Crafton: Living with Limitations
“Just because you’re disabled doesn’t mean you’re not anything else. Have you lost an ability you used to have? Something you loved? Have you had to say good-bye to it? Maybe there’s another way or another place in which you can still do it, or something like it.” Barbara Crafton, eMo from The Geranium Farm, www.geraniumfarm.org August 16, 2018.
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) this week reports on its website that 61 million adults or about one fourth of adults in this country have a disability that impacts a major part of their lives. The most common disability deals with mobility, affecting one in seven adults. It is also more common in women, especially those in the South and of lower income. The most common disability in younger adults is cognitive disability.
Barbara Crafton, who will be at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Saturday September 8th from 9 to 1 writes a daily email eMo from the Geranium Farm www.geraniumfarm.org using a piece of art to lead to her story. This week she had a painting, “Summer Wheat Field With Cypresses,” by Vincent Van Gogh painted in his last year from his window while he was in a mental facility.
My experience is that each of us has what Paul calls, “a thorn in our flesh.” If we think the other person doesn’t, we are very mistaken. We have a choice of how to respond to a disability. More and more I see our experience is to ask in our prayers how that thorn brings new light or new direction to our lives. Those in recovery will say that their addiction brought them to a new life they never dreamed. I see people with cancer changing and bettering the lives of others until the very end. I see parents with handicapped children who know more about patience and kindness and love than so many of us.
There is a new pathway. It is not necessarily overcoming the disability but seeing the message or new direction for us to continue to become the person God has created us to be in each new experience we are offered.
Joanna joannaseibert.com