July is Disability Pride Month!

Disability Pride might seem like an odd concept, and it’s one that’s taken me – as a disabled young person myself – quite a long time to come to terms with. Indeed, when my long-term invisible disability became suddenly visible, in the form of me becoming a wheelchair user, I felt… ashamed, self-consciousness, fearful, depressed. Certainly not proud.

I owe a lot to Keele University Gospel Choir for teaching me to love myself again, by showing that they loved me in spite of my disability (and at times even for it). To be able to be safe with them and not have to hide any part of myself, yet still have the light-heartedness to make jokes about my wheels, was the exact thing that I needed in this time.

I’ve been able to grow as a person and realise that these health restrictions, although they can take up a big part of my life, are by no means what defines me. I have learnt to accept the use of these mobility aids and medications as tools that allow me to flourish and achieve everything I want to achieve. I’m about to graduate from Keele University with First Class Honours in Philosophy… and if I had to use my wheelchair to get to lectures, what difference does that make?

Let me tell you: none.

It is so freeing to have found that thin line between taking pride in who I am as a resilient disabled young woman, and knowing that the ‘disabled’ part of that doesn’t define who I am.

There is one other contention I had to balance these pieces with, though, and that is faith.

I am very wary of anyone tiptoeing into prosperity gospel territory (that if you have enough faith, you will be healed), because God doesn’t work like that. I believe that if we have faith, God can heal, but that doesn’t necessitate that He will. And if He does, it doesn’t mean He will do so in the way we would like or even expect.

I have experienced a variety of forms of God’s healing in my life. As a teen, God healed my anxiety at a Christian weekend away, and it was gone… just like that. It was the most incredible experience, but then I reflected and became angry at God for not healing my chronic illness which was causing far more problems for me. It was another seven years before God made a promise to me that he would get me out of my wheelchair. And this has been a slow process, currently 18 months and counting, although I am amazed at the progress that has been made with God’s help, and I pray that this healing will continue.

What I know now though is that I don’t have to be healed to be proud of who I am. I am amazing – and I don’t need to be in perfect health for this to be so.

I am a fearfully and wonderfully made child of God. God knitted me together in my mother’s womb, and he knows the intricacies of my body better than I know them myself. He understands the wiring of my nervous system and the mitochondrial make-up of my blood cells… and He loves me and chooses me and sent his Son to die for me, despite all of my flaws.

So this Disability Pride month, I can be proud of everything I have overcome as a disabled person, or more accurately all that God has helped me get through. I can take pride in my identity as a disabled person because I know that it has no bearing on my standing as a precious child of God. And I can take pride in my temperamental body because it was nonetheless wonderfully created by the Lord our God.

And if you need a reminder of your own beautiful creation – whether due to physical disability, mental health struggles, or forgetting God’s truth for our lives – I always find myself encouraged by returning to this wonderful song, ‘I Am Amazing’ by Philippa Hanna: