The inequalities that bind

US-Mexico border, Agua Prieta, Mexico/Douglas, Arizona, 2003.  My photo.

This week we’ve seen children confined to cages, heard their screams as they’re ripped from their parents and witnessed our president bend to public and political pressure to amend his callous “zero tolerance policy” at the border. Yet, thousands of migrant children remain separated from their families, and I keep wondering if we’ve learned anything from all this. The government has wanted us to see a chasm between those families at the border and our own. In place of what could be a common humanity, a desperate dare-we-say American-like doggedness to seek a better life for their persecuted families, Trump and his allies have offered fraud, smuggling, and criminal behavior as self-inflicted explanations for migrant families’ plight. So perhaps what we’ve been faced with this week is the hearty evidence that not all families, let alone all childhoods, are created equal in America…

But isn’t this something we already knew?

We know that being needy makes you vulnerable in America, but whereas teenagers marching for “black lives matter” are vilified for lives lost, the white teenage activists from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High are praised for their activism.  It seems what we’re encountering is something even more pernicious than the inequalities themselves, rather the realization that not even all need is created equal.  Since the election, I have been desperately sharing my own story to keep the lives of families with children with disabilities, alongside the lives of so many other marginalized families, in view; however, it only recently occurred to me that by telling our story, I may be rendering further invisible families like the ones being turned away at our borders.

You see, while my family’s need for life-sustaining Medicaid for our medically fragile child elicits incredible sympathy, that’s largely because my daughter’s disability is often viewed as an underserved tragedy that has befallen a white, educated, hard-working, affluent, heterosexual couple. But while so many other families on Medicaid (especially families of color), equally needy to mine, are belittled for their poverty, chastised or blamed for the presumed neglect, fraud, or abuse that put them into the system in the first place, a common response to my family’s vulnerability is not just pity, but often, congratulation. We are heralded for our love and our sacrifice for our daughter. Meanwhile, the very nurses employed through Medicaid who tend to our daughter, monitoring her heart rate, seizures, and breathing overnight, are immigrants like those being turned away at the border. They work in unsteady employment for low wages, rarely receive healthcare, and they have either already left their children behind in their countries of origin in order to provide for them, or they leave their children in the care of others, so that my family can sleep at night.

These migrant families are part of what scholars have called the global chains of kinship and reproduction, stratified care work that elevates some families on the backs of others. If you think about it, certain groups of immigrants, children who are “rescued” through inter-country adoption or born through international surrogacy, are uplifted, generously welcomed into our borders and our citizenship, while the families they came from, foster mothers, surrogates, nannies, and other care workers, languish in the shadows, families already torn apart yet silently, incrementally, with little fanfare. Thus, the separation of families at the border is but a visible demonstration of the invisible borders we often perilously draw around our own family lives.

The myth of the modern family and this tireless invocation of the need for “family values” suggests that each family stands alone. Yet, in articulating my family’s story of need I’ve become aware of the ways we are uncomfortably and unevenly indebted to one another. I’d like to believe that with the outcry on social media and the political pressure brought by the public upon the administration’s immigration policies, a new kind of family values is emerging that does not deny, yet makes visible these inequalities and the families who have endured them in the pursuit of wellbeing and freedom.

But the challenge comes in both maintaining our common humanity and acknowledging the injustices that bind and separate us from one another. We cannot afford to look away, for it will cost us all our humanity. But we also cannot afford to go on living our fictional, solitary lives while asylum is being criminalized, need is being stigmatized, racialized, and vilified, and children with families are being abused and institutionalized.  My family, likely your family, needs these persecuted families, whether we choose to admit it or not.  If we cannot break the global chains of inequality, perhaps we can at least qualify and dignify the emotional labor that families like mine benefit from everyday.  We can refuse to participate in the politics that slander the need of some to elevate and fulfill the needs of others. We can turn away from pity and charity and toward justice, mercy, and grace.

And we can demand that America must do better by all of its families, especially those who have so painfully paid the price of vulnerability, so that others can thrive.

What I learned in 2017

Looking back, 2017 on the blog will be remembered as the year I broke my silence, the year my writing became resistance.  Only a year prior, I’d begun sharing Lucia’s story, but this year, that personal side of politics became something that as a mother, a pastor, and a professor who studies disability, I just couldn’t remain quiet about.

Speaking at an event at Princeton University.  Photo by Evan Schneider.

