THE CASE OF THE DISABLED CHRISTIAN, PART TWO: “ALL TO THE GLORY OF GOD.”

NOTE: Read THE CASE OF THE DISABLED CHRISTIAN, PART ONE: SHOULD WE PRAY FOR HEALING?” here.

Do I Want to Be Healed?

THE CASE OF THE DISABLED CHRISTIAN, PART ONE: SHOULD WE PRAY FOR HEALING? In part one, I promised you an easy answer to this question, so here it is:

Do I want to be healed?

No.

I do not want to be healed. Nor do I believe that I need to be healed. For the quality of life crowd, let me assure you that while I have my struggles like everyone, I have a wonderful life, blindness and all. I live within walking distance of a gorgeous beach. I have a family that loves me unconditionally, a supportive and inclusive church community, friends that uplift and encourage me, and I have my independence. I see nothing missing from this beautiful picture.
While sitting at the beach last week with a friend, looking out at the waves, I said, “I couldn’t enjoy this any more if I were sighted.” And I meant it.

But what of my relationship with God? It hasn’t always been this way. When I first became blind, I prayed for healing. My family prayed for healing. And that wasn’t wrong. When I prayed for physical healing last, I was eighteen and sitting on the window ledge of my second-story college dorm room. I had a nudge in my heart and I listened. Maybe there’ll come a time that I’ll ask again in the future, but only if the Lord leads me to it. I choose to believe, and be content with where God has placed me in this world. And that brings me to my final thought, and the most important lesson I’ve learned.

It’s About God, Not Me

In my last post, I said that we don’t know how to hold both a loving God and a disability together.

This is how:

By realizing that having a disability changes our lives, but it doesn’t change God.

The question of whether I’m blind for the rest of my life or if God restores my sight is irrelevant to the bigger picture.
It’s about God, not me. He is still who He has always been and always will be—a God of love, grace, justice and the savior of my soul. I am here on this earth to serve and glorify God, not the other way around. By no means has this been easy, and I struggle with this truth every moment of my life; my sinful nature persuades me that I’m the center of the world and even God is subject to my wishes. I get upset when He doesn’t answer prayers the way that I think is best, and my faith wavers when I don’t feel His presence the way that I hear worship leaders and christian authors describe. But the truth doesn’t change.

God doesn’t change.

The question of healing has been one that I’ve had to grapple with for as long as I’ve been blind. People are always curious about my answer, and even more so when they hear that my answer is no. I’ve given my reasons to family, to friends and to total strangers. But it took many years, lots of tears and constant wrestling with God to come to the conclusion that I have.

If it is God’s will to heal me, then may I be healed. But it will have to come from Him, not me. My healing must be part of His plan to bring glory to Him in my life. But for now, as I write this looking out the window at the beautiful ocean, I believe strongly in my spirit that I am firmly in the center of God’s will. I can see the blessings and the growth and the beauty that my blindness has brought. And if God is using this to his glory, who am I to rob God of a way that He’s chosen to work in my life and the lives of those around me?

God is so much bigger than I can imagine, and my healing is in His hands. I Corinthians 10:31 says it well: “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.”

“So Rhianna, can I pray for you to be healed?”

“Thanks for the thought. But no. There are other things going on right now that I’m struggling with, though. Could we pray for those? And if there’s anything that you need, I’d be happy to pray with you, too.”

THE CASE OF THE DISABLED CHRISTIAN, PART ONE: SHOULD WE PRAY FOR HEALING?

Let’s hit the ground running with this blog! And I’m excited to attack the most asked, and rather controversial question for most disabled people.

Do You Want to Be Healed?

While I have an easy answer to this question which I shout from the rooftops with more conviction than most people expect, I’m not going to answer it yet. I want to break down all the facets of this question first so we can understand fully what we’re asking. I think it’s much deeper than we realize. As you read, please be mindful that everything I say here is my own personal conviction and though I know many others who share my views, these are my words and not meant to represent every disabled person’s experience.

It’s Just Physical, Right?

When someone prays for my healing, they are asking for my physical disability to be restored to health. They’re asking that my blindness be taken away and that I be given sight. That seems fairly obvious, right?

Maybe. Maybe not.

