When you see Maggie Maher, it’s likely that she’ll be surrounded by children, ranging from preschoolers to teens.

Mrs. Maher, 52, is the youth director at Park Church United Church of Christ, and her Wednesday youth groups attract kids from the church, its Harvard Terrace neighborhood, and farther away.

If you can see past the children who stay near Mrs. Maher, you might notice where she’s sitting: She has a motorized wheelchair.

“I really would rather be defined by how I live my life and what I do with the kids, and the passion I feel for what I feel God has called me to do” than being known as a quadriplegic, Mrs. Maher said.

One evening in 2007 she had left an overnight youth gathering at a church to pick up two more people and drive them there. Her brakes failed at an intersection, and a car collided with hers. The youths were only slightly hurt, but her injuries were permanent.

She is “pretty much paralyzed from the chest down” and has only limited hand use, she said.

What some might view as an impediment to faith — why would the divine let this happen? — she has used as a path to strengthen her own beliefs. She routinely engages in youth fellowship in the church, including organizing monthly church “overnights.”

“My husband thought I was insane.” She quoted him: “Who wants to go spend a night at the church with a big group of kids, get no sleep, and eat tons of pizza?”

She said she does, “because it’s such a unique opportunity to bring a really diverse group of kids together and do programming with them that you can’t do in a two-hour block on a one-night-a-week type thing.”

Mrs. Maher has helped “so many kids over the years,” she said. “There are kids that my husband says we should have been able to claim on our taxes because they ate enough of our food, and we financially supported them for different things. We helped with school supplies and school clothes and lunch money, whatever they needed.”

Mrs. Maher is dedicated to “working with young people, showing them possibilities,” she said.

“I had some pretty negative experiences as a teen with religion in terms of really having it stuffed down my throat, and just went through a period where I really questioned if I believed there was a God — the questions that I think most people who have any kind of faith struggle with at some point in their life,” she said.

“In any of my conversations with kids or teens, I hope I never made them feel like they had to believe one thing or another. Some kids believe; some kids don’t believe; some kids aren’t sure what they believe — they’re on the fence. Everybody’s welcome here.”

Park’s pastor, the Rev. Ed Heilman: “A number of the youth are now helping with teaching Sunday school, and they are in church. A core are quite active.”

Those leaders include people from Mrs. Maher’s time at the South YMCA, youth who followed her to Park when she accepted the position as minister of youth and Christian education in 2003.

Quadriplegia hasn’t diminished Mrs. Maher’s belief in connecting with the Park Children.

“The kids text you,” Pastor Heilman said to Mrs. Maher.

“Oh, yeah, the thumbs work really well,” she responded.

“One of the beautiful things to see is that it’s like the chair has disappeared,” Pastor Heilman told Mrs. Maher.

“When the youth are with you, they see you, they love you, you love them, and it’s just — [the wheelchair] is part of it, it’s there, but it’s just not [an obstacle]. It’s such a great education for them,” he said.

“It’s a real blessing that the church kept me on, allowed me to continue to do what I do,” Mrs. Maher said. “I obviously can’t chase them around the church anymore, when we’re hunting kids down for different things, [but] there’s always been, from the beginning, folks that have stepped forward, adults, to help me chaperone so I could continue to do the youth overnights, that we could continue to do mission trips. God has provided wonderfully in terms of that.”

Church folks are also helping to provide Mrs. Maher with a reliable wheelchair van, to replace her 1989 Ford Econoline.

“It’s broken down a number of times,” Pastor Heilman said. “A number of families got together and they have established a fund called Wheels for Maggie with Key Bank. … She had no choice in the matter.” There is also a website, wheelsformaggie.com.

“In all the years I’ve worked with kids in any capacity,” Mrs. Maher said, “I’ve never done it with the expectation of getting anything in return other than the satisfaction of knowing I was able to use the gift I had.”

She said, “It’s expensive being a quadriplegic, and there are just things that insurance doesn’t cover and your budget doesn’t stretch to. I had several people tell me, finally, that I had to be quiet and get out of the way” so they could raise funds for her benefit.

“It’s so hard; I don’t like attention on me; I don’t like to be the focus of attention. I so love the folks that are willing to do this, even though it’s uncomfortable.”

Her goal continues to be service. “I don’t do what I do for the money,” she said. “I never have. You don’t get rich being any kind of youth worker.

“I do it because I love God; I love the kids. I am so so grateful that I have the ability to continue to use my God-given gifts, and I’ll do it until God tells me there’s a different direction I need to go in.”

Contact TK Barger @ tkbarger@theblade.com, 419-724-6278 or on Twitter @TK_Barger.

First Published April 30, 2016, 4:00 a.m.