A couple weeks ago I went to the grocery store and at the checkout a mentally and physically handicapped (challenged) young man who asked me if I needed help getting my groceries to the car. I wasn't really paying attention, didn't understand him and asked him to repeat himself. Halfway through him repeating the request it dawned on me that he was handicapped and the oddest thing happened...I got really nervous. I sputtered out something like "no thanks" grabbed my stuff and headed out to the car. Since then I can't stop thinking about why I got nervous? I've presented or talked to large audiences, to very senior levels of management, to presidents of companies, even to a hot Swedish girl at my work (okay, I was really nervous the first time I approached Sofia so that doesn't count). Why in the hell would I get nervous talking to a mentally and physically handicapped teenager? I never have before.
This question has hounded me for a couple weeks and here are a couple theorems:
1. Perhaps I was just caught off guard. I am, after all, fairly absent-minded and just wasn't prepared for that exchange. Of course, that's too simple an explanation.
2. Maybe it's like my issue with racism. When I moved to the US from Columbia, I honest-to-goodness did not know that people judged each other based on skin color. Call in naive but that's what happens when you grow up in the middle of the jungle. I didn't know about racism, didn't have the term "racism" in my vocabulary and certainly didn't practice racism. Oddly enough over the next few years, I learned racism from both whites and blacks (the "in" term during those years). The more I learned, the more I was puzzled because my young mind could not comprehend how someones skin color could in any way have anything to do with anything. I kept saying to myself "skin color is only a thin covering on your body, so what's that got to do with what is inside the person?" Unfortunately, the more I learned the more difficult it became for me to feel free around "black" people. I found myself censoring everything that I said to a black person to make sure it didn't have racial overtones and the more I did that the more awkward I became and which led people to believe that I was racist. (Even in this paragraph, I felt bad saying "black" because that is not the right PC terminology.) So sad because in my heart, I love or hate all people equally regardless of race, education, sex, height, etc. People are people...black people are people, white people are people, yellow people are people. "People" is the common denominator. However, I am prejudiced against mean, hateful, arrogant, hurtful, demeaning, dishonest and pompous people...all internal, not external traits.
So, how this relates to the handicapped (challenged) boy is that I might have been rattled because society has put so much emphasis on not seeing handicapped (challenged) people as being different that I over correct my reaction to make sure I was not violating social norms.
The truth is that while this might be part of the reason I got nervous, I still didn't feel like it was the whole reason.
A couple night ago, something happened that made me fully understand my reaction.
Every night I go by Oliver and Siena's beds and I check on them to make sure they have covers or are tucked in or are breathing (yes, I am paranoid) and while by their bedsides, I say a little prayer of thanks for the amazing gifts that we have been given. Well, the other night, I was laying in bed after my little ritual thinking about how fortunate I am with the amazing people in my life...Sofia, Siena and Oliver...when the thought crossed my mind "would you still love them as much if they were disfigured, or mentally challenged or not as smart as they are?" I thought about it for a long time and came to the conclusion that yes, I would love them as much. The reason is because when I think of Sofia or Siena or Oliver, I actually don't think about what they look like on the outside or of all the individual little things that make them amazing but somehow I'm able to look inside and what I see is pure goodness and beauty and that makes me fall in love with them over and over again.
So I'm laying there basking in these good feelings and the thought crossed my mind "do you see yourself the same way?" After much deliberation, I realized that I just cannot look past all my defects, character flaws, physical flaws, painful memories, mistakes made, etc. to see the goodness and beauty that resides inside. In my heart, I know there is lots of goodness inside but my mind puts up such a stink about my handicaps that it completely overrides my heart. I realized that every time I've tried to convince someone that I was a good at my job or in my abilities or in my character, it's only been myself trying to convince myself that in spite of all my handicaps, I am a good person inside. (Of course, this is completely linked to the hundreds of hours of preaching that I was exposed to growing up where I was told that we are all sinful, hideous creatures that can only be redeemed by grace, but that is for another blog entry altogether.)
Finally, I realized that I got nervous around the young man at the checkout is because I saw in the flesh a representation of the way I view myself inside. He reminded me of all the ways that I am handicapped inside and it rattled me. I'll bet that inside that person in front of me was a pure, beautiful, amazing being but what I actually saw, in that split second, was a personification of the way that I often view myself.
So, what's my point? I am learning to get comfortable with the beauty and goodness that resides inside knowing that it's greater than all my handicaps, mistakes, painful memories, etc. And I think if we all take the time to do the same, we will find ourselves so much more at peace with ourselves that we just might start taking the time to see each other for who we are on the inside, not for all the things we are or are not on the outside. We focus on the expression "love your neighbor as yourself" as a reminder to love each other but the hidden gem in that expression is that if we don't love ourselves, then it sure doesn't bode well for the neighbor!
