Is My Disability A Blessing Or A Curse?

Is my disability a blessing or a curse? I was up late with that question and couldn't sleep after hearing Dr. Amy Kenny speak at the Creative Justice Conference. She brought up so many great truths and points regarding disabilities and life. But in my mind, they seemed overcasted by her continual focus of being created disabled while emphasizing the nuance of being disabled in her identity as apposed to having a disability as part of who she is. She would say, "I am disabled. I am not a person 'with' a disability."

I wasn't created with my disability, though. At least not with the paralyzed body I have lived with since I was 15 years old. And I don't believe God orchestrated my car accident that resulted in my spinal cord injury, either. The body God intended me to be created in was fully able in the physical sense of walking and functioning without the challenges of the paralysis I've had to endure for the last 3 decades and continue to experience today.

So with Amy Kenny's emphasis on how being disabled is defined with the meaning of being blessed within her created identity, I struggled with the deeper question within myself, is my disability a blessing or curse?

Blessing

The Jewish Rabbi in 'Fiddler on the Roof' quite truthfully said that there is a blessing in everything. The nature of our humanity, no matter what struggles and sufferings we are enduring, is rooted in an identity that reflects God's character and presence everywhere.

In the very beginnings of creation, the word God used for blessing was the Hebrew word "Baruch". (Gen. 2:3) While it was especially spoken of over the Sabbath, the same blessing was given over all creation. Repeatedly, he would speak the words... "And it was good."

Reflecting that same characteristic of God, Dr. Nathan Lopes Cardozo, a Jewish scholar, also shares, "How wise were the sages of Israel when they instituted the custom of making a blessing on almost anything, whether it is eating, drinking, observing natural phenomena, or smelling extravagant aromas. They depicted all these activities as nothing less than totally miraculous."

Blessings are not the riches of good health, accumulated wealth, or recognized successes. It is not in finding your healing or getting rid of pain and anguish. It is in finding the miraculous in everything that is a part of life both in physicality and experience. Or more meaningfully, it is in recognizing God's love and presence within every given moment in time -- we do not possess blessings; we submit to our relationship with them in God's revealing.

As my friend Dick pointed out in conversation this past week, the disabilities I experience do not limit the ways God reveals his blessings through the experiences I face -- and for sure, it is my friends who truly reveal God's presence and goodness around me, too.

I also love the way Maya Angelou describes it when she wrote:

I believed that there was a God because I was told it by my grandmother and later by other adults. But when I found that I knew not only that there was a God but that I was a child of God, when I understood that, when I comprehended that, more than that, when I internalized that, ingested that, I became courageous.

Ramsey, K.J.. The Lord Is My Courage (p. 5). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

When we find the disabilities in our life, we experience the blessings from them shaping our identity not because of them, but because we begin to live with them courageously, mercifully, gracefully, and lovingly for God's revealing presence being at work and present in our lives and in the lives of those around us. As the old saying goes, we are blessed to be a blessing.

Curse

The Hebrew word for curse is "aarar".It kind of finds expression through three ways of human understanding. The first is more of an emotional acknowledgement at being angry, irritated, or outraged at a person or situation. You might think of this type of cursing when Jesus called the Pharisees a "brood of snakes". Or, when you last burst out in frustration after the care aids left and you have to redo everything they just did because they did it wrong and seemingly didn't care.

The second use for the word cursed is to be abhorred or be disgusted by something or someone. It creates distance from ourselves and that which we are holding as being cursed. Ancient Israelites would consider the "unclean" as cursed -- the lepers, crippled, and disfigured. Likewise today I think of the often socially outcast like the homeless and the immigrant populations. And of course, the physically and cognitively disabled. This kind of meaning is not always just or righteous. God's call for us to welcome the widow, the orphan, the lame, the blind, and so many others considered unclean and "cursed" is still meant to point us towards the work of social justice and societal change.

The third use of the word refers to a persons behaviour or attitude. It is when a person's actions are self destructive and harming to themselves and those around them. The woman caught in adultery was considered cursed, as was the man possessed by demons. They are states of being and can be transformed through redemptive events or experiences.

But there is also a forth kind of use to the word aarar or cursed. It is the understanding that we have been given limitations, bindings, or restrictions. These are neither meant to be negative or positive in meaning and simply an acknowledgement to the way we are. God acknowledged the cursing of the serpent, Adam (humanity by extension), and the ground (creation) in Genesis 3. And Paul spoke of a curse in saying, "From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live." (Acts 17:26)

I must admit to wanting to say so much more here. My friend Ricot has shared stories with me of the conditions found in Haiti. And in similar reflections, the conditions of those in war torn Ukraine today. The thought of how those with disabilities in these types of countries endure is unimaginable to me! I think we need a much more nuanced understanding of what the word cursed means to us as North Americans; far from just the negative simplicity we try to remove from our lives that we call suffering.

Finding A New Imagination To Our Disabilities As Blessings & Curses

So how do I know whether my disability is a blessing or a curse? Or perhaps, what meaning of the words am I suppose to understand as referring to my disability? Is it wrong to consider myself as being both blessed & cursed?

There is a story about a blind man sitting on the side of the road begging as the disciples of Jesus pass by. They seem to be struggling with these same questions as they ask Jesus, "Why is this man born blind?" Jesus speaks pointedly towards them, "He was born blind so that God's works might be revealed in him."

It's easy to point towards those "works" being the singular event of Jesus miraculously healing him. But that seems so boring! I think more significantly that Jesus was acknowledging the works of God being revealed within the life of the blindman -- the ups and the downs over his entire lifetime -- both before and after he was healed. After all, there is more then one way to see!

Like the disciples, we need a new imagination to the meanings of blessings and curses in our lives. All of us have disabilities both visible and invisible. And they present different forms or ways we both experience God and the miraculous as well as the limitations and boundaries to our existence and identity throughout time. Disability is neither a blessing or a curse in themselves but rather the state in which God reveals the course of blessings and curses that lead to the redemption and salvation of my life and those who are in relationship with me.

So yes, I am both blessed & cursed as a person with disabilities. I think also that there will always be a bit of mystery to the nature of yours and my disabilities, too -- whether they are of a creative identity placed by God or a state of creations deconstructive decay before our resurrected renewal. The point is... disabilities will always change in meaning throughout our lives. In some senses, we also share in the disabilities of our society, too. They are not limited to just finding meaning in one person or time. That is the very work of redemption & salvation that we participate in together, itself.

So I suppose I'll end with a question for you to ponder... Whatever disability means to you today -- blessing or curse -- how might its meaning change for you tomorrow? Because perhaps tomorrow's answer will change the way you see it today.