On Your Knees

I’m a little behind in posting. Lots of stuff going on here like me getting stung six times by a swarm of yellow jackets who had built a home beneath my deck and didn’t like me walking across it. A whole new look at trolls under bridges.

Then last Monday, we had a dead raccoon in our yard I had to figure out what to do with. You want no details about that, believe me.

So, I haven’t known what to write except a couple ideas that require more research than I have time for at the moment. Then this article popped up in my Facebook newsfeed Ableism: What to Know About This Form of Discrimination and I had flashbacks from something mentioned in the article.

I grew up in a pretty religious household. We were deeply involved in putting on retreats intended to convert people. I worked with the youth, being one myself. The whole thing was about peers. Peer ministries.

Most of the time, these things were fun. I met many interesting people. Unfortunately, I ended up on my knees too often. Way too often. Not because I needed conversion, but because people around me decided I needed to be healed.

A group of people would often gather around me and practically muscle me to my knees while they laid hands on me and prayed that my eyesight be restored. Humiliating. Embarrassing. Creepy.

I hated it. For one thing, my eyesight was never restored. I was then told I didn’t have enough faith. Why was my faith in question? Wouldn’t it be the faith of those who were praying that should count? Nope. It was always my fault.

At the time, people didn’t talk about bigotry against disabled people. We only had the Rehabilitation Act in our favor, which guaranteed an equal education. (Yeah, right, like that’s worked.)

So, I didn’t know that these people were being less than concerned. I tolerated their behavior because I thought they had good intentions.

They did not. Their message was loud and clear, at least it is to me now. YOU AREN’T GOOD ENOUGH AS YOU ARE.

I wasn’t acceptable as a blind woman. I had to be healed to full sightedness before I was an equal doing the praying, not being prayed for. This is ableism at its worst—letting the person with a disability know through seeming acts of kindness, that they aren’t acceptable as they are.

No wonder I became more and more withdrawn and shy the older I got. I was being told constantly that I was less than. I didn’t have enough faith to be healed; therefore, I didn’t really fit in the world of the faithful, the chosen, or whatever.

No wonder I have left the church.

As I grew older, I was told I wasn’t good enough to go into my chosen profession of teaching. OK, I was good enough with ability and academically; however, I wasn’t good enough as a whole because I couldn’t see well. Ableism in the hiring office. I went on job interviews where the interviewer spent the
entire time telling me why I wouldn’t want the job.

The article sited above is wrong in one aspect. I don’t know where they got their unemployment statistics, and they are much, much worse. Unemployment among blind people is 75%, not 12.5%.

And yes, medical help has not always been forthcoming in a proper manner because medical personnel treat me like a nuisance first and a human being second.

Do you look at a person with a disability and consider that they aren’t equal to you? Ask your heart in all seriousness if this is your perspective. This, ableism, is as bad as racism and thinking your race is superior to another. Just because you can walk or hear or see does not make you superior. It makes you
different.

Please cease pushing us to our knees because you think you need to pray us into changing for what you consider the better. Please stop pushing us to our knees to beg for accommodations to function in the world. Please stop pushing us to our knees to beg for work, for access, for a seat at the table of life.

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