Disability & Church: Where The Prayer Requests Get It Wrong
Photo by Seljan Salimova
About a year and a half ago, I found myself at the end of a journey that many women feel honored to embark on — pregnancy.
I was genuinely looking forward to giving birth, as I worked with my husband to prep and paint the nursery and arrange all the baby's tiny clothes.
What I didn’t anticipate was to be rushed to the hospital a week early after falling violently ill and thus, thrown into labor.
But what happened at the hospital was what I truly least expected.
My daughter experienced Amniotic Band Syndrome (ABS) — a non genetic occurrence where threads of the amniotic sac wind around the body and limit both blood supply and growth. This resulted in her being born with limb differences affecting each hand and foot to some degree. The most noticeable being the absence of her left foot. Our ultrasounds had never caught this, so we were completely surprised.
As our midwife stitched me back together, she told me, “It would have been better for her if she had never been born. She won’t ever have a normal life or get to do many things that others do.” (Meanwhile, my baby was receiving oxygen as nurses were trying to get her to breathe normally after inhaling fluid.)
There were many traumatic details about that day, but what the midwife said has stuck with me the longest. I wonder what she’d say now, if she saw my daughter scaling every piece of furniture and staircase we have with lightning speed. Now she’s learning how to walk with her new prosthesis.
It’s odd to me though, that these types of thoughts don't stop in just the medical community, but extend (perhaps in even greater strength) to the Church itself.
“At least she doesn’t know right now that she’ll never be normal, like the other kids.”
“God works in mysterious ways.”
“We had her added to our church prayer list since she was born this way.”
If I had a dollar for every time I've heard one of these (or similar) phrases, we wouldn’t have had to appeal to our insurance company when they said it wasn’t “medically necessary” for her to get a prosthesis.
We have these notions as Christians that as long as a person’s differences/medical issues are on the inside — it’s fine. No one is going to make a big deal about it. But any visible change may just label you a freak show in peoples’ minds, whether they mean to think that way or not.
I’ve always welcomed prayer for my daughter’s surgeries and such. But what exactly is it with us as Christians thinking we should pray away every difference? You’re not going to hear a congregation praying for their members to no longer need glasses in order to see. We as a society have deemed what differences are acceptable, and which just aren’t. We set our own standards of normal, treating anything (and consequently, everyone) else as mistakes.
But people like my daughter, with all their glorious disabilities and differences — are not mistakes. Rather, they (like all the rest of us) are pieces of art, formed in a broken world by the only God who is capable of redeeming anything! Our greatest weakness, our temptations, our addictions — they are all able to be conduits for channeling the true transformative power, truth, and beauty of our God into the world.
That’s why we named her Allison — “noble truth,” because God had laid it upon my heart from pregnancy that even her very existence would challenge the truths Christians believe. I continue to pray over her life that her call would be strengthened as she grows, and further learns to communicate with God’s people where they’re settling instead of letting God take over their lives.
Now is the time to ask yourselves — how does God desire to shine through your insecurities and perceived weaknesses?
