Inertia against living
The wolf said, “The groundhog saw his shadow and said 6 more weeks of winter… so I ate him”. I wonder how many of us are feeling wolf-like as we come to the end of winter?
In this post, I hope to provide you with a tiny window into the life of families with disabilities as we look at the issue of what my friend recently called “inertia against living”.
Inertia; a noun meaning “a tendency to do nothing or to remain unchanged”.
My conversation with my friend was regarding the idea of vacation. You see, my wife and I haven’t taken anything closely resembling a vacation since her accident in 2008. My friend, whose wife is also disabled for at least as long, is in the same boat. What we discovered is that we have no real desire to make the extraordinary effort to take a vacation for a host of reasons including (1) our problems simply go with us, (2) any ‘fun’ we might have will be muted by the guilt from awareness that our spouses aren’t able to enjoy it the same way, (3) the details of travel, (4) care of spouse, (5) their discomfort with pain and (6) the distinct possibility that vacation will be cut short because of health concerns. In our minds, all of this makes taking a vacation a mountain too high to climb.
Wolf Wolfensberger’s wound #15 from his “18 Wounds of Disability” article labels this the “impoverishment of experience”. A very apt phrase.
Perhaps you can see how such families might struggle with the promises Jesus made when He said “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Yes, we recognize that He was speaking of salvation, not the particulars of daily life, but other promises such as Psalm 27:13 and the many “joy” passages can leave the disabled community wondering how these verses apply to their lives. That’s why the heroes of Hebrews 11, the “others” from verses 36-40, jump to the forefront for us because they too did not receive what was promised in this life but, like the disabled, had to wait, by faith, for something better in the life to come.
That said, I am thrilled to report that from time to time folks in the here and now take action and become the blessings heretofore mentioned. A friend of ours actually stepped up this spring to plan, reserve and organize a get-away for us and a small cadre of friends at a B & B house on a lake in central PA. What we couldn’t get done because of inertia, she did and for the first time in over a decade we are remembering what it is like to look forward to a “fun” time away from our house.
As spring rolls into summer, perhaps you too might remember someone you know who is suffering from the impoverishment of experience because of disability. Make the effort to reach out and invite them along. Be ready to modify plans to include them. And, of course, continue to pray for our clients at AHM, many of whom will likely stay home all summer, bound by their limitations.
Blessings, grace and joy be yours as you serve our folks through your sacrifice of prayer.