How I came to love myself

I was born without arms, and I’ve spent my entire life living in a world meant for hands without having the benefit of them. Everything I learned to do in my formative years was an uphill battle of trial and error. I had to learn to do everyday tasks — eating, writing, dressing, opening doors, typing on a computer, driving a car — by watching how others accomplished those tasks with their hands and then figuring out how to adapt those actions for my toes. While there were several victories throughout these formative years, it was also marked by consistent failure.

As I tried my best to adapt to my surroundings, something odd started to happen in my heart. I would watch people write or eat and I couldn’t help but notice how easily they used their hands in comparison to how I used my clunky feet. Everyone else had the one thing I wanted. It was the one thing I would never have. Arms.

All this personal strife weighed heavily on me but so did the pressure from the outside. Being different than nearly every other person on the planet made me a target for the stares and rude comments of those whom I met on a daily basis. A simple trip to the grocery store guaranteed people would stare at me. In part, I knew people were genuinely curious about what they were seeing unfold in front of them, but there was also a heaviness that came with being watched everywhere I went.

Then there were the comments from other people. The unprompted, unexpected, unkind comments: Gross, freak, weirdo, cripple, circus act. Even now those words linger in the back of my mind, and as much as they hurt now, those words landed even harder when I was a kid.

I felt like I was under siege from all sides. My hurt and insecurity were in fresh supply from both my inner man and from the outside world. 

Yet in this time of darkness and despair, God showed me His love for me as revealed in the Gospel. I saw His pursuit of my wayward life. On a cold March morning in 1999, I confessed and abided in Jesus as my Lord, and from that moment things began to change in my heart and my life. My language of self-loathing morphed into a recognition of the fearfully and wonderfully wrought life that God had made. My cold heart toward others began to thaw with an innate love that I had never experienced before. Things in my life were beginning to change, but they were changing very slowly.

The speed of the change is what surprised me more than anything. I expected to pray a prayer and then — poof! — everything about my life would be perfect. There would be no more doubt, no more insecurity, and no more trials. I thought Jesus was going to make everything better and do that instantly.

So much of our lives has become quick and easy, and that is not all good. We have spent a generation being able to get what we want or need in the shortest amount of time possible.

That ease is something we have grown used to. That ease has produced a term called “microwave mentality,” which in essence means that if something cannot be done in five minutes or less, it is not worth doing.

Taken on its own merits, many of us would say we don’t ascribe to the microwave mentality, but our behavior may say something different. Few of us enjoy the opportunity to exercise patience, and even fewer of us appreciate God answering a prayer with, “Wait.” We have been programmed to get things in our lives quickly and conveniently, which can be detrimental when it comes to our spiritual lives.

The Father does not work at the pace of our man-made culture. He does not count time like we count days. As Peter reminds us in 2 Peter 3:8, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.” The Father does not conform His work to our broken perspective of time. He is not in a hurry; we are.

We must be faithful to take a step back from our busy lives to consider what we have in our loving Father. We need to give ourselves the space to soak in the fact that our Creator and Savior love us dearly. We must carve out pockets in the day to stop and commune with the eternal God beyond the space of our Sundays.

The psalmist gives us this poignant reminder in Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations; I will be exalted in the earth!”

When we are still, we see God for who He is. Our busyness crowds out our perception of His grace, movement, and purpose that He is producing in our lives. If we would take a few minutes to simply stop and be still, we could grasp the character of God expressed toward us and His sovereign work in us.

If we still our hearts before God and soak in His character, He is faithful to help us see and endure the long race that lays before us.