But as much as there is to share about what I’ve learned this year, there’s thanks in order to you, dear readers, for hanging in with me throughout all the feelings and frustrations and for your own listening ears, your caring, and your advocacy.  Whether you’re a new reader, or you’ve been around for awhile, thank you for sharing our family’s struggle.  I certainly hope you’ll let me know which posts continue to resonate with you, what you like best and what you like least about the blog, what you’ve learned in 2017 and what you’re looking forward to in 2018.

Love these two.  My photo.

Here is a look back in hopes that these lessons learned from the year prior will carry us forward in making this world more just, more healthy, more good, and more compassionate:

1.  Resistance is not just about marching and advocating, but writing, educating, and bridging the divides between us.

2.  It’s easy to underestimate people with disabilities, even for parents; thank God the joy God has given Lucia defies all odds! (And she is still loving school!)

3.  Unfortunately, people with disabilities cannot take healthcare for granted, but thank goodness for your advocacy this year!

4.  I’ve loved using the Enneagram as a tool to understand myself and those around me better.

5.  I’m so grateful for the differences God has made in all of us.

6.  “My Baby Wasn’t Born Healthy and Her Life Still Matters.”

7.  We must to learn to see differently.

8.  Christian calls for unity must not undermine difference.

9.  I fight because we are a Medicaid family and healthcare is about human dignity.

10.  There’s nothing like a little silence.

11.  And I will not give up in 2018!

(And a look back at What I Learned in 2016 if you’re so inclined…)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why we can’t support this tax bill

I have something to admit.

On Saturday morning, after weeks of seeing proposed changes to this tax bill and fighting against the disastrous impacts it could have on people with disabilities, people who are sick, and people who are poor, I got lost in the numbers.  You see, as I started to comb through the final outline of the bill, I started to wonder whether it was really all that bad.  It does seem to be providing more generous tax cuts to many more people than initially forecasted.  It’s possible cutting taxes for corporations could create economic growth.  And they did remove some of the truly egregious aspects–taxes on graduate student tuition, while expanding medical expense deduction thresholds.

But then I scanned the text for the lectionary the following morning—Isaiah 61:1-4, which reads:

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners; 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour,
and the day of vengeance of our God;
to comfort all who mourn; 
to provide for those who mourn in Zion—
to give them a garland instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
the planting of the Lord, to display his glory. 
They shall build up the ancient ruins,
they shall raise up the former devastations;
they shall repair the ruined cities,
the devastations of many generations.

And I was reminded that our God is a God of justice (by Isaiah, because he says so, in verse 8).

Church under construction in Yunnan, China.  Photo by Evan Schneider.

So tax bills, especially for us Christians, aren’t a matter of crunching the numbers but of seeing the bigger picture, and we simply cannot support policies that cut taxes for the wealthiest among us while ignoring the plight of the poor.  Numbers aren’t just numbers.  They represent people.  And people who are struggling should be prioritized over tax cuts to those who are wealthy.

But that’s not what our government wants us to think.  

Our government wants us to believe that by helping the rich, we can all help ourselves, that not everybody needs or deserves health insurance, that Puerto Ricans aren’t entitled to the benefits of other citizens, and that poor children don’t deserve healthcare as much as rich ones.

But just stop for a moment and think about why you pay taxes and who you want those taxes to serve?  Our family moved to a high-tax district but one that we knew would support Lucia’s special needs at school in spite of the cost, and I’m so thankful that those who live around us are willing to pay more so children can get a good education.  Our family also benefits from services through the Medicaid program that is funded by federal and state tax dollars to support people with disabilities, people who are poor, and people who are old, especially those who have substantial medical need for daily living.  Many elderly people who are sick and disabled benefit from the substantial Medicare program that threatens to be cut to support this bill.

So here we are again, cutting benefits for people who really need them, so rich people and corporations can get a tax break.  For a moment, I accepted that there could be some breaks for all because that’s what the government is saying, but that’s not only fuzzy math, it’s fuzzy morals.  Our taxes can’t pay for the things people really need and give huge breaks to the wealthy, and what’s more, they shouldn’t bother with making the rich richer, ever, because it’s wrong.  The Old Testament prophets and Jesus, whose birth we celebrate in this season, make it clear that Christians are called to liberate those who are oppressed and to bring good news.  This tax bill is not good news and we cannot ignore our responsibility, as unpopular as it may be, to speak otherwise.  We cannot turn mourning into gladness unless justice is justice for all.

Wake up, American Christians, it’s almost Christmas, and we have work to do.

Thanks-giving

I can’t tell you how often these days my husband and I are brimming with joy as parents.

Every time our daughter smiles and giggles and babbles her sweet sounds, life–nearly four years of it together now–just doesn’t get any better.  Indeed, when I look at photos like this, Lucia’s face pink and scarred from laying her cheeks in stomach acid night after night when she couldn’t tolerate her feed, I think just how far we’ve come.

