I want to tell you about two churches.

At my home church, I sat in the foyer or sanctuary most Sundays with a pit in my stomach. I'd spend the drive there dreading who might pull me aside to tell me my traumatized three year old had hit someone again. I'd watch parents steer their kids away from mine. I'd smile through comments like "Well, she's been with you long enough — she should be fine by now" and "Have you tried just praying more?" I did the work of putting together a list of practical ways the congregation could help our family and others like mine — because a pastor had asked me to, and I'd hoped something might come of it. I got a reply that said "thank you." Nothing else happened.

I loved God through all of that. I knew He loved me. But I wasn't seeing it in the people around me. Most Sunday mornings, I didn't have the energy to fight my own anxiety and get the kids ready and go. Two or three times a month, maybe, I avoided that church - for over six months.

At the second church, I showed up for the first time on a long weekend — the one Sunday they had no childcare. My six month old was on an oxygen tube, fresh out of a ten day hospital stay. My two and three year old ended up chasing each other through the foyer, shrieking with laughter, while I tried to keep the baby from pulling out her oxygen line. I got everyone back to the car in tears. A gentleman followed me to the parking lot, smiled, and said "Thanks for coming. I hope we see you again soon."

I cried for twenty minutes.

The next week, my three year old walked out of Sunday school and for the first time — the first time — she didn't want to go home.

The church was never meant to be for the easy families

Jesus didn't save his time and energy for the people who had it together. He went looking for the woman at the well. He stopped for Zacchaeus. He called Saul — Saul — by name. The people who had been through the most, who were the hardest to love, who made the religious establishment uncomfortable — those were exactly the people He moved toward.

Our families are those people. And the first place we should find grace, acceptance, and the permission to fall apart and try again — is in the church.

I'm not saying that to be harsh. I'm saying it because I believe it with everything in me, and because I have lived the gap between what the church is meant to be and what it sometimes is in practice. That gap costs families like mine more than most people realize.

What the gap actually looks like

It doesn't usually look like cruelty. It looks like a card sent to the hospital with a generic "hope she feels better soon" — while a friend from outside the church rearranged her entire day to come sit with me for an hour and brought a gift basket and checked in every single day after.

It looks like a kind offer to help — "send me a grocery list and I'll pick it up for you" — that quietly disappears when I'm too overwhelmed to write the list. When the help depends on me having the capacity to organize and direct it, it isn't really help. It's an offer with conditions I can't meet.

It looks like someone telling me, years later, with a warm smile — "I'm glad you found what you were looking for." And I smiled back and said "me too." While internally I was screaming: "I wasn't looking for a different church. I was looking for community. Acceptance. Someone to show up. I was looking for what the church is supposed to be."

It looks like my kids losing friendships because a family needed "space" after hard moments — and both my kids and I knowing that "space" meant never again.

It looks like well-meaning advice from people who have never parented a child whose nervous system is in survival mode, delivered with confidence, while I nod politely because I'm too tired to explain.

None of these people were villains. Most of them genuinely cared. But caring isn't the same as showing up. And for families like mine, the distance between those two things is enormous.

What showing up actually looks like

I want to paint you a picture of what it looks like when a church actually gets it — because I've lived that too, and it changed everything.

It looks like a man noticing my kid completely shut down and just going to sit with him. Not waiting to be asked. Not making it a big moment. Just sitting nearby, talking gently, like a mentor — until my kid was ready to walk to the car on his own. I didn't ask him to do that. He just did it.

It looks like a Sunday school volunteer letting my anxious kid wear my car key on their wrist during class — so they'd know I wasn't leaving without them.

It looks like someone saying "You don't have to be the first parent to pick up. Go have a coffee first." And meaning it.

It looks like showing up 45 minutes late, one kid still in pyjamas, everyone grumpy from a hard drive — and being met with "Glad you made it!" said like they actually mean it.

It looks like a text on a Wednesday that says "I've been thinking about you this week. How can I be praying?" Not a form email. Not a bulletin announcement. A text. From a person. Who actually wants to know.

It looks like being invited to things — repeatedly, consistently — even when we can't make it 99 times out of 100. The invitation matters. It says: "you are still part of us. We haven't given up on you."

It looks like someone dropping off a tub of ice cream in the middle of a COVID shutdown with a note that says "You need a bright spot." No list required. No organizing on my end. Just someone who thought of us and acted on it.

It looks like "I noticed something really good in your kid today" — even when we both know the morning was hard.

It looks like people who, when you say "we're fine," hear what's underneath it and say "It sounds like you're actually struggling — can I pray for you right now?" And then they do. Right there.

The one thing

If you're reading this and something in you is stirring — if you're a pastor or a volunteer or just someone who sits a few rows behind a family that looks like they're barely holding it together — I'm not asking you to build a program today.

I'm asking you to do one thing.

Get their number. Send a text this week. Not a follow-up about programming or volunteering or whether they're coming Sunday. Just: ""I've been thinking about you. How are you really doing?"

And then keep doing it. Next week. The week after. When they miss three Sundays in a row. When the holidays come and you know things are probably harder. When you don't hear back right away.

Connection. That's it. That's the whole thing.

These families are already isolated. The behaviours, the exhaustion, the appointments, the system — all of it pulls them away from community. You don't have to fix any of that. You just have to refuse to let them disappear.

The church that changed everything for us didn't have a special program

They just showed up. They hauled an oxygen tank across a parking lot so we could attend a conference. They let a three year old take her time before going into Sunday school. They asked me — eventually — to help them do it better, for our family and for the others that were quietly struggling in their congregation too.

That's where this work started for me. Not with a curriculum. With people who decided that the hardest families deserved to belong — and then acted like it.

Your church can be that church.

It starts with a text.

In future posts, I'll share practical ways your congregation can build real support for foster, adoptive, and neurodivergent families — from simple volunteer structures to what to actually say (and not say) in the hard moments. If you don't want to miss those, [join my email list] and I'll send them straight to you.