Review of Freedom, Healing for Parents of Disabled Children by Nancy Douglas

June 30, 2008 – 1:54 pm by sntjohnny. Filed under Blog, General.

A review of Nancy Douglas’s Freedom: Healing for Parents of Disabled Children (Buy from Amazon)

Book Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Nancy Douglas (February 18, 2008)
• ISBN-10: 0615188222
• ISBN-13: 978-0615188225
• Webpage: www.oliveleafministries.com

---

Nancy Douglas was looking forward to the birth of her daughter.  It didn’t take long to realize that something was horribly wrong.  After the dust had settled, she found that she was bound up in a conflicting mess of uncertainty, fear, guilt, and grief.  Her daughter could not be healed: Nancy Douglas would not be healed.  Yet twenty years later she has emerged from the worst and is now in a position to share her experiences so that others might find healing- and freedom- sooner.

As the parent of a disabled child myself, I could resonate with much of what Mrs. Douglas wrote about.  There were somethings about her experiences that were different for my wife and I but there were others that were very similar.    I believe that this book will be well suited for the Christian parents of a disabled child where the parents struggle to cope even years later.   This book is proof positive that skeptics and atheists are not the first or only ones to struggle with the problem of pain and suffering.  Quite possibly, even those who are not believers but are the parents of disabled children will be able to relate to her candid discussion about her long time struggle with God… and see that God is waiting to help them, too.

The strongest chapter, in my opinion, is chapter three, which is titled “Good Grief.”  She explains that someone doesn’t have to die in order for another to experience grief.  This is absolutely true.  I know that my wife and I endured a long period of what can only be appropriately described as grief, though what had died was not the child, but the whole host of expectations that were dashed when we learned our child would be disabled.  While we have overcome most of the outright grief, there are still shooting pains when we realize that our child will never dance, play soccer, or climb a tree.   Or at least, if these things happen, they will happen in a radically transformed way.  However, as Mrs. Douglas points out, there is a ‘good’ grief which makes you stronger and more resilient, and what makes it ‘good’ is not the degree of the event but rather the attitude one adopts in and through it.

Another strength of the book is that it takes time to discuss the impact of the disability on family relationships.  For example, the marriage is impacted, and other siblings will find that their needs are sacrificed at times to the child whose needs are exhausting.   In particular, her argument that marriages take work (a position I think she grew into somewhat reluctantly, but which her husband always knew) even in the best of times is a breath of fresh air in a culture which believes that “All you need is love” and by love, of course, they mean good sexual chemistry.

Several chapters speak to some of the deeper philosophical and theological issues that she faces, sometimes on a day to day basis.  She faces them experientially, not academically.  As such, I believe that a wide spectrum of people who share similar kinds of burdens will be receptive to what she has to say.  Some might disagree with some of her perspectives, but don’t let it be said that Christians are out of touch with the pain and suffering in the world.

Nancy Douglas writes unashamedly as a Christian and as one who struggled with her grief regarding her disabled child for years and years.  I sometimes wondered if some of her insights might be better received by a woman rather than a man, coming as it does from a woman’s point of view.   Still, as a hard look at how one believer in God coped with a very tough situation, the book has lasting value whether one is a man or a woman reading it, since things like grief, dashed expectations, fear, and the host of uncertainties that come with a disabled child in the house are human issues, real for both Christians and nonChristians.

I commend this book to parents of disabled children and to pastors who might want to have a book on hand to give to parents who have newly discovered that their child is disabled, although as Mrs. Douglas’s experiences are evidence of, those parents who are years in might be helped, too.