Get Your Joy Back

Banishing Resentment and Reclaiming Confidence in Your Special Needs Family

Laurie Wallin

• Publisher: Kregel Publications
• eBook ISBN:
  9780825485756
• Year: 2015

An invitation and a promise for weary Christian parents of special needs kids from a parent who's been there "It isn't the long day of monitoring a child's precarious health or being hypervigilant about her mood and mental health challenges that weighs parents down; it's the wishing that things were different. . . . Resentment, not the intense care they must provide their child, is the parents' greatest stressor and source of pain." —Laurie Wallin
Parents of specials needs children are exhausted. They've done all the research, consulted all the experts, joined support groups, gotten counseling, fought for the best life for their children. Often just caring for their children's needs and attempting to maintain a home maxes out parents' mental, emotional, and spiritual reserves. Laurie Wallin knows firsthand the difficulties of this journey. With Get Your Joy Back, she steps forward to make a bold, audacious claim: in the midst of this long-term, intense task, it is still possible to have an abundant life, full of joy. The key to radically changing daily life and restoring joy to the weary is forgiveness. Wallin gives parents a lifeline to find that restoration, pulling them back to shore when they feel like they're drowning. This book is full of practical, biblical insights and strategies to shed the resentments that leave Christian special-needs parents themselves spiritually, emotionally, and socially drained. Wallin meets readers right where they are, sugar coating nothing, but addressing issues with honesty, humor, and—above all—hope.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Invitation: Come in from the Cold
• 1 Yes, You Can Enjoy Life Again
• 2 Looking in the Mirror (Forgiving Yourself)
• 3 Restoring Joy in How You See Yourself
• 4 When Special Needs Don’t Feel Special (Forgiving Your Child)
• 5 Rediscovering Joy with Your Special Child
• 6 For Better or for Worse (Forgiving Your Spouse)
• 7 Rekindling Joy with Your Spouse
• 8 Can’t We All Just Get Along? (Forgiving Extended Family)
• 9 Regaining Joy in Your Family
• 10 When the Pros Don’t Know (Forgiving the Professionals)
• 11 Reclaiming Joy and Confidence with the Pros
• 12 Life on the Sidelines (Forgiving Church and Community)
• 13 Rebuilding Joy in Community
• 14 Is God Even Listening? (“Forgiving” God)
• 15 Rediscovering Joy with God
• Author’s Note
• Notes
• About the Author