Written by the Rev. Doris R. Powell

I WAS THIRTY-TWO. I’d just been backpacking in Colorado and was painting my house when I began to experience mysterious symptoms: swelling and pain in my hands, then an elbow, soon my shoulders, knees, and ankles. I went to work swathed in ace bandages. Within two months, I’d been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.

Invocation

Holy One, come among us. Walk this faith journey with us as we learn from our sisters and experience the stirring of our own deep yearning for you. Amen.

CORINTHIANS 4:7-11; EPHESIANS 3:16-21

I WAS THIRTY-TWO. I’d just been backpacking in Colorado and was painting my house when I began to experience mysterious symptoms: swelling and pain in my hands, then an elbow, soon my shoulders, knees, and ankles. I went to work swathed in ace bandages. Within two months, I’d been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. The doctor said, “It’s not a death sentence,” speaking of life expectancy. No, I thought, “It’s a life sentence” to a body in which my expectancy about life was changed. I was thirty-two … going on eighty.

I was familiar with Elisabeth Kübler Ross’s stages of dealing with loss: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I managed partial denial for almost two years. I would learn the “lessons” it had to teach me, and then it would go away.

What I wasn’t prepared for was an identity crisis. Perhaps it was because I’d just moved, and no one in my new community knew me. Everyone was reacting to this stranger who wasn’t me. They saw a woman hurting with every movement, constantly exhausted, struggling to keep up. They didn’t know the active, energetic person I’d always been. They didn’t know me.

Over and over I asked: “Who am I, God? Am I the lively, capable person I’ve always known myself to be, or this stranger sidelined by pain? Is it healthier to fight this, or accept it?” The poet Rainer Maria Rilke counsels, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart…. Live the questions now.”

The day-pain forced me to wear moccasins with my elegant business dress to a corporate meeting; I slipped from suffering into affliction. I’d looked forward to meeting many colleagues I’d only known by phone, but no one knew how to relate to the odd one in their midst. Simone Weil wrote of affliction as something that “seizes and uproots a life in all its parts … social, psychological, and physical:” It makes the sufferer an outcast and life into an image of death. “Who am I, God?”

The answer was a “standing up out of death to life,” as Melanie Morrison has described resurrection. “You are my beloved child. I know you. You are all you ever have been. You’ll always carry that with you. And you are all you are becoming. You’ll learn the grace of resisting and accepting. I am with you in all of it:” And then, “Are you still my disciple? Don’t ask for a pass to sit on the sidelines, because I have great need of you. You, my beloved child.”

That was almost twenty years ago. Nothing since has shaken my identity: disciple of Christ, bearer of treasure in an earthen vessel. As a person living with disability, I’ve discovered that I am differently-abled. I am clear in purpose and identity. I’ve cracked the illusion that we control our lives. Determination and perseverance still serve me well. I am more compassionate, creative, courageous, peaceful, perceptive, reflective, joyous, appreciative, whole.

Yet, can I be whole while others are not? So I am passionate, energetic, and active in creative, powerful ways to work for healing and wholeness for all. As with many persons with disabilities, I say to the church, “Let me offer my gifts in the church. Let me minister to and with you:” God’s power is at work in us, accomplishing far more than all we can ask or imagine.

Arthritis functions as a spiritual discipline, keeping me keenly aware of my reliance on God, God’s presence with me, and my connectedness with all people. I live in conversation with God and community, rooted and grounded in love.

I seem to have missed the classic stages of bargaining and depression, perhaps because the word spoken to my identity crisis moved me to acceptance. Whatever happens with me, I am in God’s hands. I say that not in resignation but in trust.

In a sermon about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Howard Thurman said, “We cannot fathom the mystery of God. We cannot even understand the meaning of our own little lives, but the fierce hold that we have on our lives, again and again, is the most real thing that we have. To relax that and to trust God … not to hold things in some all-encompassing grasp; no, but to trust God just with you … is the most difficult dimension of the spiritual life.”

I do experience anger. At the indifference, prejudice, and injustice that add suffering. I feel anger and lament at the barriers people erect. Where is it written that print must be tiny? That to sing we must rise to our feet … it’s not enough that our spirits rise up? That full participation in the body of Christ demands certain physical and mental capacity or certain race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, economic status? Who are we to order our lives, and life in our churches, in ways that exclude or diminish any of God’s beloved?

Our lives are lived in relation. Our reception of others is made possible by Christ’s deep reception of us. I claim, with every other baptized disciple, “The life of Jesus is made visible in my body; we have this treasure, this treasure, in clay jars, earthen vessels:” Can you not perceive it?

Questions and Activities

1. Major life changes or loss may provoke a sense of identity crisis, causing us to question, “Who am I now?” Is there a time you’ve felt this way? What has helped you? Can a congregation experience an identity crisis? What shapes your identity as a person? as a women’s fellowship? as a congregation? What if the images you hold of yourself or another prove phony? Would you be willing to have them shattered to let new images arise?

2. Think of a person or community in the Bible who knew affliction. How did they respond? What questions were they living? What questions are you living?

3. Is a lament “just” complaining? Can a lament be an act of resistance? What does a lament say about our relationship with God? Read one of these Psalms: 22, 31, 42, 77, 88, 116, 123, or 137. Write a lament about something that causes you aggravation or suffering on a regular basis, perhaps even daily. You might begin, “I’ve got a right to sing the blues…… Or play some blues as you prepare.

4. What treasure do you bear in your ordinary, fragile being? How are you differently abled? How can you open yourself and your church to receive, value, and incorporate the treasure and abilities of others into your communal life?

Resources

Eiesland, Nancy L. The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability.
Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1994.

Heyward, Isabel Carter. The Redemption of God: A Theology of Mutual Relation. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1982.

Kiibler-Ross, Elisabeth. On Death and Dying. New York: Macmillan, 1969.

Morrison, Melanie. The Grace of Coming Home: Spirituality, Sexuality, and the Struggle Justice. Cleveland, Oh.: The Pilgrim Press, 1995.

Meditation

Read Ephesians 3:16-19 or Romans 8:35,37-39. Read Matthew 19:14. Sit or lie quietly. Take several deep breaths. Perceive Jesus seated on a low stool in an inviting setting. Experience a soft, warm glow surrounding Jesus, filling the space. Perceive Jesus turning toward you, opening arms in invitation. Perceive yourself as a young child, moving into the gentle embrace. Rest on Jesus, soaking in the love, acceptance, protection, security, peace, comfort, assurance … all that you need to receive for as long as you need. Gradually become aware of your current surroundings. Stay quiet for a few moments and offer a silent prayer.

Suggested Music

The Mudflower Collective. God’s Fierce Whimsy: Christian Feminism and Theological Education. New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1985.

Rhude, Beth E. Live the Questions Now: The Interior Life. Cincinnati, Oh.: The Women’s Division, Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Church, 1980.

Soelle, Dorothee. Suffering. Trans. Everett R. Kalin. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975.

Thurman, Howard. Temptations of Jesus: Five Sermons Given by Dean Howard Thurman in Marsh Chapel, Boston University, 196. Richmond, In.: Friends United Press, 1978.

Weil, Simone. Waiting for God. Trans. Emma Craufurd. New York: Harper and Row, 1973.

“Tu has venido a la orilla” (“You Have Come Down to the Lakeshore”). 173 TNCH

Wuellner, Flora Slosson. Prayer, Stress, and Our Inner Wounds. Nashville, Tenn.: Upper Room, 1985.

Women’s Mosaic Series 2002
UCC Women’s Resource
Margaret (Peg) Slater, Editor