In praying for any need, there is always something underlying, something which propels the prayer into action. When the Israelites asked Moses for water in the desert in Exodus 17, Moses petitioned the Lord and He provided water through the rock at Horeb. They were thirsty so they asked for water. Similarly, when the 19th-century preacher, Charles Finney prayed for rain, he prayed with expectation and with the knowledge that without it, the crops of Oberlin Ohio would die and they couldn’t care for their cattle. Their need for rain prompted a prayer, and God answered their prayer. Though prayer is first and foremost a way to be in conversation with God, to know Him, to listen, and to grow closer to Him, it’s perfectly okay to ask for what we need. Matthew 21:22 says “And whatever you ask for in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

But I always wonder what drives people to pray for my healing. The most common answer I hear to this question is that they want me, the disabled person, to have a better quality of life. But stay with me here, because I want to break this down even further.

What constitutes a “good” quality of life? For some, I can imagine that it’s being financially stable. For others, having a family, or perhaps, it’s having the freedom to travel. Everyone is different—some love to be up and moving and others are perfectly content at home.

But you know what? I can do all those things, too. People who are blind can travel, raise families and be financially stable. There’s no one-size-fits-all standard for quality of life. So before presuming that a disabled person’s quality of life is somehow lessened by their disability, try something different… ask them. They may just be perfectly happy. I know I am.

There’s one more comment I’d like to make before I leave this quality-of-life discussion. In hearing this question, I can’t help but hear some underlying ableism — ableism being discrimination or prejudice against individuals with disabilities. Now, let me ask this:

What makes an able-bodied person feel that they know what’s best for a disabled person?

Please, take a minute and think that over. I don’t pretend to have an answer, and it will vary depending on who you ask. But I encourage you to spend time with that question, and if you can’t find a reason other than “I’m able-bodied and they have a disability,” then I implore you as nicely as I can: STOP!

Maybe people think our quality of life would be improved by healing since we wouldn’t be bound by hospital visits or adaptive equipment or prescription medications. We wouldn’t be limited and would be free to live as we wish. But, everyone, able-bodied or disabled, has limits. Hate to break it to you. Mine happen to be physical, and for some, they’re mental or emotional. Limits don’t inhibit freedom—they enhance it.

But Doesn’t God Want Them to Be Healed?

In the Bible, there are countless stories where Jesus heals people. The healing of the blind man in John 9, the bleeding woman in Mark 5:21-43, and even after Jesus ascended, his disciples, Peter and John healing the lame man in Acts 3. These accounts are incredible and miraculous, clearly the hand of God at work in people’s lives.

But in being told and retold these miraculous accounts of healing, I’ve grown up a little fearful of what this teaches us about people with disabilities. Our presence in the Bible is often as the recipient of the amazing grace that Jesus offers in being healed of our afflictions. If this is how we are teaching about disabled individuals in the world and particularly in church, it’s little wonder that healing is our go-to response when presented with someone like me.

“But Jesus healed the blind man,” they say. “He healed the lame, the mute, the demon-possessed. Jesus was all about healing.”

Yes! He was, and still is! You’ll never see me arguing with that. But is that the only type of healing that Jesus wants for us?

I believe Jesus came to heal us spiritually, to draw us into relationship with him. Paying for our sins by dying on the cross in our place wasn’t so that I might be physically healed, but so that I could come to him, even as a sinful person, and find healing for my soul. Does that mean that Jesus has lost interest in physical healing? Absolutely not! But I don’t believe it’s his priority, and when he chooses to heal, it’s for a purpose.

Here’s where I am going to take a gamble, and this isn’t meant to put words in anyone’s mouth. But in my heart, I do believe this is a very real part of the driving force, whether the asker knows it or not.

It creates a crisis of faith for the able-bodied believer. Jesus healed the sick and disabled. He can heal today, right now, if we pray. But when he doesn’t, or the disabled person doesn’t want to be healed… what do we do with that? How do we as believers reconcile an ever-loving God with a disability? Because, if he were truly loving and wanting the best for us, wouldn’t He heal us?

We don’t know how to hold both, our God of love who made us fearfully and wonderfully and with a purpose, and disability.

But there is a way.

Continue reading: THE CASE OF THE DISABLED CHRISTIAN, PART TWO: “ALL TO THE GLORY OF GOD.”

IN THE BEGINNING

“In The Beginning Was The Bird and the Bird Was Blind.”

Every story begins somewhere, and the story of my blindness begins with a bird.

To this day, I do not know what kind of bird it was, but I remember with vivid detail its crooked feet, its red-flecked breast and its eyes… oh those eyes. I remember specks of colour—maybe red or black?—but what I remember the most is how wrong they looked. Something was wrong with this bird.

Something was definitely wrong.

