Disabled and Whole

Lots of people love Autumn for so many reasons. I am one of those people. I know I’m not alone. Pumpkins, cozy blankets and sweaters, apple cider, crisp weather (Praise God! Where are all my fellow heat-intolerant folks?!) It seems that in the midst of the best month of the year in my opinion, October, the leaves are set “ablaze” in a fiery display. One of the things that makes it so gorgeous is how gloriously fleeting it all is. Almost tragic. But let it “burn” while it can, right?

It seems like God’s creation cries out seasonally, begging the same question, “Why don’t we do the same with our grief and our pain?” 

So many of us walk around with gaping “wounds” in our souls that fester because we’ve never set about to letting them heal. Why is that? I confess, I’m one of those people, on the journey of what life looks like after you stop ignoring your wounds. I’m curious. Why do we do this? I want to know. I’ve been asking this question for two years now and some of the journey is what sparked the creation of this blog. What does journeying with God through pain and suffering look like as a whole person, beloved by Jesus? Is there glorious Autumn involved? I have so many questions and I’ll bet you do too.

When I was diagnosed with MS two years ago, things went up in flames. Huge dreams smoldering in ashes. My old self as I knew it in a metaphorical grave. Even friendships that I never expected went up in smoke. My actual nervous system set on fire. I had no idea what it was like until it was me. The wobbly legs. The chronic pain. “Chronic”. What a strange word…so much stigma. “Pain”. What a word that so few believe. I’ve stop trying to convince others that it’s real. I know the reality in my body too well. I completely understand now why a recent John’s Hopkins study reported that “up to half of MS patients are at risk for developing depression and up to 40 percent of support partners are too”. That’s me. This is hard stuff. It burns. 

So, in light of this, is it just me, or does anyone else love fiction books when they need to rest, so that their minds don’t crack under the weight of life sometimes? Jesus honors rest. He models it. For me, I gravitate towards the Harry Potter series for my fiction of choice. I’m quite a big fan to be honest. A story of love, friendship, sacrifice. And it’s magical! There’s a scene in the fifth book, “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix” where Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, is battling it out with the evil wizard, Voldemort. Fawkes, a beloved Phoenix belonging to Dumbledore, sees a killing curse coming straight at its master and the bird flies in front of him. The bird swallows the curse, causing it to set alight and extinguish to the ground in a lifeless heap. Readers are left for several pages to wonder if the legendary bird, who typically rises from the ashes, is dead. In books prior to this, we’ve seen the Phoenix burst into glorious flame, only to rise once more. (Sound familiar? Jesus’ resurrection vibes! I just got chills.) Spoiler alert! Fawkes lives.  I promise there’s a point to this…

A well known writer, Charaia Camille, puts it this way.

“I’ve clung to the promise that God can bring beauty from the ashes. But as I’ve meditated on this truth I’ve realized that sometimes, in our desperation to not hurt, we throw water on that which must burn. And it’s easy to believe that hope is refusing to let what was and what we hoped to be, get engulfed by flames.

“Sometimes trusting God looks like letting it burn. Sometimes obedience is in putting the water pail down and believing that, even in the embers, there can be goodness. Hope will find you. And when you’re ready hope will lead you to the belief that God can birth something from what burned. When the story doesn’t begin with ‘it almost broke me’, but ‘it absolutely broke me’, and when the goodness of God is not made evident by being held together, but being able to fall apart in His palms full of holy compassion, would you find healing by remaining in remembering that your being began with the dust, and the ashes can be apart of your becoming.”

Here’s the honest truth. My dear one, reading this right now. I know it burns. I get it. I’m right there with you. I’m putting my water pail down. Every second of the day, I’m tempted to pick it back up. And it seems like so many others all around are running at you with their pails of water, to put those flames in your life out too. With well-intentioned platitudes and toxic positivity. And spiritual “Bandaid” Scripture out of context. And my personal favorites: explanations for why your life is what it is and what you should do about it, as if we are all “tiny gods” or something. 

Whatever happened to sitting with one another, in sackcloth and ashes? Oh yes, there is risk involved in this. The embers might burn to sit too close to someone else in their ash heap and embers. Maybe that’s why it’s been so lonely these years. But Jesus didn’t distance Himself. He went straight into the fires of Hades for us all. 

When you start to identify more with people who are pushed to the margins of society, you start to see things so differently. Sitting in hard things with other people starts to feel less scary because your doing it with yourself a lot. I am not saying that I now do this perfectly, but “moving towards” another human in their ashes feels natural now. Covered in my own ash heap and burns, with no intent to hide them, I myself have become a constant reminder of the fragility of life and humans who exist outside of society’s self-labeled “normal”. Kate Bowler, an author who battles stage IV colon cancer, says something like this on a recent podcast: “[Being an obvious human reminder of life’s fragility] is a real smash hit at family gatherings and kid’s birthday parties”. If we’d just truly admit it to ourselves, we are all fragile. We just don’t like to admit it. It’s true, visceral, and causes one’s vision to change drastically. This lens helps me begin to truly notice, pay attention and see those around me, and not ignore them…humans who are whole and beautiful and loved and accepted by Jesus, yet have been pushed to the fringe of society for various unacceptable reasons. Humans of all shapes, sizes, colors, ability, who are burning in their souls about the injustice of it all, yearning for a world that looks like home. Our eternal home. “Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven.” Do we believe it? 

This blog is called “Disabled and Whole”.  Whole in Jesus’ eyes. I say in Jesus’ eyes because unfortunately the world as a whole has yet to acknowledge all disabled people as whole people. Even in two years, I have already been affected deeply by the poison that is ableism in our society. Kingdom work here on earth is yet to be done, and that is why, even though it is “far better to be with Christ”, and the days can be so dark at times, I remain here, in hopes to see the light of that fire shine. More to come. But this is a start.

God, it’s utterly painful to do so, but I put down my water pail. Let burn what must.