Resilience

Recently I was invited to co-champion a disabilities community group at the company where I work. When I received the invitation, I was confused. Why me? Matthew 19:26 proclaims that with God all things are possible. I’ve never thought of the word disabled as an adjective relevant to describe me. My identity comes from Christ, so I’ve never thought of “disabled” as something that is part of my identity.

With that said, I do have quite a few medical diagnoses that affect my physical health. Without getting lost in a tangent of details, I have twelve specialists in addition to my regular primary care physician. That’s a total of thirteen doctors I see on a regular basis.

After speaking with several colleagues who serve in the co-champion role for other community groups and reflecting on God’s reminder about what is possible, I decided to accept the invitation. I’m so glad I did because I’m so excited about all the things we have already accomplished. Our approach is to pick one thing at a time, do it well, and then move on to the next. God has shown me that Matthew 19:26 is alive through this group of people. We decided to name ourselves “capABLE.” This name captures all of the members’ identities perfectly. The first three letters are an acronym, and we come together ABLE to achieve whatever we set out to pursue. We are …

         caregivers for,

         allies of, and

         people living with disabilities,

and we are ABLE.

Something else we have already discovered that we share in common is how profoundly impacted we are when changes happen to a person’s emotional, mental, or physical sense of security and confidence. As humans, we think stability means knowing what’s coming next. So when something in our world changes: 

We might resist that change … shock puts us into something of a freeze frame stillness or anxious swirl … denial prevails as we try to cushion ourselves … anger most often represented as yelling, throwing things, or a red faced emoji might instead show up in us as impatience or bitterness … fear blossoms when faced with the mysterious unknown road ahead. 

OR

We might choose to let ourselves get acquainted with the change … curiosity about this new way … energy and enthusiasm born of the awakening coming from within … hope about the mysterious unknown road ahead.

To reassure us that the mysterious unknown road ahead will never be daunting to us, God teaches us about resilience in scripture.

“Don’t rejoice over me, my enemies! For though I fall, I will rise again. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light.”

Micah 7:8

Not long ago, I walked through a season that showed me this firsthand. When working with horses, there are a variety of ways to give them exercise. One is called liberty training, during which there is nothing tangible connecting the horse and person; the person provides solely visual cues with their hands and body movements accompanied by verbal sounds. For example, when I make a kiss sound, it is the horse’s cue to begin cantering. The only thing faster than cantering is galloping – full speed – which most of you are probably familiar with. 

My horse Savannah had her left eye removed last year due to an infection that refused to heal after three tumultuous months of treatments. Since then, she and I have had a new rhythm for her fitness. I discovered quickly that whenever I did liberty training on her non-vision side, she could no longer see my visual cues. Everything is verbal. This has been a huge change for the both of us! But we resiliently picked this one thing, liberty training, to start; we started slowly and we started together. Today we are able to do almost everything at liberty on both sides, and in the moments when she is uncertain on her non-vision side, she knows she can do a head twist to gain line-of-sight and check in with me. 

If you are facing a disease, a disorder, a different ability, or a change of ANY kind, take heart and be encouraged that we truly never know what is coming next on the mysterious unknown road ahead. Any expectation that we did was just an illusion. And yet, here we are, moment by moment breathing resilience in and breathing it out … rising again … the Lord is our light (Micah 7:8). Pick one thing, any little thing, and let curiosity about it lead you toward energy, enthusiasm, and hope!

Sara Ashenfelter

Sara has served in many different places on the production team since she started serving over a decade ago. She currently serves in a volunteer administrative role where she can use her gifting to help coordinate details and align processes for our team. She brings organization and inspiration to every meeting and initiative she is apart of! – The Learning Together Team