This bird was dead, having died after flying into our back kitchen window. I’d found him in our side yard and being filled with compassion for this hurt bird and no cares for the safety or cleanliness of such an act, I picked him up and cuddled him in my little hands. My four year old heart broke.

And when I was diagnosed with bilateral retinoblastoma—cancer of the eyes—within weeks, the connection was clear. This, in all truth and sincerity, is what I believed about how and why I became blind:

The bird had cancer and was blind, and because he couldn’t see our window, he flew into it and subsequently died. I touched the bird, caught his cancer and that’s why I became blind.

Of course, now as a woman in my mid-twenties, I understand the childlike ignorance that bore this theory into being; cancer is not contagious, neither is blindness and blindness is not always the result of a retinoblastoma diagnosis. But as a child, I carried this theory as fact with me throughout my childhood and adolescence, and even while I knew the truth of my medical history, a small part of me always clung to the bird. I wanted it to be real, to have an answer for why this happened to me. Follow up genetic testing would prove inconclusive, and with no family history of RB, my cancer effectively came out of nowhere. This bird gave me a reason and a tangible reality to hold onto while grappling with questions and emotions that were too big for a little girl to carry. To believe that the bird gave me cancer was easier than the truth.

How It Really Happened: The True Origin Story

My diagnosis of bilateral retinoblastoma came on April 19, 2001. It was just shy of six weeks before my fifth birthday. Everything I know of this time comes secondhand from my parents—the greenish-whitish thing my mother saw floating in my eye, the appointment with the optometrist, the consult with the ophthalmologist that same afternoon and the diagnosis of retinoblastoma at BC Children’s Hospital a week later.

The year 2001 saw me through several rounds of cryotherapy and chemotherapy, and in November, an enucleation of my right eye. In terms that I understand? My right eye was surgically removed, thus, I became legally half-blind. In 2002, I underwent further treatments and a trip to Disneyland which was generously provided to my family by The Children’s Wish Foundation. That trip holds many memories and smiles in my heart and I hope to share those with you in a future post. But 2002 came and went and I found myself in a back room of the surgical unit, holding hands with my family and ophthalmologist, praying to Jesus for what was about to happen. Then Daddy picked me up and carried me into the operating room. I breathed deep the scent of watermelon and when I woke up, my life had changed completely.

It was January 27, 2003, known in my family as Classy Glassy Day in honour of my first prosthetic eye. As of this writing, I have been completely blind and cancer-free for eighteen years. And while I continue to be followed by a team of medical professionals, I thank God that I have not been given a second diagnosis.

In The Middle… Is The Rest

But now, with the initial cancer treatments in my past and a life lived in total blindness stretching ahead, I live in a feeling of the middle.

I live in the middle of sight and blindness. I have memories of having vision, of knowing my colours and seeing the faces of my family. When someone describes a sunset to me or says that the dog in the park is a golden retriever, I can imagine it because I’ve seen it. And yet, I live in the middle of those memories, clutching them close to my heart yet I watch them fade with every passing day. The longer I live, the more my sighted life becomes a smaller and smaller piece, like an island that appears to be shrinking but it’s merely the ocean growing bigger around me.

I live in the middle of what society expects of a disabled woman and how I try to live outside that box. This is a Pandora’s box that I’m hesitant to open, but simultaneously, I feel is important to explore. I will go into depth in future posts, but sufficed to say that living as a woman with a visible disability brings with it a disturbing disparity that clings to me like a shadow. From society, I often feel an expectation to be an overachieving inspiration for the mere act of living, or a person of whom nothing is expected because I have a disability. I have to fight for accessibility, to be treated as equal, and yet all I want is the same things as you—equality, respect, dignity and a place in our world.

And I live in the middle of a life that is messy and broken, full of joy and lots of green tea. My faith in Jesus Christ guides everything I do yet I find myself struggling against Him because I can’t reconcile the world I live in with the love that He gives to us. I suffer from disordered eating habits where I hyper-focus on healthy ingredients to the point where I go without food for hours or days to avoid eating what I’ve deemed “unhealthy.” My mental health is steadied by medication and I go to therapy every two weeks. I cry during the radio drama production of Little Women EVERY. SINGLE. TIME! I’m an intense personality with deep, strong emotions that I’m learning to embrace. And I’m complex, quirky and valuable, and I have a story that matters–just like every human being.

This is my life. And I’m happy to have you apart of it. While this blog is centered around my experiences as a blind woman, I hope you will take from it much more than that. I hope that through my words, you will find me a person much like you, someone stumbling through life’s challenges and joys and just looking to do it with God and with those I love.