My Disability is not a Metaphor

Image description: photo of the song “Amazing Grace” taken from an old hymnal.

Today, I am going to write about Jesus, the Bible and Disability. Even if you aren’t a follower of Jesus, you might find something of value in what I write, because religious people are some of the worst when it comes to how they treat people with disabilities. After all, religious organizations successfully got their buildings exempted from ADA regulations in the 1990’s!

Luke 13: 10-17

Jesus Heals a Crippled Woman on the Sabbath

10 On a Sabbath Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, 11 and a woman was there who had been crippled by a spirit for eighteen years. She was bent over and could not straighten up at all. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her forward and said to her, “Woman, you are set free from your infirmity.” 13 Then he put his hands on her, and immediately she straightened up and praised God.

14 Indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, the synagogue leader said to the people, “There are six days for work. So come and be healed on those days, not on the Sabbath.”

15 The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? 16 Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?”

17 When he said this, all his opponents were humiliated, but the people were delighted with all the wonderful things he was doing.

***

During the past week, I listened to 3 local preachers online preach from this text. The first one was short and to the point…basically, Jesus saw, noticed, zeroed in on that woman with the severely curved spine. He SAW her. A good message!

The second was unremarkable and maybe a little dry but he made a similar point…just took a little longer to get there.

The third sermon I heard has prompted me to write this blog because I absolutely cannot listen to ONE MORE SERMON where a person with a disability in the Bible is treated as a metaphor for someone’s spiritual condition or society’s ills. In this third preacher’s sermon, the woman has been dehumanized and turned into a prop to illustrate some banal point…something to the effect of “Have you been weighed down/bent over by the burdens of life, hoping that Jesus can straighten you so that you can look up into his face?” Or some such mess as that. For this particular preacher, I do know that he makes a regular habit of turning disabled people into metaphors. He’s very able-bodied himself, and speaks out of his own youthful ableist point of view. He preached a sermon a couple years ago about Jacob (whom the Angel struck and gave him a limp after they wrestled all night) and then turned it into, “We’re all holy limpers, like Jacob.” As a person with a noticeable limp, it was clear to me then that he didn’t know his audience and he didn’t really care.

I sort of get it, actually. The Christians’ national anthem seems to be “Amazing Grace.” Remember the verse, “was blind but now I see”? There you go. Turning a disability into a metaphor for your spiritual state of being has been the “Christian way” for a few hundred years. There are other Christian hymns that do this, too. I don’t know about other religious traditions, but I do know that Americans, at least, love ‘em some metaphors. And the Christian ones excel in them.

But honestly, it just needs to stop. Stop interpreting those stories that feature people with disabilities as a metaphor for your spiritual life and reread them. How did Jesus treat them? They were real people, hurting people, rejected from their communities, outcasts of society. Back then, there was no understanding of disease and medicine like we have today. If someone was sick, the devil caused it or some evil spirit was in them. They were rejected…there was no disability insurance, no government support, no physical therapist. But Jesus SAW them and that’s the power of these stories. That’s the “good news” of the Gospel…Jesus reintegrated outcasts back into society, made them feel loved, seen, heard. He even broke rules to do it…healed on the Sabbath, fed people on the Sabbath, invited society’s rejects to the dinner feast, giving them places at the dinner table.

If your faith is so crappy that you have to turn this good news into a pathetic metaphor, it’s time to reread the gospels.

At some point, almost all of us will get a disability or become disabled. Many of us with XLH got a head start and are “experts” at it. Professorgrrl recently told me about some stiffness or arthritis she was experiencing and confessed she didn’t want to mention it to me because she is keenly aware and sensitive to all my pain and mobility challenges. I told her I wanted her to share that with me, that maybe I could help and talking about it might help, too. I wanted her to know that I SEE her. I certainly am aware that she has seen me, as Jesus did, as a real person with some disabilities who is beloved by God.

It’s important that we all do this for one another, no matter what faith you subscribe to. It’s so easy to overlook people with disabilities…sometimes even doctors don’t see us or believe us. Some of us block the sidewalks in front of our houses with shaggy trees and bushes, never considering that someone in a wheelchair might want to take a “stroll” through the neighborhood. The handicap/automatic door at my local mall has been out of order for several years because no one can be bothered to fix it. We turn our heads so as not to look into the eyes of the mentally ill person who’s asking for cash because, honestly, we’ve already decided they’re going to use that money for something we don’t approve of. We’ve all done it. Some (like that preacher) have made it an Olympic sport to ignore people with disabilities, but we’re almost all guilty of it. I know I am.

So…that’s my rant for the year! Whew, glad I got that off my chest. (See what I did there? I think that was a metaphor.)

One more thing…for Christians who’d like to explore this topic more, I recently read the book, “My Body is Not a Prayer Request,” by Dr. Amy Kenny. Good stuff in there and it was so good for me to read something that expressed what I had been feeling regarding the church for over 2 years. Check it out.

Copyright 2022, S. G. Hunter and Banjogrrldiaries

Another One Bites the Dust…

 

…pun intended!

