To Camp and Back

Last year I helped in the nursery, and while we had a few children with disabilities in that room, my interaction was sporadic and limited. Meanwhile, two months of living with a family with a disabled child made me completely comfortable interacting with those who can't speak, but I hadn't realized quite how much it had changed me until this year.

Camp is full of people with disabilities - Down's syndrome, Rett's syndrome, ADD, cerebral palsy, spinal bifida, muscular dystrophy, paralysis (paraplegics, quadriplegics), PDD, blindess, deafness, etc. - pretty much everything. The typical volunteer experience consists of working one-on-one with somebody with a disability and I would say the average person is maybe in a wheelchair but fully interactive. There are a few kids there, however, who would be considered severely disabled, meaning non-responsive usually or always, non-communicative, usually moaning or drooling or something. I thought I could handle anybody in a wheelchair, but I'd probably not be up to someone with that severe of a disability. Practically, how can you love and hug somebody who just lays there and does nothing? Well, my mind was changed this year.

The family I was with requested me primarily to be friends with their other two daughters, age 13 and 11, and to oversee the nursery care of the 2 year old boy. However, the nurse who usually takes care of Sarah was only able to be there about 15% of the activity time, and so I ended up taking charge of her while the parents were in their Bible studies and support group meetings. Overall, I had her with me the majority of the time.

So far every year at camp I've been involved with the children's ministry - making crafts, playing wild games, breaking open pinatas, etc., but this year Sarah and I went to the teen room which was a different and great experience. We sang, had competitions, went to the "coffee house," listened to Joni and Joel give testimonies, and other such things. The bonfire, talent show, pool party, and other activities were all great, but what really impacted me was the "take a step back" that I was forced to do and what I noticed.

My mom shared the best summary, I think, that she learned in one of the seminars she went to. Someone once said, "We are all born broken. We live by mending. The grace of God is the glue." Those with disabilities are often overlooked and unloved and viewed as abormal in a normal world, when in fact the truth is that the world is abnormal and their condition is normal in an abnormal world. We live on a fallen planet and we are fallen people. We are all broken - physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually - some of us are just able to hide it better than others. These people can't hide the fact that they are born broken - without a limb, with an extra chromosone, with legs or arms that don't work right - whatever. But we are no different. To see these kids worshipping God....Eric with Down's banging on his tamborine in perfect rhythm, trying to trust God to take care of him during his upcoming surgery; David with CP in a wheelchair doing sign language for Chad, who wants to know what's going on but needs an interpreter; Kim and Cindy who use language boards with a machine that speaks what they type singing "Amazing Grace" through their mechanical "voices"; Sarah and Laura who have brothers with disabilities and try their best to act like it doesn't bother them; Mike and Chris who "sing" by making noise; Laura who laughs during every song, especially when Mike kneels down by her feet and wiggles her animals for her; all of them singing our song for the week - "Why should I give up when Your plans are full of love? Why should I be afraid when You put the stars in place? In this world you will have trouble, but I have overcome the world!" - every one of them struggling to cope with the life that God has given them. They try to forgive those who make fun of them. They pray and worship in their own way. And there I sat with Sarah, who moaned, thrashed her head, drooled, who had two seizures, turning blue and shaking violently, who doesn't talk, doesn't smile, doesn't laugh, maybe doesn't even understand anything I said to her... I sat there and wiped up the drool, ran for the nurse, held her hand, sang for her, scratched her back, chatted quietly to her, called her "sweetheart," rubbed her hair, and somehow fell in love, realizing that it's just as easy to love those who are visibly broken as it is to love those of us who cover up our brokenness.

Thomas Merton said this: "If we are too anxious to find absolute perfection in created things we cease to look for perfection where alone it can be found: in God. The secret of the imperfection of all things, of their inconstancy, their fragility, their falling into nothingness, is that they are only a shadowy expression of the one Being from Whom they receive their being. If they were absolutely perfect and changeless in themselves, they would fail in their vocation, which is to give glory to God by their contingency...As long as we are on earth our vocation is precisely to be imperfect, incomplete, insufficient in ourselves, changing, hapless, destitute, and weak, hastening toward the grave. But the power of God and His eternity and His peace and His completeness and His glory must somehow find their way into our lives, secretly, while we are here, in order that we may be found in Him eternally as He has meant us to be."

Camp makes me slow down and listen to people with tiny lungs and small voices because they have things to say. It makes me do dumb and stupid things in order to make a girl with PDD feel "cool." It makes me talk loud and laugh a lot and dance and act goofy in order to include people. Because for one week these kids belong. They get clapped for and cheered for and told that they are special and worth something and for most of them, it's probably the only time all year anybody thinks they are worth talking to, let alone slows down enough to listen to them.

After six days, I got in the car and started looking ahead to what I have going on this week and next. It is all so far away at camp. There nothing matters but people and I think that's probably how things ought to be all the time.

— Posted by Naomi