Family Retreat: A Powerful Place to Belong

Life with a disability is often a life spent fighting to belong.

Doctors tell parents their child isn’t “normal.” Teachers and specialists suggest he or she is holding others back. Family members treat disability as an inconvenience or an embarrassment, while society quietly communicates that those who don’t fit the mold don’t quite belong.

Even within disability communities, families can feel caught in the middle—told their child is “too disabled” for one group and “not disabled enough” for another.

The result is often loneliness, grief, and exhaustion while families spend years fighting for resources, understanding, and acceptance for their children. Over time, many begin to pull back from the world that seems unwilling to make room for them.

This story is all too common in families living with disability.

It’s also my story.

As the sister of a girl with disabilities, I have spent years watching my family navigate doctors’ offices, therapy appointments, schools, churches, and social events. We were always searching for places where my sister would be welcomed instead of tolerated, understood instead of judged, and loved for who she is instead of defined by what she couldn’t do.

So, when I arrived at a Joni and Friends Family Retreat this summer, I thought I knew exactly why I was there.

I was there to serve.

I wanted to give my buddy the kind of acceptance and belonging my family had spent years looking for. I wanted to contribute to her experience of a place where her disability wasn’t the first thing people noticed, where her struggles weren’t placed under a magnifying glass, and where she could simply be herself.

But what I didn’t expect was to find a place of belonging for myself.

As a sibling, I know what it’s like to live in the spaces surrounding disability—the spaces where you love deeply and fight fiercely and sometimes feel unseen. I came to Family Retreat excited to pour into others and yet found myself being poured into in return.

I realized that Family Retreat is not a retreat away from something; it’s a retreat into something better.

Where families are accustomed to explaining themselves, they find understanding. Where they often experience isolation, they encounter community. Where they have faced rejection, they are met with acceptance.

For one week, families don’t have to convince anyone that their loved one has value. They don’t have to apologize for behaviors, explain diagnoses, or worry about fitting in. They simply belong. And so do the volunteers.

I saw it in the boy with autism who could enthusiastically ask everyone about their vacuum cleaners and find people eager to listen. I saw it in the boy with cerebral palsy who told the same joke over and over and was met with laughter instead of annoyance. I saw it in the girl with Down Syndrome who couldn’t get enough motorcycle rides and was cheered on every time she climbed aboard.

Each person was celebrated not despite who they are, but because of who they are.

Yet the belonging extended beyond individuals with disabilities. It was extended to the parents carrying years of exhaustion. It was extended to the siblings who understood the reality of disability in ways that are hard to put into words. It was extended to the volunteers and staff who came to serve and discovered they were part of something larger than themselves.

For one week, we became family.

This is what makes Family Retreat so special. It is not just a program or an event. It is a glimpse of the body of Christ functioning as it was intended. People of different abilities, ages, backgrounds, and experiences coming together—caring for one another and reflecting the love of Jesus.

Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the Body of Christ.

At Family Retreat, I saw that vision come to life.

And as I watched families living with disability, volunteers, and staff members embracing one another as family, I realized something unexpected: I was home.

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This was written by Cara Ramer, a Joni and Friends intern and student at Cedarville University.