disABILITY

 Ok!  Can I just take off my Superhero cape for a minute and be real?  No shame, just giving you a glimpse into my heart.  *BREATHE* and here it goes...

Ex: of "Sun Dog" I saw today

IMPOSSIBLITY! DISABLED!  You look at these words and see a negative, but look closer!  Look real close!  I see Possibility, and ABLE!  I have had a morning where being in this "visible minority group" just really stinks!  My body yawns from exhaustion as I use every last inch of muscle just to move my body out of bed, I jump on my scooter in this crazy Manitoba winter,  and push through the soft, deep snow and get stuck!!!  GRR...I just want to be free....to go without having to stress about clear sidewalks, skinny doorways, whether or not I  can get into a building, how close I am to everything (bathrooms esp.) whether or not there are stairs and if maybe I can be out in public without a stare or a glance of pity.  I have learned most times to be flexible and understanding of my surroundings, but this morning I was not!!  I had to fight these feelings today...and then I was grumpy that my independence was lost as the snow ate my scooter tires on the way to work.  All of this was robbing me of my joy until I looked up and saw the "Sun Dog" in the sky.  This showed me again that all the bad that I can pick out of my day and my life is nothing in comparison to how the Father sees me.  HIS LOVE FOR ME OUTWEIGHS IT ALL! I looked up and was reminded of beauty, of hope and that I am not forgotten.  So this blog is not for pity or even prayers for wholeness, but I want you to pray that the Father gives me strength to take up my cross (my cup of suffering--my disability) for His glory.  This is the stage that He has chosen for His glory to shine on...and I need to surrender it!  As much as I doubt what He has confirmed in my heart, He often uses this to tell my youth of the hope they can have in Jesus!!  Crazy, God-understands-only stuff!!

Healing will come...but most of all I want healing in my heart...cause boy, do I know the mess of my heart.  So just like I had to...look past the negative and look up to see HIS heart, please do the same.  His heart for me is this:

". . .so I wouldn’t get a big head, I was given the gift of a handicap to keep me in constant touch with my limitations. Satan’s angel did his best to get me down; what he in fact did was push me to my knees. No danger then of walking around high and mighty! At first I didn’t think of it as a gift, and begged God to remove it. Three times I did that, and then he told me,

My grace is enough; it’s all you need.
My strength comes into its own in your weakness.

Once I heard that, I was glad to let it happen. I quit focusing on the handicap and began appreciating the gift. It was a case of Christ’s strength moving in on my weakness. Now I take limitations in stride, and with good cheer, these limitations that cut me down to size—abuse, accidents, opposition, bad breaks. I just let Christ take over! And so the weaker I get, the stronger I become.

So see the ability instead of the disability...see the possibility instead of the impossibility...and walk in the gift of His Presence with you everyday...that means so much more than having a working body or a smooth life.