I am writing this week on my experience of disability – of missing my left arm. Growing up I heard two very contradictory messages about my arm from the church. The first was the mantra I was taught to tell people who asked about my arm – “This is the way God made me.” This was the way God wanted me to be and since we can’t question God there is no use in worrying about it. I’m missing my arm that’s just life. The second message I heard though was – “God can fix it.” Apparently even though God made me this way, He could fix the mistake if he wanted to. There were generally two options given for as to how God could fix me.
First, I have been told countless times that if I just prayed with enough faith for God to regrow my arm he would (the whole mustardseed and mountains thing). I always found this response odd because I grew up in Dispensational Cessasionist churches. We didn’t talk about miraculous healings, but apparently my arm was an exception. There were the times I believed that message and prayed for my arm to grow (and of course assumed my faith was too weak when it didn’t). There was never any mention of God’s will or basic laws of nature stuff, just the assumption that of course God would reward me with a new arm if my faith was strong enough. As I hear stories now of people trying to pray other physically manifest aspects of personality out of people (ADHD, Gayness..) I realize how utterly offensive such messages are. Just because we don’t fit into a cultural definition of normal, we are told that we must pray that God will change us to fit the dominant mold. Who we are is apparently less important than appearing to be just like everyone else.
The other way I was told that God would fix me would be in giving me a perfect resurrected body. It was apparently supposed to be a comfort that when I go to heaven after I die I will have two hands. But honestly, will I? If my life and my personality have been shaped by having one arm, why would my resurrected body necessarily be different? I don’t pretend to understand any of that stuff or assume how much of an echo of ourselves we will be in eternity, but the assumption that I would have two hands in heaven was always strange to me.
I guess my perceptions of God have changed over time. Do I still think that God “made me this way”? Maybe, I honestly don’t know. I don’t believe God micromanages everything, or does stuff like this to punish or build faith. But in creating me to me be, I can say God made me this way. I do believe in the possibility of miracles, but don’t see them as rewards for faith or as really all that necessary. And I don’t believe in wishing for a miracle to make a person appear more mainstream. And I’ve learned that living incarnationally in the world now, whatever our personal lot, is much more important than pining after what Heaven may be like. I want to be who I am not in spite of or in reaction to my arm. It is part of who I am, but doesn’t completely define me.