“Just because you’re disabled doesn’t mean you’re not anything else. Have you lost an ability you used to have? Something you loved? Have you had to say good-bye to it? Maybe there’s another way or another place in which you can still do it, or something like it.” —Barbara Crafton, eMo from The Geranium Farm (geraniumfarm.org), August 16, 2018.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) has reported on its website that 61 million adults, or about one fourth of adults in this country, have a disability that impacts their lives in a major way. The most common disability involves mobility, affecting one in seven adults. This limitation is more common in women, especially those in the South who are of lower income. The most common disability in younger adults is cognitive impairment.
Barbara Crafton, who recently visited St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, writes an almost daily email eMo from the “Geranium Farm,” including a picture of artwork related to her story. One week she featured a Van Gogh painting, “Summer Wheat Field with Cypresses,” painted in the artist’s last year, a view from a window in his room at a mental facility.
My experience is that each of us has what the Apostle Paul calls a “thorn” in our flesh. If we think another person doesn’t suffer from this, we are very mistaken.
We have a choice of how to respond to a disability. More and more I believe we can ask in our prayers how that thorn brings new light into our lives. Those in recovery will say that their addiction brought them to a new life they never dreamed of. I see people with cancer changing and bettering the lives of others until the very end. I see parents with handicapped children who are experts in patience and kindness and love.
There is a new pathway. It may not necessarily mean overcoming the disability, but rather waking up to a divine message, or being opened up to a new direction in becoming the person God has created us to be.
Joanna. Joannaseibert.com
Book Signing Wordsworth Books
Saturday, November 2, 2019 1 to 3 pm
Just in time for the holidays
A Spiritual Rx for Advent Christmas, and Epiphany
The Sequel to A Spiritual Rx for Lent and Easter
Both are $18. Money from sale of the books goes to Camp Mitchel Camp and Conference Center in Arkansas or Hurricane Relief in
The Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast