Candee Fick uses the metaphor of making lemonade to help parents of special needs children to understand what life will be like. While I believe she wrote it primarily with new parents in mind, it is helpful to those of us who have been parents to special needs children for years. Every now and again, I need to be reminded that I’m not on this journey alone and there are others out there who understand what daily life is like for me.

Using the metaphor, some of her chapters include: Juicing Lemons (the hard times we go through), Adding Sugar (hope), Adding Other Fruit (healthy children in the home), Pitcher of Support, Sipping Lemonade (joy).

Throughout the book, she follows the lives of several families with special needs kids. The needs range from cancer to autism, to asthma, to Cornelia de Lange syndrome. Such personal stories made the book come alive.

For me personally, God has taken what we first thought to be a very terrible situation and turned it into something beautiful. That’s what the author is trying to say with her metaphor. There are so many good things she points out. One of the best was mentioning that the grief process all parents of special needs children experience is not linear but cyclical. Something will happen or there will be a new diagnosis, and the grief begins all over again. Many “outsiders” don’t understand that. In this way, I think this would also be a good book for other family members and friends.

I also liked the section where the author lists pages of helpful Scripture verses. What a wonderful resource to have when you’re afraid or angry or grieving.

The last section of the book recounts the progress of the children followed in the book. That was an encouragement and the main thing I took away from the book – we all will come to a place, wherever we are now in our journey as parents of special needs kids, when God will make everything beautiful. Even if we may not understand it all on this earth.