…and smiling through it all!

But a lot of things have also stayed the same.

Lucia still needs a tube to feed during the day and overnight, she’s still prone to seizures, she’s having trouble breathing, and she’s scheduled for major surgery in 2018.  Our family equilibrium isn’t typical, and it doesn’t come from a respite from medical complications, technological procedures, or nursing interventions.  Rather, it is those very things and an incredibly spirited three-year old that often makes life so much fuller, grander, and more beautiful than we ever could have imagined.  Ever since we got private duty nursing through Medicaid when Lucia was about a year and half old, not only her cheeks, but her lungs, her digestion, her joints, her nutrition, and her mood have all shown such growth.

In this season of thanks, we have so much to be thankful for.  

And yet, I’d be lying if I told you that 2017 wasn’t anything but an incredibly trying year.  In the midst of all of Lucia’s persistent health challenges, we’ve also faced major threats to her healthcare and provisions for people with disabilities all year long.  Living life with this constant threat hurts more than the uncertainty we face with Lucia, because it’s complete manufactured and manmade.

And  I can’t help but think about how the spirit of this Senate tax bill seems so out of sorts with this week’s cherished American tradition.  They call it Thanksgiving, because it was one of the Pilgrims’ first corporate acts of giving thanks for the good harvest.  And while the stories we tell our children about the miraculous sharing of a feast between the white colonialists and the Indians may not be entirely accurate, they reflect an idealized notion that thanks must be freely given and cannot be readily given unless there is peace, justice, and provision.

So this week, the prospect of giving thanks when so many are facing the looming possibility of losing their healthcare, people who are poor and hungry will suffer because of the bill, and people with disabilities will lose benefits and supports because of it, seems downright trite and inhumane.  I wonder if when we go to celebrate this week, we might practice yet another storied, American tradition–that of patriotic protest, dissent, and advocacy and urge those we love and those around our tables to give as we give thanks.

You give to my family every time you make a phone call to your senator and tell them that people with disabilities shouldn’t suffer so that this country can save money.  You give to my family when you pay your taxes and portions of those taxes go to programs like Medicaid that support nursing care, medical coverage, and medical equipment for kids like Lucia who are deemed too costly by private providers.  And you give to families, especially those who find themselves in need this season, when you make clear that we cannot celebrate tax cuts when the poor get poorer and the hungry go hungrier.

Miss Lucia laughing in her stander.

If this truly is not just the season of giving thanks but also of giving, then let us gather together to make not just my cup, but every cup of every parent in this country overflow with gladness.  None of our journeys are typical, but that’s what makes this country so great.  Let’s not let a few hard-hearted people in Washington make it otherwise, especially on Thanksgiving.

And from the bottom of my heart, for all your phone calls, prayers, and support,

thank you.

 

Why healthcare is about human dignity

It’s a new bill (this Graham-Cassidy repeal bill), but the same, old story.

Curb healthcare to the poorest, the sickest, the oldest, the neediest, the youngest, and the disabled to cut costs.  But without healthcare, without Medicaid,  not only will costs soar, most importantly, real people will suffer.  I think of my own family–without private duty nursing provided by Medicaid, especially those overnights–we’ll surely be in the emergency room with our medically fragile child far more often.  If Medicaid is removed and we’re forced to rely on our private insurance, even if we run through our savings, we’ll still seek healthcare for our daughter, and we’ll continue to struggle to care for her at home (which is why Medicaid exists), because that’s what families do.

Simply put, the welfare of our nation is hardly improved by an assault on the most vulnerable.  And if this is the American way, our country will soon be defined not by its dreams and its opportunities, but by its exclusion of those in need.

Yesterday, my daughter and I struggled to get around in a crowded place–I had to get out to push shopping carts out of the handicap parking space (good thing I could even do so) and I struggled to push her wheelchair through a sea of tight twists and turns.  Few people moved their chairs, and as we endured looks of disgust, glances of pity, and the fundamental unwelcome of barriers to entry, movement, and accommodation, my eyes filled with tears.  As I sat down next to Lucia, I took her face in my hands and kissed her. I whispered in her ear, “They don’t know how special you are, but I do, and I’m so glad.”

More happy whispers between Lucia and her dad.

As I wrote about recently, no matter how hard they try, no politician nor party nor hospital nor inhospitality can ever take away our family’s joy.  But as I look around the already trying, precarious nature of Lucia’s fragile life, I sure wonder why they try so hard–why they target families for whom society is already so unkind, for whom another year of life is hardly certain, families who know all too well pain and fear and heartache and who now face even more fear and uncertainty–financial, medical, and even physical.

