overwhelmed with despair about what I considered to be the worst possible news, I was reminded that there was actually worse possible news. That I was naturally God's enemy, and there was nothing I could have ever done to change that.
Janet: Wow.
Tirzah: That truly is the worst possible news. And then the best possible news, even better than a cure for my son, is that God made a way for me to be right with Him and have eternal life. And how could temporary physical life compare to knowing God and being with Him forever?
Janet: I'm sure you were not thinking, I'm so excited to get to teach this week. And we start to feel like a hypocrite when my emotions are not in line with truth. But what a gift of God that you'd be saturated in an eternal view as you prepared and then honored your commitment to teach that every night. Wow.
Tirzah: Just the sweetness of the Lord's timing. So that's the story of how my journey with disability began. And what I really want to encourage in our time this week is that we have to begin by pausing and lamenting to God. We cannot skip past that. So instead of telling myself, here's a temptation as a parent, is just stop thinking about it. I've got enough on my plate.
Janet: Nothing you can do.
Tirzah: So much I need to do. I can't change this. And let me just turn to distractions and keep going, everything's fine. Janet, would you define lament for us? I know you've talked before on this podcast.
Janet: Yes. We've had Mark Vroegop come and talk about that and so I highly recommend that we'll link that in the show notes, but I love his definition first, which is a prayer in pain that leads to trust.
Jocelyn: I love that definition.
Janet: I do too. Cause it's short, like I tend to be a little more wordy and I'm like, but that's when you're hurting that's what you need.
Tirzah: Yeah.
Janet: And so what is that? And sharing my thoughts directly to God, which I think is so important because prayer is not just trying to remind myself of biblical principles and be tough. Prayer is actually going to God directly, pouring out my heart, then learning even more about who He is so that it will lead to a greater trust.
Tirzah: Absolutely. And thank you. I know we don't want to be seen as superheroes, but there's a sense of, I want to just, everything's fine. Everything's fine. Keep moving forward without pausing to lament.
Janet: Yeah.
Tirzah: And I'm glad you mentioned this book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy by Pastor Mark Vroegop. I have personally benefited so much from that book over and over and highly recommend that.
Jocelyn: So why should we lament? Why not just sweep our thoughts and feelings under the rug and keep moving forward? Why is lamenting better
Tirzah: What a great question. I want to answer that in just two ways. One by saying from Philippians 4:6, that God commands us to bring all of our requests to Him. And another reason I want to offer is just the example we see over and over at the Old Testament. I had took some time over the past couple of years to study the minor prophets and have just seen how the Old Testament is just filled with laments.
Janet: Yeah.
Tirzah: Grief, even with accusations against God and questions to God and bitter words filled with devastation and anger and fear. And yet God himself breathed those words and preserved them for all time for our benefit. I have yet to hear any accusation or question against God worse than what God Himself preserved against Himself in scripture for all time. So I just really want to encourage us, let's not try to be more spiritual than the Bible.
Janet: Yeah. Yeah. And I love Vroegop's point of turning to God with all of those questions and anger. I can either pretend they're not there, but they are. I can either talk to everybody else about it. Or here's my act of faith. I will go to God with all of them and that's what He's asked me to do. That we have the kind of God who wants us to do that is pretty amazing.
Tirzah: And boy, doesn't that take faith to do that. So I have a homework assignment and nothing makes me sound more, yeah, I used to be a science teacher then I brought some data, I had a graph, and now I have homework for you. And this is a homework assignment that Janet gave to me. These years ago when I discovered about Isaiah's special needs, I quickly began to see I needed some additional help to process through this. And my husband was giving me counsel and I was turning to God's word but I was just so thankful to sit down with Janet. I just want to encourage you, is there someone that you could reach out to that would help you just sort through and process these thoughts and these fears and complaints? And I want to, to my shame, say, I have always been in a good church my whole entire life. I have only ever received biblical, gospel-centered teaching that taught me about view of suffering, and I needed personal help in this way. And on top of that, I'm a pastor's wife. So why should I need help? Because I'm the pastor's wife. And I had to fight that in my thoughts too, of I still need help. We all need help. And then not only that, I'm also a biblical counselor. So I even remember coming to you, Janet, and saying I should know a little better. Like I shouldn't need help like this. And that's just, what a lie, right?
Janet: We all need it.
Tirzah: Deceit We all need God's help, we all need counsel. Community, absolutely. So here was a homework assignment that Janet gave me that I'm going to give you all, which is to just write out all of your honest thoughts, all of your fears and your questions. I'm going to share with you three that I had written out from that time. This was maybe three years ago now. These are not pretty. These are ugly. and these have partial truths twisted with my sinful skewed mindset.
Janet: But I think they're very common. And so I appreciate you being willing to share that because it will help other people to know I can be honest about mine too.
