Defining Limit

Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

- Matthew 19:26

We were back at the Fitness Centre for our weekly exercise routine. One of my clients had been eyeing the stationary exercise bikes featuring individual T.V.'s and remote controls to mindlessly surf channels, taking one's mind off the excruciating pain. I asked if this week he would like to give the bike a try, in which he nodded his head enthusiastically. 

We waited our turn, as fitness buff's clad in fitness gear to call attention to their celestial fit bodies pedaled vigorously until their taut, muscled legs could take them no further. A man got off the bike slowly, but with a steady swagger, and wiped the seat down with the spray bottle and rag provided. I wheeled my client forward - he looked up dauntingly at the high seat of the bike from the inferior position of his wheelchair. 

A fitness instructor approached us and asked me if my client would like to use the bike. "Well", I tilted my head, "do you think it's possible?" She replied confidently, "anything's possible!" We maneuvered his wheelchair next to the bike, but as she turned over some of the possibilities in her mind, she had to face - literally face-to-face - his limitations, conceding, "Oh. That might not work. Maybe you could try some of the other equipment on that end" pointing with an extended finger to the other end of the facility.

Feeling a bit defeated, as though he'd been overstepping one's place, I pushed my client's wheelchair over to a pulley he could reach. His upper body strength compensates for his legs weaknesses, and with sweat streaming down his face, he beamed at his herculean efforts, as able-bodied and attractive athletes passed by unmoved in self-absorbed dreaminess, with inconspicuous glances at any surface reflection their wandering eyes could find. 

I called to my other client who was socializing with bodybuilders pumping iron and sculpting muscles, "Why don't you try the leg press?" 

He sauntered over and took one look, "No." 

I raised an eyebrow, "Why not?" 

"I can't. I get nosebleeds in this dry room." 

"I think you can do it" I smiled encouragingly. 

"No, I can't, my mom said that I have to be careful with my shoulder." 

"You're using your legs with this exercise", I pointed out with my hands raised in exasperation.

"I can't" he said more defiantly, "I might fall and twist my ankle."

"Huh?" 

Pausing to smile he sat down and put his legs to work.  At the end of the day he proudly told my co-workers that he was able to pump "5 lbs." Their laughter dripped of sarcasm and a mocking look of astonishment. I corrected him, "No, that's 50 lbs." "Oh" he said with indifference, smiling again in the glow of small victories and the irrelevance of weights and measures. 

At the end of the day, my client who was excluded by restrictive barriers from use of the exercise bike sat down with a drink and talked about his day. He turned to me and asked, "Dallas, is there anyone in your family who is handicapped?" I thought to myself, "Well, we're all handicapped in some way." He paused, then as if to wipe my sloppy sentimentality right off, continued his line of thought, "Yes, I have another cousin who is in a wheelchair..." He clearly wasn't convinced by my romanticization of "disability", and to be honest, in spite of my hidden disabilities that invisibly haunt me, I don't know if I was either. The hollow ring in my idealism came back as empty rhetoric. Thomas E. Reynolds, author of the profound and moving book, Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality, observes:

"Claiming that 'we are all disabled' is only a partial truth; it overlooks the concrete forms of physical and emotional suffering that may accompany certain impairments and also sweeps away the realities of exclusion and oppression faced by persons whose impairments preclude participation in a world designed by and for non-disabled people."

When possible I avoid defining the people I work with by their disabilities, because a definition is by nature a self-imposed limitation, and their personhood - like every other person's - is irreducible to neat and tidy categories and clearly defined labels, the lowest common denominator. That said, I am not "disabled" in the same way my clients are, as if all disability is cut from the same cloth. 

So. Who defines the limits? Nothing is impossible for God, after all. My client underlined something of defining significance for me today: we are all limited in our human creaturliness, but the power structures of our world are still defined by the fit, strong and healthy to separate those defined as other - the disfigured, powerless and useless - from full participation. 

Reynolds again; "God is free, able to bring transformative possibilities to even the most impossible of situations."  

Sovereign Lord, the source of genuine freedom and from whom nothing is impossible, we try so hard to impress others with our appearance, and by doing so exclude those who don't quite measure up, but we can't appear presentable to you, much less impress you, for you see the true shape of life as it is - just as we are - stripped of all pretense: pour into our hearts and shared space the limitlessness of your love, open up new possibilities in which all are welcomed to participate in, all differently-abled, regardless of how we define our mixed abilities.