I love the New Year. It’s a time for new beginnings for all of us. We can put the past year behind us and start fresh with new goals, new adventures and new promises.

It’s hard not to think about what has happened to us and our world in the past year but moving into a new year gives us new hope and new promises that things may be different and look different.

If you have a child on the spectrum, you may hope that things improve over the next year. It could be behaviour, learning challenges you’ve been experience, developing speech, fostering or creating friendships and most importantly happiness.

Personally, for me as a parent, I am always setting new goals for myself with regards to my children. There are always things that we need to work on and I develop a plan of how to achieve them throughout the year. One example is health. I have had many challenges with both of our children over health issues. One is an eating disorder and the other one is a compromised immune system in which supplementation, diet changes and constant modifications and continuous tests to ensure that the health remains stable.

My goals as a parent are not the same goals that my children have for their life, but it is important for me to ensure that I am always striving for better for them to get healthier.

It is important to make spiritual goals as well. I have my own spiritual goals and I also have spiritual goals for us as a family. If I am being honest, over the past year, family spiritual goals have been difficult. It’s hard when the church has not been open very much and especially not for programs. I think our family has definitely felt the sting from this as a whole. Everyone always seems to be on a different schedule and honestly with lots of school (at least in our house) being still on-line, it is difficult to ensure that we can all participate in church.

The one thing though that is constant is that God doesn’t care where or how we worship or pray to Him. He is there for us no matter what. This gives us more opportunity to be in close contact with Him as we go about our day.

I want 2022 to bring more spiritual changes for me as a person as well as for our entire family. How will we achieve this? Well……. I will have to come up with a plan. What that will look like right now, I don’t really know.

I love the verse Isaiah 41:10, “Do not fear for I am with you; do not be afraid for I am your God. I will strengthen you; I will help you; I will hold onto you with my righteous right hand.”

I know if we make God a priority and honour Him that our lives will be so much richer!

Please let us know how we can support you and your family this year. Let’s brainstorm together, ways and resources to make God a priority in our home.

Shelly Wedge
Exceptional Families Coordinator
Amberlea Church