Tirzah: And these are not thoughts that I've totally completely dealt with in the sense that they never come back. I do regularly have to fight some of these thoughts. So one is, I'm never going to have any freedom ever again for the rest of my life. I'm going to be a slave to taking care of my son. Another thought was, it's just so unfair that my husband gets to go on having his dream job while I have to give up everything and take care of my son for the rest of his life. And boy, isn't that a warped view? Because that's not true. So my husband is affected as well by his son, but just sin just warps and skews those just sinful thoughts. And then a third thought was just, God, you could have stopped this, but you didn't. And therefore you must be cold or calculating or distant or unfeeling.
Janet: Yes.
Tirzah: So I want to go back briefly to the survey data. And what I want to argue here briefly is just a little bit of hope of why should we address our thoughts, our laments, our fears to the Lord? Will God help me if I share with Him what I am experiencing? And then in our second episode, I'm going to come back to some of these thoughts and fears that I've just shared and provide some answers from God's word or just a tip of the iceberg, shall we say, of some answers. So going back to my survey of parents, I asked them to select what gave them personal refreshment. So I gave a list of 22 ideas and parents could select what things they felt really, truly refreshed their soul. They were things like being out in nature, taking a trip, reading a book, having alone time, going to work, reading my Bible, being in a community group, being in church, and they could add their own and then I asked parents to pick from that list, what were the top three areas that personally refreshed them? And then how refreshed did they feel by those sources? So for example, if you said you were most refreshed by being alone in nature, by watching TV and spending time with friends, you could have chosen from zero to five where five is I'm completely at peace with having a loved one with special needs, these sources provide me a hundred percent comfort and refreshment down to zero that these sources are at best temporary distractions to me.
Janet: That's so fascinating. I love that you did that. I can't wait to hear what happened, but this is such a scientific way
Jocelyn: You're so scientific. This is great.
Janet: But this is fascinating.
Tirzah: So one of the things I was looking for in this is to see is there a difference between how true Christians respond and non-Christians? I know I could have just asked people, are you a Christian, yes or no, but that means different things to different people. And God's word defines a Christian in part or what exemplifies a Christian is someone that truly knows God and delights in His word and benefits from God's word and His ways and being with His people. So I'm defining, this is not the Lord sees each of these people and whether they're true Christians or not, but for the sake of analyzing this data, I'm defining true Christians as those who said, of my top three sources of refreshment, at least two of those sources were the church attendance, reading the Bible, or prayer. And my non-Christian group is of their top three sources, they said that personally refresh their soul, zero of those were church, Bible, or prayer. So there's a group in the middle there that is not included in this data set. And what I found again, this is not statistically significant. I have to say, because this is my background in science I didn't analyzes statistically and there would be maybe statistically not a significant difference in these groups, but we can say a trend was that the true Christians, they did report being more at peace, more comforted and more refreshed than the non-Christians by their sources of refreshment. The non-Christian group, again, it was a scale of one to five, so they were about a three out of five for how refreshed did they feel by their sources. It was about a three out of five. And the true Christians said that they were almost a four out of five of how refreshed they feel. So the data can suggest that special needs parents can find real true joy and help and refreshment in knowing God. But God's word promises that we can have real and true and lasting joy in knowing Him.
Janet: Yeah.
Tirzah: One last piece of data here from my survey, so hang on with me, appreciate your patience, is that the true Christians, again, that's that same group of people who said at least two out of the three of their top sources of refreshment were the Bible or church or prayer. They reported being more at peace in the areas of fear for their future, understanding fairness of their circumstances and of questioning why this happened to them compared to the non-Christians. Although there, I did not see a difference between the fear over the child's future, finances, or wanting to find other solutions. So again, the data can only suggest it cannot prove anything, but I believe it does match with what God's word says and God's word promises. Which is that He does have a plan and a purpose for everything, including disability. And Christians who know God can have a better understanding of what God's word says and the purpose that gives us
Janet: I think that this is a good foundation. I hope that people who are listening are going. Okay, so now what? You've piqued my interest. You're telling me that I can find joy there. Maybe that's not my experience, or I don't even really understand that. Next episode, we will be talking about that in more depth, but for now, I do want to at least for those who are listening and going true Christian versus a non-Christian, how do I know where I am? I know, Tirzah, you would also say it's not based on whether you go to church or pray or read your Bible. Those would be indicators that should come after.
Tirzah: Yes.
Janet: And I know that that's what you were looking at, but for any of you that are saying, I'm not sure what category I'm in. I do encourage you spend some time in the gospels as we're going to be doing this year, thinking about who is Jesus and if He's who He says He is your only hope. Being a Christian is turning from, trying to find my own sources of refreshment, trying to find my own way to find joy, trying to figure it all out, and humbly recognizing I can't do it. I can't be good enough, I can't be sinless, I can't atone, I can't make up for, but God knowing that was willing to bring his own precious, perfect son to do all of that, to live the life I should have lived, to die the death I deserve, and then to offer me that I can be wrapped in His robes of righteousness when I humbly believe in Him. And that is the beginning of a relationship that can lead to the joy that Tirzah is describing.
Jocelyn: why don't you share some of the resources that have been especially helpful for you over these past several years as you've come to terms with your son's diagnosis.
