From the School of Accident & Illness, Part I

This blog and the next contain four of the main lessons I've learned throughout this year: Limitations, Identity, Patience, and Humility.

LIMITATIONS

In America, we applaud people who go “beyond the limits.”  Hard-core skiers love the thrill of skiing out of bounds.  Extreme sports lovers want more air, bigger waves, less gravity.  If Senior classes aimed any higher with their mottos and aims, they’d be astronauts.  Businesses hire analysts or inspirational speakers to push their employees to be the best of the best, to overcome the odds, to make their company numero uno.  Maybe there’s a place for all that—somewhere—but this year, I’ve been learning about limitations.  And how to accept them.

When I was sick with Dengue, and as I am recovering from my broken foot, I have learned that I cannot always do what I want to do.  I wanted to stay in Yap and keep working—but my body wanted to sleep all day.  I wanted to fix my own meals, but it was next to impossible with crutches.  I wanted to take a shower without a chair.  I would like to run and play sports and hike and walk to Tom’s Store and jump up and down, just for the heck of it.  But I can’t.  What I have discovered is that the more I focus on my limitations—what I cannot do—the less I see what I CAN do.  When I think about everything that I am missing out on, I become dissatisfied and angry.  But when I think about what I still am able to do, accepting my present limitations, I am much more free to be creative and thankful in my circumstances. 

I believe this lesson is good for more than physical limitations.  Maybe we should take a break from the frantic attempts to overcome all our limitations.  Maybe you really aren’t cut out for the job, because your real gifts would be better used elsewhere.  Maybe the pastor and a few leaders in the church would be better off realizing they can’t do it all—because that’s what the rest of the Body of Christ is for.  Maybe we should lay down our attempts at being good enough, successful enough, pretty enough, wealthy enough, smart enough—and realize who we really are.  Humans with limitations, who need Jesus.  Because when we are weak—when we know our limits—then He is able to spread out His powerful wings and take us where we need to go.

IDENTITY

Remember trying to figure out who you really were?  What?  That was yesterday?  Exactly.  Sometimes we think that “identity” stage ends after college—or maybe we just thought it was supposed to after studying for our Freshmen Psychology exam.  The funny thing about identity is that as soon as you think you have it figured out, something comes along and shakes your world, and you’re basically back to the beginning.

After a few months with this messed-up foot, I’ve started to realize that my limitations have become part of my identity.  I fight it, I don’t like it, but that’s how it is.  When people see me, they notice my foot first.  They ask about it, and it does make a nice conversation-starter, which I don’t mind.  Sometimes I like the extra attention and concern.  But sometimes, a lot of times, I just want to be normal.  At the moment, I define normal as having functional limbs.  Sometimes I want people to ask me how I am doing, and not assume they are asking about my foot.  I would like to not feel like a burden every time we go somewhere, and people have to help me do everything.  On the other hand, if they don’t, I know I’m stuck.  I need people to understand this part of my identity right now—but I also need them to understand that it is not really who I am.  There is more of me I would like to share and be and do, within my limitations, if people are willing to get past the easy conversation piece.

This struck me again today when a small group of us went to visit a young man in his early 20s who was paralyzed from the waist-down in a car accident in 2010.  As soon as I saw him, I felt like I knew a tiny bit of his pain.  Yes, it’s the pain of limitations, of not being able to do what you would like to do.  But even more, it’s the painful label that precious few can get past to see the you that is not just your body.  The real, inner you.  It bothered me that most of the time the conversation was about his physical limitations—that one part of his identity—instead looking for the billions of other things about him that make him unique.  Of course he wants comfort, of course he thinks about his limitations.  But I think he also wants identity.   Something that tells people that he is more than a body lying on a porch.  I pray that He finds Jesus, because even if people misunderstand, even in all their best attempts, Jesus can understand.  Jesus can give us the identity we are searching for.  One that goes beyond our limitations and self-depreciating definitions, and rests in who He is and who He thinks we are.