Coloring With Broken Crayons

Building a writing career is harder than most people think. It's more than just making up a story, hitting "publish," and rolling in piles of money. There's a certain dedication required to create people out of nothingness, weave backstories through the fabric of imaginary time, and sculpt truth into places and worlds that don't actually exist.

It often means taking your characters through unspeakable hardship. To nurture resilience, you give them struggle. To illustrate perspective, you offer contrast. You imagine what they'll say or do, how they'll react when life is hard...and then you make it harder. Not just to see what happens, but to guide growth. And the reader sees an inspiring character finding purpose and overcoming limitations. Page by page, we follow a plotted path to personal growth and if we're lucky, we walk away at the end with hope or gratitude we didn't have before.

Because stories, after all, are teachers.

As a Christian, I believe God is the ultimate author, and sometimes I think about my life as a story. I imagine myself as a character and I wonder what God is writing next. And I think about the hidden blessings in each passing chapter—especially the lessons I've learned from living with a disability.

Chronic illness is one of the greatest challenges in my story, and to be honest, there are days when disability feels like loss. Some challenges feel insurmountable. My body hurts, my energy dips, my finances and resources don't always stretch far enough. It changes my relationships. Sometimes it changes the way I see myself. And it's so easy to measure my story by everything disability takes away, especially when the world is quick to tell us what our labels remove. But what if that label is only one part of a nuanced identity? What if, even as it prevents some things...it prepares others?

The stories that stick with us are rarely easy to read, and the characters we remember aren't the ones who never struggled. The best books give us characters facing impossible things and making the most of what they have.

I think good stories color our hearts with broken crayons. Fragile enough to snap. Harder for smaller hands to hold. Sometimes the point is shaved away or broken off. Maybe the wrapper has been shredded, and this crayon isn't as pretty as the shiny new ones. But maybe we're all just broken characters who could learn a lot from broken crayons.

They still color—because they don't stop being crayons.

I want to tell you a secret. A deeply personal, sometimes controversial, maybe even a little bit dangerous secret.

There's a part of me that's glad I'm disabled.

There. I said it. But before you roll your eyes and decide that I'm choosing to romanticize chronic illness, constant pain, unending fatigue, and humiliating financial limitations, just hear me out.

I've written a lot about finding purpose in pain and the value of keeping a positive mindset, but I think sometimes it's easy to miss what that really means. Sure, we'll talk about choosing gratitude, and I could absolutely turn this into a pretty post on trusting God in suffering—but I'm not going to. Because the truth is, disability sucks.

You know that annual check-up most people dread? Imagine doing it two or three times a year, and then multiply that by at least three doctors. Think about the reality of never feeling less than a four on that cute little pain scale in every hospital room. Or planning a day at the zoo a month in advance so you can check on the weather, the stock of medications, the mobility aids. Or the people who won't go with you because planning is a hassle...and what if something happens?

It's depressing, really. Friends stop calling when you're not as fun anymore. The mask slips one time too many, your discomfort upsets or worries someone, and they suddenly find someone easier to hang out with. Someone more spontaneous. Someone less complicated. Or maybe they don't even believe you, and every interaction is marked by the weight of proof until you withdraw from the battle. Your life shrinks. Your joy fades.

Before long, all you have left is the struggle, and it becomes the focus of your existence. The moral of your story. The disability defines you. But what if I told you it doesn't have to? What if your power lies in choosing gratitude without denying reality, and that's the key to making sure disability doesn't define you?

Hang on, let me flip the script.

You know that annual check-up most people dread? Imagine using those moments to celebrate making it another year. Imagine recognizing the strength it takes to keep going, keep advocating, keep trying—even when no one else can see what it costs. If you do that two or three times a year with three or four different doctors, that's a whole lot of opportunities to take yourself to lunch afterward. And if little kids get a sticker for being a good patient, I feel like losing yourself in a new book when the pain scale hits six is perfectly reasonable.

Let that month-long planning session help you filter out the people who can't handle what you're going through. Check the weather, check your meds, check your mobility, and go to the zoo with someone who doesn't mind walking a little slower. Someone who pretends to love the apes as much as you do—because that bench over there looks like a great place to rest for a minute.

Don't be afraid of your support network. Tell them why you can't get out today. But then invite them over for a movie on the couch. (Bonus points if your friends are slightly older or have similar disabilities. You can fill a whole afternoon trading horror stories and coping mechanisms.)

You don't have to shrink, fade, or withdraw. Disability may take a great deal...but you don't have to give it everything. And I'm not suggesting that every disability has an obvious upside or that gratitude erases hardship. I'm just saying that sometimes the way we look at things matters.

I can't keep a nine-to-five because of my health problems. I can't just get up in the morning, drink some coffee, and soldier through the day. In fact, I do most of my writing from my bed, where I can try to keep my back happy. But that limitation bought me the freedom to be a stay-home mom. And coping with it allows me to do what I'm doing right now, writing posts I hope encourage people.

I spent too many years wishing I had a different set of crayons. Brighter energy, sharper health, prettier labels. I've watched people give up on me when I didn't have the right colors. I've compared shades of complacency and swatched patches of contentment. I've ached and prayed for sturdier wax. But if these limitations mark the experiences that shaped who I've become, what would I lose by erasing them?

The truth is, we don't always get to choose our crayons. Sometimes the only choice we're given is what picture we want to color.

*****

I think we forget that gratitude is a valid coping skill. We overlook it because it seems too simple to matter, or we discount it because we think it means pretending everything is fine. We shake our heads because sometimes it looks like denial, and sometimes it looks like surrender. For me, it's just acceptance. It's the courage to recognize when nothing is fine—and the simultaneous determination to say, "This part is still good."

If my life is a story and I am a character, I want to spend the next chapter as Indiana Jones. I want to face the booby-trap on page ten, throw a rock at it, roll under it, dance around the giant boulder, swing over the pit, and punch the dude waiting to ambush me on page thirty (me and Jesus can talk about that later).

I know I'll get to the end of the story battered and bruised. I know I'll slide into that last chapter so exhausted I can hardly even speak. But if I have to hunt the blessings in a story fraught with challenge, just imagine the picture I'll get to color with my broken crayons. I bet it'll be a library filled with a rainbow of stories, with every title a reminder to...

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