Most of the time, no one notices my arm’s paralysis. I’ve had a lifetime to learn tricks to appear “normal.” But now and then, I manage to flub my routine. One day, as I reached for a bag of flour on a high grocery shelf, the package flipped end over end and landed on the floor in a cloud of dust. A young boy who happened to be behind me tugged on his mom’s sleeve.
“Mommy,” he said. “What’s wrong with that lady’s arm?” To her credit, she answered that we’re all different.
Covered in unbleached flour, I smiled lamely. The mom then whisked her son away, but inside me the voices had already started. You’re an idiot. Why didn’t you ask for help? Did you really need flour? Idiot. I knew all the right answers: I was doing my best, everyone messes up, give yourself grace. But I kept coming back to the word idiot.
In this world, and especially in our culture, we reward perfection and punish flaws. In school even a C Plus isn’t good enough. We work harder, practice more and enjoy less, even as we idolize perfection. Those who don’t measure up get slapped with memes, jokes and labels like loser, spaz, retard, crip. And don’t forget idiot.
What if our penchant for the ideal keeps us from finding God?
I’m just as guilty as anyone of getting a bit squeamish around those with terrible circumstances. I haven’t done a mission trip to the Mexican dump or the Haitian orphanage. I don’t even hand out money to the sign flyers on the corner—because my left arm literally can’t hand anything out that driver’s side window.
And I understand that we’re all pelted with pleas for donations for everything from wounded veterans to endangered elephants. Some days it feels like all I see and hear are hard-luck stories.
But if I want to meet God—and I do—I know right how to begin.
If I start my search with a sense of gratitude, however small, my heart becomes a crucible. In it, twigs of caring are fanned into flame. The same thankfulness that helps me appreciate the artistic fractals of trees, a dog’s cold soft nose, the smell of rain on new-mown grass now leaps forward to move me from self-absorption to acknowledging another’s pain.
Paths I travel regularly now point to opportunities for love. I must be sure all my actions are filtered through this love lens—I don’t want to end up a clanging symbol, thank you St. Paul. For me, seeding each day with a layer of gratitude helps keep me focused on the love and help I can give.
A couple of weeks ago, my husband of nearly forty-seven years was in a serious car accident. He broke his neck in five places, broke ribs and his sternum and lacerated his liver. He had aspiration pneumonia. I’ve since learned that this doesn’t mean he aspired to get sick. Instead upon the car impact, spit made it down the windpipe. In other words, the seventy-eight-year-old man transported to the hospital after the crash was really messed up. He spent nearly ten days in the hospital and is now in rehab.
As I search for God (who seems to be hiding under a rock lately), I can be grateful I’m not injured, and that my husband isn’t paralyzed. I’m grateful that my daughter can help me watch over him at the rehab and I’m very thankful he wasn’t killed.
God may not always deliver you out of your troubles, but he'll always carry you through.
I think about these wisps of gratitude and suddenly, when I witness a teen girl shouting profanities, instead of tsking her or judging, I wonder why she’s having such a bad day. My heart has no choice but to melt at the guy who cut me off on the freeway, because I was able to drive defensively. Plus, I did not yell and call him “Jerkface” even behind my windshield.
This gratitude for me, anyway, is different than what we heard as kids: Eat your broccoli, think of the starving children in China. I’m not thanking God for being less of a sinner. I’m using my misfortune to help me tune in to the many around me who could use a dose of God’s love.
Back in the grocery store, I was covered in flour while overhead a voice said, “Clean up on aisle nine.” Of course, I wanted to sink into the floor or put on the cloak of invisibility. But I also saw myself the way I see others—a person whose limitations had been short-circuited by pride, who may or may not be an idiot but who could really have used a hug.
Those are the ones God runs to—the close-but-no-cigar folks, the obviously unworthy souls, the ones who are too ashamed to admit their need. God is on the lookout for every broken thing masquerading as a successful human, everyone who has let hope sail away. God doesn’t seem to mind that I don’t know my ticket to grace has already been punched, that in the deep end of my heart I secretly believe I am less than, not good enough, laughably piteous.
We hear about this grace stuff all the time and when we flub the routine of our faith, we think we did or didn’t have enough or somehow we forgot the secret password. But if you peek under the blanket of embarrassment and shame, you discover God’s under there with you. A little blanket fort of safety and love. God might not magically fix whatever prompted your trouble. In my life, that rarely happens.
Today at the rehab, my husband got up in a wheelchair and we took him out into the sunshine and fresh air. That he could feel the air and sun on his face was a true miracle after what he’s been through.
But finding God doesn’t always mean something miraculous. That day in the store aisle, nobody rescued me, including God. I wasn’t whisked away to a resort where I could recover by the pool. But I burrowed under God’s mother hen wings.
I don’t know if that makes me less prone to idiocy.
The one thing I do know is that if you reach for God when you’re covered in the flour of your mistakes, God shows up. I didn’t have to prove my loyalty by reciting verses or praying a certain way. Gratitude only helped me get out of my own head and reminded me of God’s tender love.
The next time you do something that makes words like idiot cross your mind, call on God and experience that love anywhere, anytime. God may not deliver you out of troubles, but he’ll always carry you through.
have you read Amy Kenny's My Body Is Not a Prayer Request? Rereading it for church group. Blown away the 2nd time too. She goes beyond the reward punishment to place of seeing what disabled have to give to abled. When I shattered my ankle, my past church made me feel bad for being disabled. It has taken decades to start to get over those internalized messages of being less or punished to a vision of a God and church that celebrate difference as the fullness of God. You and your husband are in my prayers and my church's prayers continually.
Looking for what to be grateful for since moving my husband to assisted living is the only way I am making it through the days-I had to purposely let go of what I thought our life would look like at this point-to quote Jerry Sittser, we live in the tension between beauty and terror. It sounds like your husband is fortunate to even be alive-you both will be in my prayers today