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Originally Posted by HERn
Well, I'm hesitant to write about this, but as a family we're facing our first conflict in our new church. Our slightly mentally handicapped daughter has been attending the high school youth group and was hoping to attend the upcoming high school retreat. The youth workers said she was to immature and would not accept the registration fees from my wife. When my wife offered to drive our SUV and chaperone our daughter she was told by the youth workers that they did not want to put my wife out. I wrote an email to our senior pastor and we have a meeting with him on Monday. We did not ask him to change the decision, but let him know that we are offended, hurt and angry. My wife spent an hour on the phone talking to the youth worker in tears. I know that people have different capacities when it comes to accommodating mentally handicapped people, but for God's sake this is the body of Christ where we are supposed to care the weaker members, right? Sorry for the dirty laundry, but this is where we are at. I don't think we will leave, but our hearts are sad.  |
We had a good meeting. Kind and loving, but their capacity is limited. We will be working with the the youth minister to help her prepare for for next year's retreat. She can't go this year even with her mother as a chaperone. We are worried that if we tell her that if she improves next year she can go, but does not make it she will feel like a failure. Her soccer coach invited the girls to her church youth group, so she will visit. In coordination with her councilor we have restricted her to only 10 unsolicited phone texts per day. This will help her from pestering her church friends. We will not force her to continue in her current youth group if she feels rejected and like "she's a project". There is an Assembly of God church who's youth group she may visit because when she was home schooled where one of the moms was a youth pastor there. One comment that hurt was that there was a senior girl who we were told wanted her last year in the group not to be negatively affected by our daughter's needs. We just went to a ballet were two of the senior girls were performing and several families were there, but we felt ignored. This rejection of our daughter will probably factor in to me taking early retirement and moving in with my wife's widowed father. Our daughter has a dear disabled friend in his church that we really like.