String of Hope...Marriages

This weekend a reality of Special Needs Ministry hit me square in the face. I've known it's an issue but for some reason this weekend my heart was hit rather than just my mind. I'm talking about marriage success amongst families with special needs children. About 40-50% of all marriages in America end in divorce. That number is for the typical family. If you throw a special needs child into the mix, the rate of divorce jumps up to around 85%. I don't know about you but that is scary. To look at all the families in the Special Needs Ministry and to think, if the statistics proved true, of 100 of them only 15 of them would still be married when I revisit the list in 5 or 10 years. Wow, that is a lot of disruption for children who don't handle disruption well.

Rather than just talk about the statistics or worry about the "what ifs", God has been pressing on my heart to do something about it. My husband and I recently completed a 24 week course called "Re-Engage". It's a program that was started by Watermark Church in Dallas to address the need for couples to re-engage themselves in their marriage. The great thing is that it's not only for couples who are on the verge of divorce, but also for couples who just need a flame reignited. Re-Engage doesn't help the marriage by pinpointing his issues or her issues. It works to restore personal relationships with Christ and our responsibility to love like Christ does. For my own marriage, this program just what we needed to put our marriage back at a priority after having two kids. Now I have two typical children and can easily see how children call pull a marriage apart...never mind a special needs child.

So since our church offers this ministry, why aren't our families taking advantage of it? Childcare. Childcare if offered for all who participate in Re-Engage but most typical childcare settings won't support a special needs child. Someone who needs one-on-one will overwhelm the childcare workers. We need to offer special volunteers to care for the special needs children.

I guess I type all of this out on this blog to get you to look at the issues your families are dealing with. Marriage is a HUGE thing. If a mom is overwhelmed by a special needs child and feels she's also fighting her spouse because he's not meeting the needs she has set him up to meet, how much more can mom take? If mom decides she can't handle being torn on both ends (from husband and child), she's forced to choose. If there was some way for problems to be addressed and worked on before a choice is to be made, maybe more marriages would be saved. Any string of hope that can be easily accessed is the start. Maybe our string of hope, given the ministries we already have in place, is childcare for Re-Engage. Could it be that simple? YES.