Disability, part 1

 

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

"Years before I became a mother to five autistic children, I was walking alongside my student, who drove a motorized wheelchair along a sidewalk on our university campus. She was the brightest in her class, and we were discussing a fine point in one of the works of St. Gregory of Nyssa as we went. We paused as a car slowed beside us and a young man got out to stand in front of us.

'May we help you?' I asked.

'Miss,' he said to my student, 'if you will believe in Jesus, you can stand up out of that wheelchair and walk.'

My jaw dropped. A hundred rebukes came to mind. How dare he attack this woman, who has devoted her life to studying the Lord, as though she lacked faith? Thankfully, before I could draw breath to tell the man what I thought, my student spoke up.

'Sir,' she said, 'this wheelchair is an answer to my prayers. I know Jesus, and He gave me this wheelchair so I can fulfill the call He has placed on my life.'"

--From Of Such is the Kingdom: A Practical Theology of Disability by Summer Kinard

This post will be one in a series of like-minded posts. I honestly don't know how long the series will be, because I am processing what it means to live with a disability. Yes, I am disabled. It's an invisible, hidden, silent disability, but it exists nonetheless. And that's okay.

I started with this quote because my first response to similar advice/guidance from people in my life, the sinner that I am, is not nearly as gracious. I become irritated, frustrated, and angry. How can they not understand what I'm going through? How can they not know that I DO believe God could heal me instantly and completely if He wanted to? How can they not see that I don't view this disability as a curse, but a blessing? 

I genuinely believe God has allowed me to be disabled for my salvation. He allowed me to get cancer for my salvation. My being disabled post-cancer treatment wasn't a surprise to Him. My disability may bar me from a career in medicine, but it doesn't bar me from a relationship with God.

Leaving behind my career as a doctor doesn't make me any less of a person. God certainly doesn't think so.