I had the privilege last week of touring a Maine business with an integrated workforce in which half of its employees are affected by some form of disability. It brought back warm memories of our daughter Ruth, who had cerebral palsy and was deaf. How she want to join in!

It didn’t matter whether it was grocery shopping, licking envelope flaps to help mail bills, or stirring cake batter, with my hand over hers, Ruth wanted to participate. With kids back in class this month, I am reminded what a challenge school can be for children who need extra help. Not just getting around the halls or sitting through class or coming up with the right answer, but feeling that they belong.

To the best of my memory, in nearly eight years, Ruth was only invited to a friend’s house once. While she was in first grade in Bath, I was helping her class with writing. One of her classmates suggested having Ruth over. With great glee this little girl spun a story about how she would buckle Ruth in her electric, child’s-size Jeep and drive her around her yard.

I laughed, knowing that Ruth didn’t have the strength to hold herself up in such a contraption. Having never met the girl’s family and not knowing her contact information, I never followed up on her invitation — a huge regret. As hard as it was for Ruth to make close friends, it was equally hard for me to help her make friends.

Not long ago I read an article in which parents praised their children for raising money to help kids living in a shelter. Another parent commented on the valuable lessons her own son had learned after volunteering to be a buddy to a boy with disabilities on his baseball team. But neither family appeared to have any contact with these children beyond the original environment that brought them together.

Deep relationships are forged over time. Real friends hang out. While Ruth struggled to communicate and relied on others to feed and transport her, she longed for the same acceptance that we all do, regardless of our other needs. This is the same acceptance that Christ encourages us to have for others, telling his followers to, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” Matthew 22:39.

Close to 20 percent of the members of our church arrive each week from area group homes. I’m blessed as our voices join together for hymns, as they offer up their requests in prayer, and in the time we sit together in fellowship after the service. But to be truly integrated, Christ calls us to go deeper, to grow together beyond our comfortable walls – a challenge.

How can we welcome those whose needs differ from our own? With a little imagination, like the child in Ruth’s class, who was eager to embrace a new friend and take her for a ride.

Meadow Rue Merrill writes and reflects on God’s presence in her ordinary life from a little house in the big woods of Mid-coast Maine. Her memoir, “Redeeming Ruth,” releases in May 2017.