rejoice

 

Susie arrives later today; Noah and Elijah tomorrow; and on Friday all five of us head off to my brother’s wedding.

My brother is getting married, for the first time, thirty years after he was my best man.

His wedding was the first thing that crossed my mind—‘No, no, no! ****!’—when I smashed up my shoulder exactly three weeks’ out from the big day.

My goal for Friday is to be able to put my shirt on without assistance. Not that there is anything wrong with needing assistance; but setting goals can be useful for physical rehab, as long as we hold them lightly enough that our spirits aren’t crushed if we don’t meet them. I still don’t have a functioning left arm; and after two less-painful days, it is more painful again today; so, we shall see.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone. My mother and sister will likely both be in wheelchairs for at least some of the day; my father, walking with the aid of a stick; my arm in a sling. The point is not that my brother should have married sooner—we would all be in these conditions now, regardless of a wedding—but that we are all only ever temporarily not disabled.

The body is miraculously designed to renew itself of many (not all) things. I give thanks for the incredible work of surgeons, doctors, and nurses. And I believe that prayer, and anointing with oil for healing, both play a part too. My shoulder will mend; and, in time, something else will fall apart.

We are not meant to be self-sufficient. We are meant to be interdependent, and to care for one another. To enable one another to participate, as fully as we—together—are able; given actual constraints, and the imagination and will to transform our environment. To experience abundant life, in the fleeting and seasonal nature of our existence.

Which is why the obscenely rich insisting that those who are disabled should carry the burden of the cost of such transformation by themselves, alone, is so comprehensively lacking in humanity.

We are all only ever temporarily not disabled.