Tooth #4 is no longer a pain, because it’s GONE! Check out the notch in this tooth:

I’ve been dealing with this aggravating tooth for several years. Eventually, the notch got so deep that the nerve was exposed. My dentist tried patching it about 7 years ago and the patch fell out while eating a bowl of chicken soup a short time later. He patched it again, and that patch fell out, too. So, we just kept an eye on it until a few weeks ago when it really started bothering me. I was actually glad when he told me about three weeks ago that he recommended extraction. There was also quite a bit of bone loss in the gums around it, so it was not going to make it. I thought it would be better to have it professionally extracted rather than do like my uncle, who pulled his own teeth. (I previously blogged about him a few years ago.) I may be crazy but not THAT crazy.

I feel fortunate that my dentist is the THE BEST Novocain injector (or whatever you call that) on the planet. I hardly felt a thing. Until I went to the checkout counter to pay my bill. I felt that.

I know many of you XLH-ers can relate to the tooth problems I’ve had. It’s an aggravation, isn’t it? Not to mention what it does to your self-esteem. And ability to eat. And bank account. And the smile factor. Sigh.

As I’ve said before, though, I love mashed potatoes. In fact, that’s what I ate for dinner Wednesday night. They were so good. Last night I ate a bowl of lentil stew, using a recipe from a cookbook called “Eating the Bible,” by Rena Rossner. (Now, THAT  would literally be hard on your teeth!) This lentil stew recipe was inspired by the story of Esau selling his birthright to his brother Jacob, as found in the book of Genesis. The author was then inspired to write a book based on the Jewish foods mentioned in the Hebrew bible, found in the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Not only did she create recipes for the modern kitchen inspired by these ancient stories, she wrote commentary on each of the stories, based on her research and her reading of the texts both in Hebrew and in English.

It’s  a very meaty book to sink your teeth into. Yeah, I had to say that.

I bet Ms. Rossner would be surprised to learn that a recipe from her book would help a person with a rare disease to eat following a tooth extraction which has limited my ability to eat foods that require even minimal chewing. We’re all so interconnected anymore. Thank you, Ms. Rossner. I will make that recipe again. In fact, I will probably make it even after my gum heals and I can go back to eating some “chewy” things. It was that good! I’m looking forward to the leftovers.

My dentist told me that he believes this is the last tooth I’ll lose. That’s good, because I don’t have many left. I still can’t convince him that I should receive a discount on my cleanings, though. Doesn’t that seem fair to you all? I mean, would you charge the full price of a pedicure to a one-legged person? And my cousin with one eye…should he be required to buy two contact lenses? Why should I pay full price for a cleaning when there are a LOT of gaps in my mouth, mostly in the back which is hard to get to anyway. It’s just not right.

At the very least, I should get a bigger bag of parting gifts when I leave…more toothbrushes, tooth paste, floss and floss threaders and maybe even some sugar-free breath mints and some lip gloss.

And a recipe book for soft foods.

 

Copyright 2017, Banjogrrldiaries and S.G. Hunter. All rights reserved.

 

I Am a Pre-existing Condition

Hello fellow XLH-ers!

A couple days ago, I got an essay published on a religious blog called “Unfundamentalist Christians.” It generated quite a discussion, especially on the Facebook page version! Whew! Don’t read all those comments unless you have thick skin.

I’m concerned about the future of health care in America and I do see that the government can play a role, for the good of our society, in making sure all of its citizens have affordable health care. As much as many people of faith like to say that it’s not the government’s place to “heal the sick,” The Church, as a whole, is now not that kind of organization. We’ve had about 1,984 years to prove that we’re interested in healing the sick, feeding the hungry and caring for the poor, but frankly, we have failed to do that on any kind of large scale.  I have personally failed, to be quite honest. My indictment on the church is also on myself.

I willingly pay taxes to insure there is money for children to be educated, although I have no children.  I would like to think that we, as citizens of the USA, would also be willing to pay taxes to insure affordable health care for all, including those of us who were born with pre-existing conditions. I realize all the complexities around doing this, though.

Anyway, if you want to check out my essay, here’s the link to the website:

I Am a Pre-existing Condition.

As always, I welcome your comments, even if you disagree! We do share something…either you have XLH or you love someone with XLH, so hopefully our common ground can keep the conversation open. I do care about my readers with XLH, no matter where you fall on the religious spectrum. I feel sure many of us who live in the USA are nervous about our futures in the health care system, even if we disagree on how to fix it and who should fix it.

More later!

 

Copyright 2017, Banjogrrldiaries and S.G. Hunter. All rights reserved.

 

Come Home Free

Hello fellow XLH-ers!

As a follow up to my September post, the book that I co-wrote, “Come Home Free,” by Hunter Crainshaw, is ON SALE today and tomorrow for .99, Kindle Edition only. Clara, who is one of the main characters in the book, has XLH.

While writing the book, we debated a little bit about whether to include a character with XLH, since it is something that I have. But a writing seminar we attended convinced us it would be okay to do that because, according to the writer who spoke at the seminar, most readers enjoy learning new things. So, it’s okay to “write what you know” if it’s a subject that others might not know about. We XLH-ers know that XLH is a subject that hardly anyone knows anything about, including most doctors. This confirmed our decision to have Clara be a person with XLH.

If you’re a fan of Southern fiction, you might enjoy this book, available through Amazon. You can do a search of “Come Home Free” by Hunter Crainshaw.

Or, you can follow this link: Come Home Free.

Thanks for reading!