Acceptance of disability is a milestone for persons with disabilities – Geraldine Ruiz, NCDA Executive Director
Last Friday, I went to a workshop for the drafting of a national and regional plan on human rights. One of the those in the panel, Ms. Ruiz gave that statement which brought me to my senses like a splash of water on my face.
Each of us has our own “disability” or brokenness that when we are confronted by our ugly side, we usually see ourselves as despicable… unable to face our own selves… we create other selves for our own convenience or forget ourselves in every way possible yet try not to lose ourselves also. But then, we lose them in the end. Only because we could not accept that broken part of us, we try to submerge the whole into nothingness. I guess this was the lightness of being Mr. Gabriel G. Marquez was talking about.
It was no coincidence that when I went to the Pathways Recollection last Sunday, I was struck by the first meditation about the healing at Bethesda, where there was this pool surrounded by disabled people and this man who has been invalid for 38 years… It was the very word that was flashed via powerpoint – D-I-S-A-B-L-E-D… and it caught my eye… then stirred me. Yup, it was not the pool that was stirred but the depths of my heart.
For a long time, I held on to this distorted view of myself. My unloveliness was what I thought would un-make me. I thought it was a part I have to hide, I have to fight with, I have to control, I have to part with–at all cost. Until God made me realize it was the very thing that makes Him draw near me.
I have a hole in my heart. A black hole. That was how I defined my disability. (see previous posts)
Tired. Dark. Stormy. Three strong words which depicts that plight of that man… Like that invalid man waiting for years to be healed, I was almost hopeless but hanged on for one more day as our retreat master told us (Thanks Bobby Q). But on top it all, was another word-ALONE. Despite the goodwill of others, we bear ourselves including our mistakes, our brokenness alone. Or so I thought.
Until that protein called “laminin” was discussed and a picture of the black hole from a telescope was flashed. The form of the protein was in a cross and the center of a black hole also forms a cross much like how a laminin looks like under a microscope. Laminin is a protein that hold us together-literally. And it is also found at the farthest ends of the universe. God was hitting two birds with one Cross. No, God was holding everything in One Cross.
How I felt was beyond words. Really.
I was complaining about my disabled heart–my emptiness and inability to love. Yet, again, He convicts me that I have everything because I have Him in that center…. even in the center of my very disability He is there to hold me together.
So there is darkness, but I have Light within.
So there is tiredness, but I have my Rest in me.
So there is storm, but I have Stillness with me.
I am NOT alone. He holds me and my disabled heart together. Despite and precisely because of my disabled heart, He is with me. And that’s all I needed to be me and free.
