Mothers and Fathers of Special Needs Children

I have some dear friends who are raising an older, special needs son, and last week for Mother’s Day, the father of this special son shared with me a letter that he had written a few years earlier for the son’s mom.

The son is not able to verbally express his deep love and appreciation for his mom, so the dad wrote a Mother’s Day tribute on the son’s behalf. Please read it, weep, be inspired, and forward it to anyone you know that might be strengthened by it. Other than removing names, this letter is unedited.

Dear Mom,

Even before God made me, He knew of all the difficulties and trials I would face. He knew of my illnesses and deficiencies to be overcome, the teaching, training, modeling, and hard work it would take to allow me to be who I am today. He then had a very difficult task – to select a mother to give to me.

This woman would need lots of special qualities. More than anything else, she would have to be extremely loving because I would be asking so much of her. She would need the patience of Job to deal with my training, many ‘accidents’, waiting in doctors’ offices, and outside bathroom doors. She would have to have wisdom both in how to handle me and also to know when a doctor’s diagnosis didn’t ring true.

She was going to need good medical knowledge because often it was going to be her and not a doctor that knew the most effective course of action to be taken to make me better. She would have to listen to me and treat me with dignity and respect so I could grow and feel self-worth. She would have to learn from each experience we went through in order to make good future decisions and also comfort others she found in similar situations.

She would need to be kind, compassionate, generous, silly, hard–working, honest, sincere, determined, friendly, have an awesome sense of humor, and be an all-around terrific person for she was to be my role model. She would need to be a great teacher as I am not a normal child. It would be critical for her to have a great walk with the Lord, for often He would be the only one she could turn to.

She would have to have a true servant’s heart, always placing my needs above hers. She would need the stamina of a marathon runner because there would be times that lasted months and even years before the right diagnosis was found (often due to her determination and wisdom). There would also be countless nights she would have to go with little or no sleep to comfort me in my needs.

She would also need to be brave to face the many hardships we would face together. She would have to be willing to devote a great portion of her life to my daily needs: counting pills; going to doctors; helping me get dressed; tying my shoes; taking me to work and Ability First; cleaning up after an ‘oops’; wiping my butt; teaching me; helping me get through speech therapy and school; explaining what was going on or the plot of a TV show; and countless other tasks – all to be done without a moment’s hesitation or hint of irritation. My mom would also need the skills of a master-class juggler because she would also have my brother, sister, and my dad to care for as well as run the household and deal with her own medical issues.

Most of all, she would need to have unconditional love for me. Fortunately God is God and despite the seemingly impossible list of qualifications, God found the perfect match – that’s why God chose YOU to be my mom.

From my heart,