You, politicians, cannot take our joy, but you are playing hard and fast with our very lives.  As you go to vote this week, may we as the people continue to remind you that your task is actually to protect the weak, guard the sick, provide for the poor, rather than trade them for your own political gain. You are not doing right by my daughter and my family and something much more basic than our joy–her human dignity–is what’s at stake.

What will you do to make this world more inclusive?  To give my daughter more opportunities and grant our family more dreams?  Or will you continue to deny her the basic healthcare she needs to live her life?  Will you not even give her that human dignity?

Take your cue from families like ours.  With everything we’ve been through, we never give up on one another.  Don’t you dare give up on us.

A Medicaid Story

It was an ordinary, sunny, Saturday morning when I crept downstairs into Lucia’s room to dismiss the night nurse.  “It was a beautiful night,” one of Lucia’s nurses, Viktoriya, purred in her thick, Ukrainian accent, flashing a wide smile, gesturing toward Lucia, still sound asleep in her bed.

I smiled, too, and sighed in relief.

Lucia hadn’t been having “beautiful nights” as of late: for almost a year now, she’d been screaming and crying out in pain in the wee hours of the morning and as she was just waking up.  The crying was so extreme that the nurses and even we, her parents, couldn’t comfort her.  Finally, we’d figured out that she was experiencing muscle spasms and cramps because especially in her sleep, she can’t move purposefully, so a low dose of Valium had recently been providing some relief.

But with Viktoriya (who mind you was a doctor in Ukraine), Lucia often had “beautiful nights,” nights that Viktoriya never took credit for, but rather rejoiced in innocently, as one would a gift.  And yet, we knew there was something special about Viktoriya, about the meticulousness of the care she gave, the extra knowledge she possessed about the medications Lucia was on and their interactions, even the way she played with Lucia, offering her therapy when she’d wake up early in the mornings.

As we neared the front door and we talked about the pulse oxygen machine–the pediatrician had asked to get the alarm rates to make sure Medicaid would approve its rental for the coming year–Viktoriya detailed with precision the attention she paid to Lucia’s heart rate.  “You see, when her heart rate starts to climb, I can see she’s getting uncomfortable, so I do not wait for her to cry,” she said, “I turn her.”  And she motioned.  “I turn her from side to side all night and she never wake up,” she said cheerfully.  “She sleep perfectly just like that.”

Even as I write these lines, I am in awe.

In awe of the devotion and care my daughter receives as not only she, but my husband and I all sleep through the night, all the while a nurse keeping watch, anticipating and aiding Lucia to find safety and comfort and rest.  It’s just no small thing that in a world where life is so difficult for Lucia, where at night she faces seizures and breathing and pain, a nurse not only keeps watch for the big things, but guards her sleep, attentive to her every desire, a desire even to move.

As Viktoriya left that morning, I scribbled a post on Facebook, letting my little world know what she’d done and been doing for us, and why Medicaid has been such a boon, a comfort, a watchman for our Lucia and for our lives.

Cuddles with my girl.

I did this before I knew Medicaid was about to come under threat yet again.  I did this before I knew I’d begin losing sleep again not because of Lucia’s medical conditions but because of the care that may not be there in years, months, or weeks.

How I feel about Medicaid is how I feel about Viktoryia and so many of the nurses who have come into our lives–they are a gift.  We can’t possibly pay for the healthcare that Lucia would need to live and that in itself is frightening and humbling.  Yet the state and the federal government give us the support we need to live our lives as a thriving, joyful family, not just of 3, but of 9.

That’s about how many nurses, plus two parents, it currently takes to provide Lucia the round-the-clock care she needs to make it through the day.  Or maybe it’s more like 16–that’s the addition of the five specialists that Lucia sees on a regular basis, her medical care that Medicaid, too, helps support.  Or maybe it’s more like 20–that’s her therapists and her teacher at school, a special needs school where Medicaid helps supply equipment, her Medicaid-supplied nurse makes it possible to attend, and Lucia gets great education and therapy.

I could go on.  I know the numbers are much higher still–it’s you, millions of people who pay taxes and the government, that help support families like ours, that make it possible for Viktoriya to play watchman at night so Lucia doesn’t seize uncontrollably, so she doesn’t wake up crying in pain, and so her parents don’t have to hold vigil night after night as they struggle to work and to care for her.  It turns out, I’m not just in awe of Viktoriya, but the abundance we have received through Medicaid, which is in no small part thanks to all of you.

