Joy Uncovered

Hello, welcome to Humbly Courageous. I am so glad you are here. I hope my blog brings a sense of understanding  what living a life with a disability can be like, or helps you to feel seen as a human who has value. This is just one perspective, but I believe all our perspectives hold value and have the capability to help others in unique ways. 

As a child, I often had this sinking feeling. It felt like an emptiness deep inside my body. It was a powerful feeling, and I felt very unsettled by it. 

It was a sad feeling, and I never knew where it came from. I kept this to myself. 

Several years later, I was courageous enough to tell my best friend about it. She quickly responded, “I get that too!” 

I could tell that she was as relieved as I was to find someone to commiserate with. We described in detail what this felt like to each other. We were both happy that we found someone who understood. 

Neither of us had ever told anyone else about this.

As the years went on, this occasional emptiness turned into a more constant sinking feeling for me. Depression. It took up permanent residence, and did not come and go. I was stuck with that constant, deep and empty feeling.

I would pray to God, “please just make me happy. Why can’t I just be happy?” Followed up with, “please make my legs better.” Surely then I could soak in the sparkling waters of happiness.

Any feelings of happiness were temporary, and I never fully enjoyed them because I was busy anticipating the sadness to return, as it always did. 

I had heard of joy. I wasn’t sure I’d ever truly felt it, but I believed it existed.

I saw it in the faces of others. Others whose legs weren’t riddled with weakness and scars. 

I thought, they must have it all together. If only I could get my prayers answered, perhaps I could embody this joy I saw in others. 

To me, that was the only way I thought I could ever feel joy. For God to heal me. No other avenue to joy ever entered my brain. I had started to come to terms with the fact that lasting joy would never be a part of me. 

When my babies were born, I met joy. It was as wonderful as I had imagined.

However, it did not stick to my insides like it seemed to do with others. Mine was a slippery joy, seemingly not designed to stick.

My belief was that joy was a lasting emotion, not affected by life’s fluctuating circumstances. Happiness is fleeting, while joy takes root.

I could not believe God would want me to live a joyless life, yet I knew my disease did not have any treatments or a cure, so my body, would likely continue to decline in strength. How is there any joy in that?

For the majority of my life, I was in a constant fight against myself. This battle kept me in a vicious cycle, but I did not realize it. I thought it was how I was supposed to think of myself as a disabled person. Flawed, with decreased value. 

That was the message that society sent to me in the ways of public interactions, exclusion from activities at school, forced to sit on the sidelines and watch my peers have fun, doctors using less than flattering terms about me starting as young as my mind can remember. They talked about my body and described it with ugly words while I was in the room. What else was I to think?

I felt like my soul had an insatiable hunger for joy that would never be satisfied. 

Sometimes, life hands us adversity. It can be short lived, or it can be a lifetime long. Either way, we learn from that space, even if we fight it. In the end, the adversity teaches us something about ourselves and the world around us.

It wasn’t until much later in life that I learned what my adversity was teaching me. 

It was teaching me how to embrace my “imperfections”, and use them for good. That was where the joy was waiting for me.

It was waiting in the acceptance of myself, just as I am. My weakness didn’t need to be cured for joy to exist. I did not have to continue to live with the words of ugliness often used to describe me and my physical body. 

My internal narrative had to be completely overhauled for joy to be uncovered within me. 

So, that is what I did. At first, not really on purpose. I was writing and speaking to help others feel better, not necessarily myself. But then, I started to truly see myself in those stories. The little girl, who believed at her core that she was flawed, not valuable. 

Joy began to emerge through the recounting of my story. As I wrote, I released the ugliness. Joy began to take root within me. 

How do I know? My physical abilities continue to decline, and many days are downright heartbreaking. It is terrifying to think of what lies ahead, but I still feel joy within me, even on the toughest days.

Although I am sad, I am not hopeless. 

I am here for a reason.

Humbly courageously, living in close connection to my purpose, continues to allow the roots of joy to entrench deeper into my soul. Living with faith that my life is not a mistake. 

I am not flawed.

I am disabled.💚