Beautifully Broken

I have spina bifida, so I’ve spent a lot of time straddling the line between disability and self-love. Struggling with self-acceptance, disability acceptance. Sometimes I still hate the long list of things I can't do. The limitations that slow me down. But as I get older, I've come to see living with disability less as a healing journey and more as an exercise in gratitude and growth, because embracing limitations (without accepting shame) makes room for adaptive living—which nurtures a growth mindset that lets you to love who you are.

Learning to love yourself is hard though, isn't it? With or without chronic illness, letting go of self-hatred and loving your past self demands a determination to stop flinching from the memory of old wounds and start turning pain into purpose.

You can't love who you are if you still hate the moments that made you.

The trouble is, we live in a world where people think personal growth means "getting over it" and "letting it go." We think trusting God in hard times should promise an end to those times, that faith and healing must each be a guarantee of the other's existence—but that's not always how it works. Sometimes, thriving with disability means learning to love your story as it is, with grace for what it was and hope for what it can still be.

Sometimes, the most powerful prescription you can fill is a daily dose of self-forgiveness.

You may not have disabilities, invisible illness, or a trauma recovery story, but I'll bet you know what pain is. I'm sure there are things you would change, moments you'd rather erase, mistakes you wish you hadn't made. And in a society so hungry for optimism we often tiptoe over the edge of "toxic positivity," I'm sure you've heard your fair share of advice that tells you how to heal from resentment, how to find gratitude in hard times, and how to choose joy in all things.

I can't tell you how to do any of those things, because I'm still learning too.

What I can tell you is this. When you hold the past with hands of compassion, and you offer understanding to the version of yourself who lived there...when you thank each previous version of you for how they created who you are now...the life you're living won't feel as heavy, and the future you're headed toward won't seem as daunting.

With my background and my childhood, the search for emotional healing isn't new. Making peace with my parents, separating myself from their choices, and digging into the stories that made them who they were...wasn't easy. Compassion for them often unsettled the fragile compassion I held for myself, and even as I learned to appreciate the value of spiritual growth through suffering, I struggled to hold gratitude for the past.

People who couldn't bear to hear how bad it was would shrug their shoulders and say things like, "At least you survived," and, "It could have been worse."

I learned to tread carefully in the space between an eternally optimistic mother-in-law who said, "I wish you wouldn't talk about that. It's too hard to listen to," and a trauma-informed specialist who, rendered nearly speechless, leaned back in her chair and whispered, "Wow."

I found strength through faith, searching for God's purpose in pain filled memories—like my life was a photo album that would suddenly make sense if I could find his face in even one picture.

I raised children, protecting them with such ferocity that sometimes they resented me for it. I taught them with mindful intention even as I was learning. I wrote books that used my life, my experiences, and my emotions to fuel characters, driving them through hard stories that offered hope.

Then in 2021, I started leading a student group at my church. In the time since, I've walked a middle school girl through an abusive situation at home. I've held someone's sobbing young daughter as shame over sexual assault shattered everything good she saw in herself. I've encouraged their dreams, uplifted their identities, supported their goals. I've baptized them, cried over them, prayed for them.

And in every picture, in every circumstance where my past made me capable of coaching someone else's present, God was there.

But in the background, I could still see the chains of disability and chronic illness. The events I missed because of heat intolerance. The moments cut short by the impact of nerve damage. The chores I couldn't manage, the meals I missed making because pain laid me out on the living room floor.

In 2023, I took a weekly ministry class for several months. During that time I had a cancer scare, my car broke down constantly, every TV in our house broke, our washer broke, my marriage fell apart, and my oldest daughter briefly lost her ability to walk. But as I took her and her wheelchair to physical therapy three times a week, kept up with my class, maintained my student group, battled the finances of constant car trouble, cook and cleaned (and wrote), and struggled with grief over my marriage, I began to see my physical limitations in a new light—not as disability, but as different ability.

Not as a chain, but as an open door to possibility. Disability might keep me from holding a steady job society approves of, but it doesn't stop me from contributing to the world around me. I just have to do it differently, and when I use the boundaries of my life not as stopping points but as redirection, I can see them pushing me toward deeper strength—the kind that's measured by presence and purpose instead of titles or financial achievements.

My body has broken me and rebuilt me. It's slowed me down, softened me, and taught me grace I might not have learned any other way. But as I learned to see it for the gift that it is, I shifted the limits. Transformed them from closed door to clear calling.

And this moment? Well...it simply wouldn't exist...without all the moments that came before.

*****

I don't always feel grateful for the pain, the limitations, or the days when my body gives up long before my heart and mind. But gratitude isn’t about pretending everything is easy. It’s about recognizing that even hard things become holy ground when we stop asking, "Why me?" and start asking, "What now?"

Maybe the point was never to prove that I could do everything. Maybe it was to learn that I don’t have to. And maybe that’s why I'm grateful for the way God's still using it all—every broken piece, every slow, unsteady step—to shape me into someone who shows up with empathy, perspective, and grace.

Because every limitation has led me somewhere I wouldn’t have gone otherwise—and those experiences gave me what I needed to...

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