People are really funny sometimes. They come in so many different shades and varieties, sizes and shapes, and right now, I'm just talking about their personalities. Some people are soft and tender inside while others are hard and tough. Both are perfectly acceptable qualities at times, and both can be annoying at times. We've all been there, we've experienced little aches and pains, and people will judge us by how we react to these minor troubles. Take a sliver in your finger, for example. A tiny annoyance to you perhaps, until it is pulled out, but there are other people who, if they had the very same sliver in the very same finger, would freak out, and practically require anesthesia to remove the offending splinter.
But there are some people out there who have difficulties going far beyond the usual tiny little splinter, or a muscle ache or stomach pain. There are some who exist with terrible pain, or life-threatening disease, or disfiguring illness. There are people who have paralysis, and must spend their lives in wheelchairs. There are birth defects and brain injuries, that can cause life-long problems for the person enduring them. These people for the most part, endure with grace and dignity, doing everything in their power to live as normal a life as possible. It is those people that this article is dedicated to.
People like, Joni Earickson Tada, a woman who has spent her entire adult life in a wheelchair, after a diving accident left her a quadriplegic at the age of seventeen. Instead of hating that chair, she has made the most of it, doing for herself what she can, and enlisting help for the things she cannot. Joni is an artist, a very profoundly talented one, I might add, who paints and draws with implements held in her teeth. That may sound incredible, but what is more incredible are the amazingly detailed paintings she is capable of creating using the mouth painting method. She also sings, with a unique and beautiful soprano voice, which is difficult for a quadriplegic. Breathing, which is important to the ability to sing well, is different for the quad.
Joni's wish for when she goes to Heaven? You would naturally suspect that she would want new legs and hands so she can run again, and walk, and do things for herself, right? Wrong. Joni's wish for her new body in Heaven is for the Lord to give her....a new heart. Yes, that's right. Joni wants more than anything else, to recieve a more loving, more caring, more beautiful personality than the one she has now. Amazing, considering that there are few women in this world who could be more beautiful inside than her. She has started the Joni and Friends Ministries which is dedicated to helping paralyzed people get the special tools and skills they need. I wonder, how I would live my life if I had to live it like she does? Would I sit there feeling sorry for myself, or would I try to make other people with the same problems live better lives? That's something to think about.
I recently saw a news story about a young teenaged boy who suffered from cancer as an infant, which resulted in the surgical removal of both of his eyes. Now, nearly a man, he gets around easily without a guide dog, or a white cane, and usually without any human assistance as well. How does he maneuver down sidewalks and busy streets, without help and without eyes? He has somehow developed a technique of hearing-sight which is quite similar to the way that bats navigate using sound. He clicks his tongue against his teeth, then listens for the returning click. The sound of that click will tell him exactly what is directly ahead of him, causing him to be able to walk around objects in his path that he cannot possibly see for himself.
To me, this ability is more than just extraordinary. It is also a significant sign of different ability. This young man is not in any way handicapped, but is instead, differently abled. Disability has always carried something of a stigma but it is so heartwarming when people with disabilities are able to break through that barrier and do things that the rest of us take for granted every day. Take for example, the story of a man who once worked as a side-show exhibit in a circus. He also starred in the 1931 Tod Browning movie, "Freaks". This man had been born without arms and legs and was billed as, "the Human Torso". He truly was a human torso too, with only one method of mobility, a sort of side-to-side creeping motion that he managed by twisting his body back and forth on the ground.