Tirzah: I would love to, as I have benefited from many resources. This is not in any particular order of greatest to least by any means, so just in no order a book called How Long, Oh Lord by DA Carson, which my library had on audiobook and I listened to it that way, so I highly recommend you look for that. I just think this is one of the best books about suffering. It's not specific to disability. And it is a thicker book, so I would just really recommend for someone looking to really process. And his explanations are just so biblical, and they're sweet, and they're just really worshipful. So that was How Long, O Lord by D. A. Carson. I also really enjoyed Stephanie Hubach, I hope I'm pronouncing her last name right, Parenting and Disabilities, Abiding in God's Presence. It's a 31 day devotional. She's a mom who has an adult child with Down syndrome, and she just has short reflections. And what I appreciate about that is, one, they're short, because often as parents, we have very busy and overwhelmed schedules. Her answers were very sweet, tender, they were very biblical, and she's very vulnerable about her journey as a mom. And I would just really appreciate her openness, and she addresses some things about her adult child with Down syndrome that were very sweet. Another recommendation I have, which I just cannot say enough wonderful things about the ministry of Joni Erickson Tata. I listen every morning, Isaiah and I listen to her podcast, which was a radio show. You can listen to it, I think on the radio, but I listened to the podcast sharing hope by Joni Erickson Tata. Each episode is four minutes long. And they're filled with precious theological truths about battling any lifelong condition, including disability, pain, et cetera. We, Isaiah and I love listening to this and my kids every morning while we eat breakfast. And she has many ministries that she refers to, including a retreat for families of the disabled that I've also heard incredibly sweet things about.
Janet: I've never. I know her. I've never heard of that specific resource, but I love that you just also mentioned it's only four minutes. You can listen with your kids.
Tirzah: Exactly.
Janet: I love that idea of that being part of your morning and it's not a 30 minute sermon because most kids can't really hang for that. I don't always have time for that, but four minutes of a gospel shot of hope in the morning.
Jocelyn: I was actually thinking about how helpful that probably is for your three older kids to have daily theological accuracy in their brain as they are developing their own theology of suffering and disability.
Janet: That's great.
Tirzah: Another book I've benefited from by Pastor Paul Tautges his last name is T A U T G E S. He wrote the book, When Disability Hits Home, How God Magnifies His Grace in Our Weakness and Suffering. The author is both a pastor and a father, and his book is just really, Precious, theological. It really helped me wrestle through a lot of the theological questions that arose in my heart.
Jocelyn: That's cool. That's wonderful.
Tirzah: We already talked about Mark Vogop's book, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, that helps process through what does lament look like? And there's great questions at the end of each chapter. I highly recommend that. There's also a book by Dr. Laura Hendrickson. called Finding Your Child's Way on the Autism Spectrum that I have not yet personally read, but I have just heard over and over. It's in our church's Ministry Resource Center, recommended for not only a parent of someone with autism, but for any parent whose child has learning disabilities.
Janet: Yeah, I have read that. Another friend, another mom with special needs children let me know about it, and so I read it as well. We now, when my husband and I travel and do parenting conferences, we talk about that book. Because we realize there's a variety of parents in the room and we don't want We're not there to address special needs, but we don't want to ignore it. And especially when you're thinking about how do I raise them? What's discipline look like? I don't just say, Oh well, but what do I do? This is an excellent book.
Jocelyn: Especially if a third of the people in the United States have disabilities as a part of their life.
Tirzah: And then lastly, I have a social media recommendation, which is by Courtney Allison. Her Instagram handle is just another wife and mother. And we know Courtney. We love Courtney. We love Courtney. And I just recommend this for she has just precious gospel truths, especially connected to adopted children, biological children. And as well as disabled children, and what I found in my survey, a number of parents who had disabled children were also adopted. So I highly recommend that as a social media follow.
Jocelyn: We also want to recommend the podcast episode that your husband recorded with us on Providence. That lesson. That class that he taught on Providence during FCI was shortly after Isaiah's first birthday. And he shared with us what he had learned about God's providence through what you guys have walked through. And the episode that we've recorded was just so helpful. Yeah. So very good. And you'll find that in our show notes.
Janet: Yeah. So we'll list all those resources again, if you were trying to hurry up and write down the names. Yeah. Of course, you can rewind and listen to it again, but you could also just know we're going to list all that in the show notes as well. Thank you so much for joining us and we will be ready for part two.
To keep from missing any future episodes, please sign up for our newsletter on our webpage faithlafayette.org/JJP From there you can also subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Google, or Spotify. You can also visit us on our Facebook page or Instagram at Joyful Journey Podcast. If you have questions or comments for us, you can email us at joyfuljourneyquestions@outlook.com. Joyful Journey Podcast is a ministry of Faith Bible Seminary. All proceeds go to offset costs of this podcast and toward scholarships for women to receive their MABC through Faith Bible Seminary.
Host Janet and her husband, Brent, also speak at a variety of conferences as a way to raise money for the seminary. If you want to look at what they offer or book them for a conference, go to their website.
