I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and it’s Family Retreat time and we’re singing this song all this week at Joni and Friends…
(Joni sings:)
Lord, we welcome you here among us with grateful adoration
Lord, we welcome you here among us with grateful adoration
Knowing your undeserved mercy and pardon
We welcome you here, we welcome you here
Lord, we welcome you here
Let your glory come, let your spirit pour out on us
Mighty redeemer, great light of the world
O Lord we welcome you here, O Lord we welcome you here.
Well, I might have been a little rough on that song, but I bet our families at the Family Retreats this week are going to be welcoming the Lord with it. What a great song, welcoming the Spirit to move amongst us in a powerful way this week as our Family Retreats are going full swing across the country – up in New Hampshire, out in Oregon, in western Pennsylvania and all the way up in Minnesota. There’s a lot going on, a lot of fun, a lot of worship… and I’ll tell you this, a lot of soul-searching.
I’m thinking of a mother named Nancy whom I met at Family Retreat. I remember when she told me about the deep struggles she and her husband were wrestling with – they were struggling over the question of placing their severely disabled son, Brad, in a residential facility. Should they bring him home? Did the family have enough support to do so? I tried to give Nancy and her husband some tools to make that critical decision, and I tell you, just being at Family Retreat connecting with other moms and dads sure helped them a lot. Well, after the retreat was over, Nancy wrote back to express her appreciation. They’d made their decision; Brad was going to stay at home with the family. “Joni,” she wrote, “incredible fruit has resulted in our lives from that decision. God used Brad to change my husband and me, helping us see the Lord in a way we never would have had Brad not lived in our midst.”
Nancy also enclosed a beautiful three-page tribute to her husband, written from Brad’s point of view. Every paragraph was a powerful testimony to a father’s flexibility, love, integrity, and devotion to his disabled child. Nancy wrote it from little Brad’s perspective, so picture him saying, picture Brad writing, “Dad, I can’t give you anything except my smiles when I hear your voice, or my giggles when you whistle. Dad, I can’t even say, ‘I love you…’” But I think the best part of the tribute is the close: “Dad, maybe I can’t read the Bible, but I can ‘say’ Jesus loves me, this I know, for my Daddy showed me so.”
Nancy and her husband are a huge inspiration to other couples that have a disabled child. But I have a feeling that there are a lot of dads listening right now for whom this has really hit home; and if you’re a father – how about it? It would be quite a tribute if your son or daughter could say, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for my daddy showed me so!” That, if anything, should spur you fathers on if you’re feeling a little overwhelmed with things at home.
Remember, you can talk and sing about love until the cows come home, but at the end of the day, real love means sacrifice. The kind of love and sacrifice Brad’s father shows every single day.
Used by permission of
JONI AND FRIENDS
P.O. Box 3333
Agoura Hills, CA 91376
© Joni and Friends