From The Desk of David

The inflection in his voice was a trap, and I fell for it—hook, line, and sinker. “Fight for your limitations, and you’ll keep them.” And off was the racehorse of overthinking.

But don’t ask me to tell you what he said after because, at that moment, The Spirit leaned in, hand on hip, and started playing “connect the dots” in my heart. See, I’ve been trying to write as much as I can, and because of this new habit, I’m learning that God speaks to me in a very “narrative” because as I hear words, phrases, songs, etc., I am wired in a way that I always try to find the heart behind the words. Maybe it’s my time at Liberty speaking, but if my theology and religion professors taught me anything, it’s that it’s more valuable to see the heart behind a message than to criticize the way it’s said. 

I have a friend who is a spiritual ninja. We’ve known each other for over ten years, and he knows me pretty well, but he does this annoying thing (he knows who he is and knows this is written with all love) where he drops this half-baked idea in my lap and then shuts up while I rant (or, as he calls it, “writing a book report”) my way to understanding it. He did this to me a few weeks ago. 

“There are no badges of honor in the Kingdom of God.” 

But I’m not sure he knew how badly I needed to hear that…

It hasn’t gone the way I expected it or even wanted it to go. I walked into Holy Week with an expectation of not just my productivity but also of confidence in my ability to control my circumstances this week. And boy, how wrong was I? 

See, I have this thing that I often associate as part of my identity—my disability. And if I’m being honest, I’ve started talking about my disability more honestly lately. I know, that probably sounds weird because, at least to me, it’s always the thousand-pound gorilla in the room. And honestly, I’ve had to sort of “prove” my way into rooms for years. What I mean is I’ve been “first” a lot in my life—first [BLANK] with a disability to…” and as my spiritual ninja of a therapist would say, “the first through often gets cut the most.” While life hasn’t been easy for me, I’m learning that my God is bigger than this metaphorical “thousand-pound gorilla” that my very prideful heart likes to believe that it’s my burden to carry. When, in fact, the whole reason we have Holy Week is so that Jesus can come and take the burdens that you and I can’t.

Oh, and that control thing? My prideful heart likes to hold tight to that a lot, and you could argue that it’s a good thing because I have this disability; being able to think “four moves ahead” helps keep me safe, but “fight for your disabilities, and you’ll keep them.” This week, I had what you might call “a series of misfortunate events,” and long story short, that pesky nerve in my right leg got caught in scar tissue in not one but two places in my leg and sent my pain levels through the roof. Thankfully, my brilliant medical team came running and did a total of 4 injections on me this week. Now, I share all of this because I should know by now that I serve a God who is the God of the turnaround. 

I guess I’m trying to say that this week, while reflecting on Jesus’s sacrifice in all its precise and gory details, I found not only understanding but hope in pain. Because Jesus carried the pain so that mine would end. But as I sat in waiting rooms, I realized that Jesus didn’t die just so that my pain would end. He died so that my pain could become this reminder that I serve a King who is not only the conqueror of death but is a King who knows what it means to feel the sting of death because as He walked out of the grave, His heel struck the head of the snake. And that means that not just my disability is left in the grave, but all of our “disabilities” were left in His grave clothes, and the good news of Holy Week is that it’s no longer our burden to carry or limitation to fight for. 

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash