The way it has always been

Peter continues with his chemo treatments, thankfully still with his blood counts having been good every time.  He has two more weekly chemos and then it drops to once every three weeks.  He has had recurring vomiting, but I think it is improving as we try different things; lately it has coincided with when he coughs vigorously, rather than resulting from nausea.  God's grace is new every day.

A common question we hear is, "How are you holding up?" or "How are the other kids handling things?"

When Peter was in the hospital, it did make life more difficult, and the family felt our absence. It was harder for me to manage life in two places at once.

But other than that, and the adjustment period to the cancer diagnosis and the treatment regimen - the truth is that this is just an extension of the way life has always been with Peter.

He has always had multiple appointments to go to, often with therapy once a week and random doctors' appointments regularly throughout the year.  He has always had issues to figure out and troubleshoot.  There has often been the weariness, the lack of free time, the hours spent researching some new thing in hopes of something else helping him.

So yes, it is God's grace that sustains us.  It is God's grace that has always sustained us.

But this is also normal life for many families whose kids have special needs: weekly appointments for therapy (which take hours out of your day), extra work to do during the day and evening, regular doctors' appointments for this or that, weariness, lack of free time, and struggles to make it to church.  If the kids have medical needs, they may end up with recurring hospital stays (we thank God that that has not been our normal).  Especially if the kids have mental or emotional needs, the parents often just don't go to church at all, or not as a family, because the church has no accommodations for them.

Our church has been so supportive during the last few months.  We are thankful for everyone's concern and prayers, and (for local folks) for the meals you brought when we were in the hospital in December, and for the many who have taken turns staying home with Peter so that the rest of us could be in church on Sundays.

That is the kind of support that parents with special needs could use on a regular basis - as they are often pushed to their limits (mentally, emotionally, physically, financially) more than those who have normal kids. And I am thankful that our church does seek to meet the needs of those who are in the church.

But there are plenty in our community who never get that support.

This is why I so wish we had a ministry to families with special needs. A program where they could show up with their child who is 10 but acts like he is 3, or who has autism that results in loud and disruptive behavior, and someone at church would be assigned to be their buddy during church, or sit with them in another room, or teach a special SS class for them, or whatever it takes to enable the parents to sit in the worship service.

These are parents who are regularly under a lot of stress and have a lot of needs - and who need the gospel.  Their marriages are often under more stress also.  But they are not just going to walk into a church without some provision for their child who is currently unable to sit in church.  Maybe they do need better parenting habits; maybe their children are just undisciplined; but maybe the problem is bigger than that, due to the child's brain damage from injury or a genetic problem or autism.  Maybe if they had the support of godly people, they could improve their parenting. Maybe at least they would find the grace of God if they had a way to come to church and hear the Word and find fellowship and refreshment.  These needy families are all around us in the community and often have little opportunity to hear the gospel.

The road of cancer treatment is long and uncertain. After treatment there is follow-up for however many months or years, and sometimes long-term effects from it all, along with the possibility of recurrence.

The road of raising a child with special needs can feel longer and more uncertain than cancer. It lasts a lifetime. It is full of hopes and dreams that often have to be denied and changed. It forever changes your expectations of family and parenting.

For God's children, any difficult road is a tool used by His Fatherly hand to prune us, to make us more like Jesus, to weed out our sin and to increase our love for Him.  Whether that road ends in healing or death or a lifelong sorrow - "It is the LORD. Let him do what seems good to him." (1Samuel 3:18).

Strive to enter

Hebrews 3:12-13
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

"an evil, unbelieving heart" makes you depart from God.

What would a "believing" heart look like?

It would look like Jesus' mindset toward the Father: total trust in the Father's care and character and wisdom; total submission to His will; total faith in His Word being true and trustworthy and faithful.
It would mean never doubting the Word to be true, or the promises to fail, or the threats to be empty.
Never questioning the Father's clear will, nor rebelling against it, nor fighting His providence.
Never seeking to rule myself, but being yielded up to the Father unreservedly.
It would mean complete submission to the Father, devotedly, unquestioningly.

Real faith believes, submits, obeys.
Satan would deceive us, making sin and self-rule look attractive and making submission to the Father a repulsive choice.  The deceitfulness of sin can harden your heart toward God, such that you mock His rule, ignore His Word, and run toward destruction as though that were life.

How can we exhort one another against the deceitfulness of sin?
We must be willing to bring God's Word to bear on one another's lives. Which means WE must know the Word enough to do that. We must be willing to be salt and light to one another, not just smiling and nodding and having happy social times. We must be willing to call out one another's attitudes as being incongruent with imitators of Christ.

Hebrews 3:18 - 4:1
And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.
Therefore, while the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it.

Hebrews 3:12-13
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

Hebrews 4:11-13
Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/the-word-of-god-living-active-sharp

Those three passages are tied together in this way:
It is unbelief that causes us to fail to reach Heaven.
It is the deceitfulness of sin that hardens us.
It is the Word of God that can pierce the heart and expose the unbelief lodging there, and show sin's deceit for what it is.

So to help one another make it safely Home, we must wield the Word of God with one another - exhorting daily! - applying it to each other's lives and hearts and attitudes and words, that we might be a prod to get others back on the right Path when sin lures them to wander off it.

This is why studying the Word itself is so important.  It is not devotionals that will pierce our hearts and expose our sin - it is the Word itself.
This is why memorizing and meditating on the Word is so important.  It is a tool the Spirit can use to keep US from being deceived by sin, and it is a tool that we need to help others get safely to Heaven.