Reason #649: Forced Lingering

Why it's cool to be in a wheelchair reason # 649: Forced Lingering

I helped clean the church today and I spent my hour cleaning fingerprints off the doors. Well, eight doors anyway. I work soooo sloooowly, it takes me a while just to reposition to be at the right angle in my wheelchair just to wipe off a tiny smudge, but as I'm positioning, I see more smudges, so I slowly reposition again...and again...and...

I'm pretty sure that those eight doors have never been so clean (from the doorknobs down).

So I'm not fast, but I'm very thorough.

Jiffy Lube

There are many assumptions people make when they see me in my wheelchair. People think I’m “poor” or “homeless” or “jobless” or “brain damaged” or any combination. If they talk to me, they talk slowly using small words and look surprised when I answer them.

Yes, it's annoying.

These assumptions are common and there isn’t much I can do about them. I suppose I could paint the back of my wheelchair to read “I have a job, an address, a bank account, and I’m not brain damaged.” – but then I’m pretty sure no one would believe the part about not being brain damaged.

I took my car to get its registration done this week at a Jiffy Lube. The wait was a whole hour and their store wasn’t wheelchair accessible. I mean, I guess most people would say that it was because they had a ramp – but it was almost a 90 degree angle for two feet and then the landing was super narrow. I didn’t dare try so I went to a nearby store to shop around and wait.

The area was really ghetto and seedy and I saw six homeless people walking to and from different surrounding areas as I came back to the Jiffy Lube. I was having trouble pushing through the parking lot that joined the two stores and I was getting super self conscious because I just KNEW the people driving on the nearby main road were judging me. I started to get so mad at…well, everything.

I was mad that people were judging me based on what I looked like – a struggling little wheelchair girl, probably brain damaged and poor. I was mad at the parking lot, why was it shaped this way? I was mad at me – why did I have to be in a wheelchair?

But then I thought about disabled people in other countries. So many don’t even have wheelchairs. They couldn’t push through a seedy parking lot even if they wanted to.

It occurred to me that I could go anywhere I wanted with my wheelchair - anywhere! My wheelchair isn’t my disability – and neither are my lifeless legs – what seems to disable me most is my pride.

And so as I pushed through the parking lot, I discovered the best remedy for pride: gratitude! As I pushed all the way back to the Jiffy Lube and as I endured the many sideways glances from the patrons there, I listed all the things I could think of that I was grateful for.

...and I felt so much better.

So here’s a quick list before bed:

1. pumpkin pancakes
2. Christmas trees
3. my husband
4. mechanical pencils
5. snow flurries
6. the game Scrabble
7. hot chocolate
8. down pillows
9. street dancers
10. policemen

…what’s yours?

Falling

I'm considering going into seminary teaching and am currently student teaching - which is so much harder than speaking. It takes so much more time and energy. I taught last Tuesday and had to quick rush to the Ogden Golf and Country Club to speak for the Weber Chamber's Women in Business luncheon. After that I had to rush home and bake cookies to send to my Mia Maids for their activity (I couldn't be there and wanted to be supportive) before I left again to speak at Weber High School's volleyball banquet. As I was baking cookies, I had the mixer going with the butter and sugar and was getting out the oatmeal, which was on the bottom shelf of the cupboard and as I was reaching just as far as I could, I fell! Totally and completely out of my wheelchair.

I was so tired and frustrated and sick and I started to cry. I cried like a baby on the tile floor. I was thinking the whole time - I'm a motivational speaker! I'm a motivational speaker! There's got to be a lesson here! But I couldn't think of one. So I stopped crying. I sat myself cross-legged, and continued to measure the ingredients for the cookies.

When Whit came home, he found me on the floor, surrounded by various measuring cups of flour, oatmeal, cinnamon, and baking powder.

I guess sometimes we fall just because we fall and not really for any reason. So, when we're done crying, we have to right ourselves and keep cooking.