A Prayer For A Child With A Disability

A Prayer for a Child with a Disability

O God, You are an artist.

Your glory is in every swirl

And imprint of our lives.

You know our child intimately—

Their very nature reflects Your glory.

You have knit them together in the womb,

And not a sliver of DNA

Or one strand of hair

Goes unnoticed or unloved

By You.

We pray for our child,

That we would be able to meet

Their complex needs.

And when we cannot meet them, O Lord,

Give us the right people at the right time

To enter into life with us.

Give us community to surround

Our child with understanding and compassion,

Expertise and empathy,

Hope and love.

Help our child to know they are not alone

In their personal challenges and victories.

Surround them with love all the days of their lives.

Be with us on the dark nights

When we are awake,

Worried about what the future will look like

For our child,

For our family,

And for us.

Give us eyes to see beyond this world,

For our children have much to show us.

Help us not diminish our child

By defining them by a diagnosis,

But let us celebrate our child

For exactly who they are.

In the doctor’s appointments and waiting rooms,

Give us peace.

In the research and the therapies,

Give us hope.

In the classrooms and the medical trials,

Give us strength.

Help us to avoid trap of comparison,

And lead us to see that our lives

Are not marked by what we do

But rather by who we are

And who we love.

Help us to shout the worth of the child

You have placed in our lives.

And when our voices grow hoarse,

Help us to know when to rest.

Empower our child to know

They are valued and worthy.

Give us new mercies each morning

As we rise to do the often-unseen acts of love

As we care for our child.

You have created our brains and bodies

In amazing ways.

Help us dance in the broad spectrums

Of Your great love.

Lord, sometimes our great mysteries

Are misunderstood,

And more often than not,

We feel the great chasm between

What is seen and what is unseen.

Will You give us community?

Will You provide respite

When the days are long?

Will You provide bread for the journey

As the years are long?

We thank You for our child’s heart,

For in the unique ways they love the world,

We feel You more fully.

We thank You for their soul,

For in the ways they are in the world,

We feel You more fully.

We thank You for their body,

For in the ways they experience the world,

We feel You more fully.

We thank You for their brain,

For in the ways they understand the world,

We feel You more fully.

Help our family to take each day as it comes.

Help us to do the best we can

To come to You in the celebrations and struggles.

Transform our hearts, souls, bodies, and minds

To be tuned to Your time—

The kairos time that gives us perspective,

Not the chronos timelines

Of developmental charts and educational goals.

In our child’s victories and in their struggles,

May we be a safe place to land.

In their wins and in their defeats,

May we parent with our arms wide open.

And may we always sense Your presence in it all.

Help us to understand more fully the mysteries

Of who our child is.

Help us to understand their joys and sorrows.

Help us, Lord.

Our child is Yours,

And Your Spirit is among us.

Help us to neither define our child

Solely by their disability

Nor shy away from exactly who they are.

Thank You for making our child,

For they truly are beautiful and wonderful

And made by You.

Psalm 139:13-16; Romans 15:13; Lamentations 3:22-23