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| Jenny, Ken, Kris, and Joni MN '14 |
I still remember standing on the green chair in my father’s
den, peering onto the top rows of his bookshelf, looking for something to
read. It was 1997. I was 13, overly self-conscious of my mild
cerebral palsy, desperately longing for God to reach out His hand and heal
me.
Joni was sitting
on a corner shelf, stacked against a few other titles I didn’t recognize. Perhaps I was drawn to the fact that a young
woman grazed the cover. Maybe I was intrigued by its flowery title whose giant
brown letters framed Joni’s face like a window, inviting me to peer back into
the 1970s.
My next few days were spent with the world only in my
periphery as it peeked out beyond the pages of the book. Joni wrote with such gripping detail that I
too felt as if I had broken my neck in a diving accident and spent my evenings recovering
in a Stryker frame.
It was Joni’s concluding words that gripped me by the throat
and wouldn’t let me go: I’d rather be in this chair knowing him than
on my feet without him.
No! I screamed in my head. Isn’t
there a third option!? Can’t I love
Jesus AND be healed? I scanned the
pages of her book in torment before I threw it under my bed. Days later I placed in into a brown paper bag
and carried it to the trash.
* * *
In 2012, I arrived at a Joni
and Friends Family Retreat held at Castaway Club in Detroit Lakes, MN. (Learn about family retreats and more at http://www.joniandfriends.org/) After
much deliberation, I had accepted the invitation to volunteer as a short-term
missionary (STM) for the week.
I was simply overwhelmed.
I found myself in the bathroom one afternoon only to realize
that the woman in the stall next to me was changing the diapers of her adult
son.
I witnessed a middle-aged woman tend to her two adult sons
with severe disabilities by herself because her husband had died of cancer that
winter.
I wondered about the man seated in front of me each morning
in the chapel. Why didn’t he have a
power wheelchair like everyone else?
Everyone seemed so happy during our nightly volunteer
debriefing. They were smiling and
celebrating the precious connections they had made with their campers
throughout the day…I wanted to grieve.
Then one day in small group, I looked across the room to
witness a man who was crying. Finally! There’s someone around here who is
keeping it real. I thought to myself.
“Are you crying because of all you have lost due to your
disability?” The STMs around him asked. The man signed “Yes,” and the
volunteers began to weep. The next day,
he was introduced to the rest of us.
“This is Kris. Kris
was in a car accident. He can’t talk
with his mouth so he signs with his good hand one letter at a time. 1 is for yes and 2 fingers are for no. Even though he can’t talk he still thinks
like a typical adult.”
Upon hearing these words, I had one of those rare moments in
life when I looked at Kris and saw years ahead.
My heart was broken for him, but at the same time, I just wanted to sit
beside him and eat pizza together. I
wanted so desperately to go over to his house, sit by his chair, and watch him
sign hour after hour until we learned how to communicate.
After a few exchanges on Facebook following camp, Kris asked
me a simple question, “Do you like pizza?”
And so began our friendship.
The last two years have been beautiful and hard. Learning how to interact with someone who is
non-verbal is challenging, but within our conversations I have learned what a
gift it is to simply be with another person, that so much can be accomplished
and communicated simply by holding another’s hand. Dallas Theological Seminary professor Dr.
Victor Anderson was right when he said:
A
ministry of friendship [to people with disabilities] does not depend on a vast
biblical knowledge or refined pastoral technique. Rather it displays loyal love to an
individual and a family, modeled after the love God has shown to his broken
people. Relational needs are seldom met with an occasional contact. Family fragmentation may be irreparable, and
feelings of aloneness that are controlled in one hour may be ferociously
unleashed in the next. Yet true
friendship serves as a balm repeatedly applied and rubbed deep into the soul.
* * *
Volunteering as an STM at Joni and Friends Family retreat
has changed my life. It has impacted the
mail I receive, the books I read, and how I spend my money. It has sparked a greater awareness in me to
those in my immediate community who have been impacted by disability. It has caused me to ask deep questions about
the role churches can play in reaching out to those who are disabled and to
wonder about the spiritual formation process that occurs within a person who
suffers.
So much has changed since that day I threw a vintage copy of
Joni in the trash. This summer, Joni visited Minnesota’s Family
retreat where Kris and I got to meet her.
Of all the things I said to Joni throughout this special week, the ones
that kept falling most often from my lips were, “Thank you!”
Jenny Hill is an
elementary school library media specialist and the author of Walking with Tension a book
about her walk with God and with cerebral palsy. She is currently pursuing her doctorate at
Bethel University where Joni visited
this March. Jenny regularly blogs about faith and disability at walkingwithtension.com
Reference
Anderson, V. D. (2011). Pastoral care and disability. In L. J. Waters & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), Why o God?
Suffering and disability in the Bible and the church (pp.
231-243). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.
The story of Kris was shared with
permission.
