i'm reposting this from my brother Richard's blog. his 6-year-old daughter Ana has Down syndrome. this is one way she's made a difference in his life & impacted people who come across their path.
We celebrated my daughter’s birthday this weekend. We wanted so badly to invite friends of Ana’s from her special needs class. We were intentional in inviting all her peers from class because we know firsthand the isolation and loneliness that disability can bring. It's not always a purposeful isolation. People exclude you but they don’t mean to; it's not malicious, they just do. So we wanted to make sure all of Ana’s special needs classmates felt welcome. We rented a jump house just for that occasion, where I would work hard to make sure all children in wheelchairs or a little wobbly on their feet were assisted to have a great time in the jump house. The first boy from Ana’s class came up and I asked his mother if he could come in. She said, "He’s never done it before because they're always too full and people aren’t looking out for him." He came in and I held him and we jumped together. The smile on his face said it all. It gave me great joy that I was the first one to take him into a jump house. He had been excluded up until that point, not because people are mean and don’t want to include him, but because the world is not built for him. I don’t accept that, and so we were so glad that this 7-year-old boy could know and experience that he is included and maybe that might show him and his mother the acceptance that a good God has given them in Jesus.
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