What God's Got to Do with It?

“Can I pray for God to heal your legs?” Is a question I was sincerely asked by a well-meaning college student. I was in a position to be asked questions like that because I spent most of my life in the Church in some way or another. Church gave me hope amidst the struggles, it gave me a space to belong sometimes and sometimes not, it gave me my first career (largely influenced by my Cerebral Palsy), and it gave me a different lens to see the world – where people like me were included in the eyes of God.

How it started – I was born into the Church. My parents got “saved” sometime before I was born. The first church I spent time in was some kind of Baptist church in the city. Sometime after that I spent most of my childhood attending an Evangelical Presbyterian Megachurch in the suburbs with members of the paternal side of my family. My existence was considered a miracle from surviving premature birth, being on oxygen in the early years, enduring surgeries at a young age, and learning how to live with CP. 

Where it went – in my teens, I left the family Megachurch because I felt out of place – I had to attend most youth group activities on scholarship because my immediate family didn't have much money. When a longtime friend invited me to youth group at the Salvation Army (another denomination of Evangelical Christianity), I kept going because I felt like I belonged. Like me, most of the others didn't have much. I felt like their ministries were actually serving the poor and marginalized, like I read in the Bible. But by this point, I'd also allowed my CP to become largely invisible – apart from climbing and repelling actual mountains and cliffs. It was at the Salvation Army that I realized, ministry was a job I could actually physically do with my CP and I had an opportunity to have a different life than the one I was expecting. I could attempt to live on government assistance, like I grew up and was expecting to do because it was ingrained that I couldn't physically work, or I could defy expectations and go into Youth Ministry as my career. I spent roughly twelve years with the Salvation Army before leaving Evangelical Christianity for a different brand of theology.

After my mom passed away, I was drifting a lot when it came to church. The Evangelical Megachurch I grew up in didn't fit my understanding of Jesus, the Evangelical Salvation Army was a better fit in some ways but its theology and mine were increasingly butting heads. I encountered Martin Luther and the Theology of the Cross. I spent the next twelve years in the Lutheran tradition of Christianity, including two Youth Ministry jobs at different churches. I didn't have an easy or smooth career in ministry – both my CP and trauma experiences had an impact on that career and its end.

How it's going – I've spent nine years in a second career as a librarian and it's been incredible! A job I can physically do that doesn't quantify my core values as a performance metric. A job that aligns with who I am and what's important to me – without battling for my soul. It's also given me the platform to share my experience living with Cerebral Palsy. For all the good the Church brought to my life, it also brought me a lot of hurt and unanswered questions about the devine. Theologically, I've been comfortable with my uncertainty about God for many years but wasn't comfortable voicing the extent of that while most of my existence was wrapped up in the Church. I left the Church completely a couple of years ago because after my dad died I was less worried about familial disapproval for making my agnostic feelings known. 

Today, I'm an apostate who's grateful to the Church for the ways I experienced love and belonging while in it. I try to be forgiving of the Church for the ways I felt excluded, not good enough, and less than while in it personally, professionally, and spiritually. I don't want God to heal my legs, I didn't in college either, and just like then, I'm equally cynical about whether or not that would actually work. I'm not broken. If I was made by God, then there's nothing wrong with me or my CP. 

In the stories to come, I'll climb and ski mountains. I'll do things at the expense of my comfort for others. I'll dive deeper into the smell memories. I'll become my own advocate. I'll walk the line between survival and defiance. I'll be a pillar of strength for others and struggle to be strong for myself. Stay tuned.