I Am Not My Disability

I started going to the gym earlier this year, and recently met someone there. She went out of her way to say hello to me, which--silly me--I thought was nice. I should have been more suspicious. Long story short, I have a disability I cannot hide from others. After a few days of briefly acknowledging one another at the gym, she and I seemed--I thought--to be "making eyes" at one another, so to speak. I kept wanting to have a longer conversation with her, but the timing never worked out.

A few days ago, I was in the middle of my workout, and she was across the gym in the middle of her own work. She came over to me and asked if there was anything she could pray for. I told her I'd been stressed, and she prayed for me right there. I thought that was a bit odd, but refreshingly bold, so I thanked her. She said something to the effect of, "I know God wants us all well." Before I could say anything else, she went back to her workout and left me to mine. I called my mentor at that point, who advised me to make time to talk with her for a few minutes.

This morning, I arrived early. I sat on a bench in the gym and waited for her. When she arrived, I said hello, and again expressed my thanks in praying for me. We were about to proceed with our warm-up on the stairclimbers, and I figured we might actually be able to chat a little. Unfortunately, the only stairclimber I can use safely--due to my disability--was being used, so I went back to the bench and waited.

She finished her workout and came over to me to ask why I wasn't working out. I told her "my" stairclimber was being used and I'd have to wait, because of my disability. She again asked if she could pray for me, and mentioned something about college I didn't quite catch due to the noise of the gym. That's when the flags really started to come up for me; she's a faith healer. I told her I'd had several negative experiences with faith healers in the past, but said it would be okay if she prayed for me. I asked her to repeat what she'd said about college, and she didn't exactly repeat it, but she told me she goes to a local charismatic Christian college that I'm well aware teaches prosperity theology.

After she prayed for me, I tried to chat with her, but I see now she wasn't really interested in me. She was interested in my disability. Her answers to my questions were short, vague, friendly enough, but ultimately, she was done with me. The more I think about it, the more it infuriates me to be treated--yet again--like a project. I've been dealing with this garbage for decades. She slow-played me. What I mistook for some kind of flirtatious interest was her just being nervously excited about possibly healing me.

The worst part is, I fight very hard to try to believe I am not my disability. I've lived my life keenly aware of how different I am from others, and how much "less than" I am. I'm weaker, slower, less efficient, less capable of living like a normal person. I struggle with basic things. Because of my disability, my own family had separate linens and soaps and other things because my things and me would have "spoiled" the good linens and soaps and such. Every time a female has expressed interest in me, it's been because she pitied me, or because she though dating the disabled guy would win her brownie points with God or the "empaths" in her social circle. A lot of guys have "befriended" me for similar reasons.

On top of all that, I get faith healers coming up to me, prying into my medical history. I tell them I'm not interested, and they want to play the "I just want to pray for you" card, like I'm the one being offensive. I humor them and let them pray for me, and I'm discarded as a project that didn't work. Sometimes I've been told I just need more faith, or the sin in my life is prohibiting my healing. I've spent decades of my life praying and believing, trying every mantra and formula, reading all the books, begging God that something would work. For years upon years I struggled to accept myself, on top of years of abuse and ridicule from my peers for the sin of being different.

Christianity tells us we're all broken from what was intended, but then charismatic faith healers come along and say, "You're more broken because you're disabled and you don't have faith. Obviously if you had faith you would be healed." And I know the truth. I know that in Jesus' time, people who had faith aplenty still went unhealed. People got sick and died, and they weren't resurrected. Paul himself suffered from an affliction God refused to take away, so that God's power might be perfected in Paul's weakness. I understand the intellectual arguments, but I still fight to believe that I am not wholly defined by "more broken."

I've never been married, and haven't had a girlfriend in nearly twenty years. The few girlfriends I've had, my disability ended up being the main attraction. I've never had a woman take an interest in me because I'm me, which seems to suggest I'm even more broken than "more broken." I should have been suspicious that a woman seemed to take an interest in me at all, but I'd been praying in recent weeks for God to help me be the man I should be for a wife, and to help me find her. It felt nice to think maybe she was an answer to prayer, but no.

I'm done. I still have the same faith I've always had. If God wants to heal me, He knows where to find me, and I know He can do it. He's healed my lesser afflictions before, and done great and miraculous things in my life. But I am done ever thinking I could have a wife or a family of my own. God is more capable and more likely to heal me than it seems any woman is capable or likely to see me as more than my disability.

I've been told before I have a chip on my shoulder, and I won't dispute it. There are many times I have put that chip down and extended an olive branch to the charismatic set, but more and more they've managed to justify that chip in their inability to see a person, rather than a broken project.