EIGHTEEN months ago, I partially severed my spinal cord. I fell from a mini boat on a mini pond. I used to be leading a gaggle from my church. So, it wasn’t just me: the group had their weekend within the Kent countryside somewhat spoiled, and I spent three months in King’s College Hospital, sometimes fighting for my life. This was followed by five months of rehabilitation at Stoke Mandeville, the National Spinal Injuries Centre.
I’m now a resident at British Home, in Streatham, a big residential centre for individuals with neurological disabilities. Remarkably, this specialist centre is lower than a mile from where I lived, and so friends of 30 years can pop in and provides their encouragement and support.
I’m tetraplegic, permanently disabled with paralysis from below the shoulders. You can imagine all of the challenges and indignities that include such a helpless state, suddenly inflicted on the age of 70.
The challenges that my comrades at British Home face, nonetheless, are much more acute than mine. Serious stroke, road injury, or brain tumours mean facing life with impaired cognitive capability and speech, in addition to enduring physical disabilities. My situation is nowhere near as bleak. I may not give you the option to maneuver, but I can talk, and I can think, and, consider it or not, I also can enjoy many things and express that enjoyment.
So, here I sit, privileged with a powered wheelchair, and viable capability, and embraced by my wife and longstanding friends. Nevertheless, within the early stages of my injury, once I drifted near death, I did must endure some exceptionally intrusive and ugly procedures as a way to make it through the night — many nights. It was an alarming and existentially lonely place.
Rightly, it is a place during which to look at the efficacy of our Christian faith. I actually have all the time been an apprehensive Christian, suspicious of the systematising efforts that encase our faith.
Given such a fragile — even cynical — faith, the chances may be against its remaining secure within the face of those challenges. But I can report that my diffident faith was sufficient for the times. While great faith could also be lauded, through the grace of God tentative faith is sweet enough. There could also be a lesson here for missiologists.
DURING essentially the most difficult of procedures, and the three months that followed, looking only at ceilings due to an immovable neck brace, I all the time had a profound reassurance in relation to each life and death. There was — and is — a way that each one can be well.
It is just not just Julian of Norwich who uttered such words, nonetheless; so, too, might the military, now education the ranks in resilience techniques. The United States army is a chief mover of mental disciplines that bring similar reassurance and coping skills. Therefore, my Christian-rooted reassurance and apparent resilience is just not something unique about which to crow.
Furthermore, the medication (pregabalin) that helps to alleviate my nerve pain is traded on the streets because the approach to relax when the world gets an excessive amount of. So, beware: it may not be my faith, m’lud: it may be the drugs!
There is now a gospel story that I discover with greater than ever before. It is the story of the person unable to enter the pool at Bethesda and receive its occasional advantages. Jesus tells him to select up his bed and walk, and he does. Rather than sustained gratitude as a response, he makes his approach to the Pharisees, and stokes their fury over this latest rabbi, Jesus.
I learn from this story to be thankful for the chums that I actually have handy, and to be alert to the bitterness that may stalk us, especially if hardship or disability is long-term. Here, help has come unknowingly from my British Home comrades, especially those that are young, and will have already got endured profound challenges for a few years. My burden is light compared with theirs; they’re the heroes, and, to this point, their companionship has displaced bitterness.
DURING my lifetime as a Christian, I actually have been shaped by the notions that “the last shall be first,” and that the meek shall inherit the earth. I’m so grateful for this formation. It has helped me to offer profound value to those with whom I now live. These Christian reversals of customary power and standing have prepared me for my latest community, and even a latest ministry. I actually have a calling that I never expected.
At British Home, I’m certainly one of the few who — due to spinal somewhat than brain injury — is each verbally able and “with competence” (to make use of the language of care plans). I’m learning to make use of these unusual gifts on behalf of others.
Notably, too, my rootedness within the Streatham neighbourhood has brought advantages: music from Everyone Matters, and termly adventures with St Leonard’s “Open the Book” team. First off the mark was “Pulse”, the church youth group, selling their home-made Christmas cards on behalf of British Home. And now the Mindful Movement group at St Leonard’s has put British Home on its list of beneficiaries. All very modest, needless to say, however the impact is important, and, with virtuous dynamics, gaining momentum day by day.
When you might be profoundly disabled, you depend on carers who will wash and are likely to you in intimate ways. My carers have their roots in Jamaica or St Lucia, Kampala or Lagos. I do know little of their struggles, but I believe that they’re many. I know the way their faith is alive and a fantastic source of comfort, in addition to a fantastic antidote to my disbelief. I’m also aware of the generosity of care and affection that I receive as someone who rejoices in a same-sex relationship.
My carers labour for a modest hourly rate; my ambition is to be certain that they receive the true London living wage, plus plus. Another task for the list, and a reminder that the body might fail, but ministry doesn’t end.
Ann Morisy is a community theologian, and is a member of the congregation at St Leonard’s, Streatham, within the diocese of Southwark. For more information concerning the work of British Home, visit: www.britishhome.org.uk
