The Sorta City on a Hill

Jumping from Believing to Belonging

Most of the time, I make sure no one notices that I’m doing things one-handedly. Technically, I’m disabled, with one nonworking arm and hand. Since polio caught up with me at age eight and a half months, I’m not very normal either.

Trouble is, I don’t belong in the normal or the disabled group. I’m in nowhere land. Sorta City. Lately, many Christians I know have backed away from their denominations or from Christianity in general. They end up in Sorta City too.

One of my favorite writers, Diana Butler-Bass, writes of Christians moving away from believing and toward belonging. Another fellow Substacker, Holly Berkley Fletcher, has started a Belonging club of sorts. Media inundates us with pressure to join, buy or identify with a certain group. But like disability, some groups are harder to belong to than others.

Across the country, worshippers recite creeds and are challenged to know what and why they believe. And in plenty of churches, who to vote for is front and center. As Butler-Bass points out, it’s way easier to say you believe something than to actually belong.

Because of the way politics has opened deep fissures among the faithful, I keep my mouth shut about my voting preferences. When congregants start criticizing a pastor for preaching the Beatitudes, saying they sound too liberal, I duck out the back, Jack.

When my kids were in school, I was an Easter Seals spokesperson. I really believed in Easter Seals’ mission, but in my mind it was for truly disabled—not for nearly norms like me. When a camera crew came to my home to film me cracking eggs into a bowl, typing and other one-handed feats, I told myself there was nothing special about me.

 For the telethon, which lasted approximately nine hundred years, I stood on a stage at the mall and lied about how lucky I was and to please donate. The worst part came when they asked my youngest son to describe what it’s like to have a disabled mom. He shrugged and said, “I guess I’m lucky.” My heart grew ten sizes, even if lucky isn’t my favorite adjective.

Over and over, I’ve been told how lucky I am. Lucky that polio only paralyzed one arm. Lucky that I can walk and run—like a total klutz, but still. I’m lucky that I don’t use a wheelchair or crutches. There is that clamp-on, gooseneck hairdryer stand, but they sell those to able-bodied-but-lazy folks too.  

Maybe my kid sensed that I didn’t want to be known as disabled. To a fault, I don’t ask for help, and if I do, it’s because somebody has asked lucky me why I’m dispensing coffee beans while holding the bag between my teeth.

You can’t fill a bag of Colombian beans unless you pull the lever and keep the bag under the opening at the same time. Spiritually, I was desperate to belong to Jesus but still I needed to reject beliefs that didn’t follow Jesus’ teachings.

For years I was one heckuva believer.

To be a good Christian, I thought I had to believe the right things. I said and wrote the right stuff and claimed to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but I never felt as if I belonged.

Christ was not real to me. I said I had Jesus in my heart, but I also had major bleeding-heart tendencies, like turning the other cheek, feeding the hungry and giving my cloak to someone who needs it. My spiritual life even got in the way of disability. If perfect strangers could approach me at my job in a Christian bookstore and announce that God hadn’t healed my paralysis because of a lack of faith, I must be doing something wrong.

I might have drifted permanently into becoming a sorta believer, just like my sorta disability. For years I skipped church, even as I wrote for Christian publications. As politics breathed fire over our country and became even more ingrained in some churches, I started to feel that not only did I not belong, I’d been betrayed.

Why bother to believe what Jesus said if I’m supposed to act as if I’m a cowboy’s little woman? Why identify as a Christian if it means I only vote one way and ignore most of Jesus’ big blueprint for living? So many people struggle with this, torn between tradition, twisted and exclusionary practices and what our God asks of us.

As I wrestle with both disability and Christian labels that describe me, I see similarities in both arenas. When I confess that I’m physically disabled (yes, I’m typing this onehanded), I feel instant embarrassment—as if I’m standing naked before you. And if I say I’m a Christian, I must quickly explain what I mean to avoid association with certain ideas. Being deformed is something I’ll always have a tough time celebrating, and I can’t belong with those who want to control others or turn a blind eye to Jesus’ teachings.

Instead, in Sorta City there’s true hope. I’m finding all kinds of folks who, like me, feel as if they no longer fit some versions of Christianity, any more than they identify with our culture’s worship of beach-bodies and billionaires. Sortas aren’t willing to think of Christ’s teachings as nice ideals that don’t work in modern life. They reject aims to control others and refuse to back anyone who mocks a person with a disability.

Even if I don’t mention that I’m a tad disabled, I’ll stand with those in Sorta City. They’re the ones running alongside me, helping me up when I stumble, extending grace and mercy when it’s not convenient. The Jesus followers are holy hands and hearts in this life, imperfect sure, but always leaning toward gratitude, hospitality and love. Next time I wrangle self-serve coffee beans, I hope I meet one of you. We may be from Sorta City, but God still says we belong.