But today, I am also weary.  Weary of the proposed cuts to Medicaid in this newest bill in the Senate, and weary of the plan to make savings from cutting people from healthcare who need it most.

Please join me in bombarding Congress with stories of gratefulness about children like Lucia and the gift of Medicaid by calling your Senators over the next few days.  Please share our story and Viktoriya’s story.  Please tell them that Medicaid is about people and long nights and “beautiful nights” and families like ours.  Please tell them what Medicaid has done for us.  And please tell them how thankful and in awe we are of the people who have provided for our daughter.

Psalm 130

¹ Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord. 
²   Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
   to the voice of my supplications! 

³ If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,
   Lord, who could stand? 
⁴ But there is forgiveness with you,
   so that you may be revered. 

⁵ I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
   and in his word I hope; 
⁶ my soul waits for the Lord
   more than those who watch for the morning,
   more than those who watch for the morning. 

⁷ O Israel, hope in the Lord!
   For with the Lord there is steadfast love,
   and with him is great power to redeem. 
⁸ It is he who will redeem Israel
   from all its iniquities.

Why Christian calls for unity in the wake of Charlottesville may be both racist and theologically unsound

Whether it was the clergy in full vestments, arms linked facing down gun-wielding white supremacists or the torch-bearers chanting anti-semitic threats, it is abundantly clear that theology is not neutral in 21st century America.  And yet, in the wake of Charlottesville, many Christians have responded with opaque calls to unity and appeals to people of faith to “tear down the racial and cultural barriers that divide us.”

At first I thought such statements offended me merely as a cultural anthropologist.

You see, while it is powerful and poignant to condemn discrimination and racism, it seems a problematically ethnocentric, if not a positively white-privileged perspective to blatantly condemn “the racial and cultural barriers that divide us.”

Whose culture, whose race is dividing us?  Perhaps it seems like mere semantics, but when Christians posit that culture and race are problems that breed division, that they are the very evils that need to be stamped out, we reveal that our calls to unity run dangerously close to the rhetoric of those who rallied in Charlottesville last weekend (even if that was not the intent).

Even though race is a social construct, we do see color and it has socially and politically relevant power and effects that especially white Americans must grapple with rather than ignore.  The creative cultures that have emerged from communities of struggle and resistance among people of color in America are not barriers that divide us but rich resources to teach us about what America can and should become.

Not only do we have to choose our words carefully from an anthropological point of view, but we have to do so because the ministry and the integrity of Jesus Christ is at stake here.  Countless Christians have boldly quoted Galatians 3:28 in the face of racial division: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ.”  But Paul uses this passage to argue that all are liberated from the law and therefore, we do not need to become like one another to be in Christ and receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit; rather, in Christ, we can live as one with those who are radically different from us.

Indeed, we often forget that Jesus came into a culturally pluralistic world and honored the cultural practices in communities and peoples who were different from him, while preaching a gospel that sought to unify.  There are certainly passages in the Bible that also justify slavery, genocide, and division, but when we look at the whole of God’s ministry arose history and in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, I believe we do see that redemptive reconciliation does not damn culture, difference, and the sacredness of varied human lives, but the ways in which we human beings often instrumentalize these differences as division.

There’s nothing theologically unsound about unity, but unity that obliterates, objectifies, and undermines difference falls short of the vision God has for the fullness of humanity in Jesus Christ.  Unity that maintains inequitable power structures is false and faithless.  And unity that fails to listen and value the struggles of people of color in America is not only anthropologically unsound but theologically dismissive.

If you’re a Christian, especially a white Christian like me, seeking healing, reconciliation, and unity, I recommend you read the PCUSA’s statement on “Facing Racism,” adopted in 1999 by the General Assembly as a policy document to guide the pursuit of racial justice.  Or read this exegetical lecture on Acts, where Princeton Seminary Professor Eric Baretto powerfully describes how differences are gifts from God.  You might check out my post on “Embracing Difference as a Spiritual Discipline” and consider the challenge in a theology where we recognize and affirm that although we belong to God, God does not belong to us.  And check out Christina Cleveland’s “Syllabus for White People to Educate Themselves.”

Of course, there’s so much more to read and do.  But at the very least, let’s check ourselves from parading around platitudes about unity at the expense of diversity, especially in the name of Christ.  Christians have got to stand for more than that.  We owe it to one another and especially to Jesus.

 

Why they can’t take our joy

A few weeks ago a former student emailed to update me on her summer.  “How’ve you been?”  she asked spiritedly.  “I’ve spent the summer distracted by healthcare,” was the confessional, somber, and bitter beginning of my reply.

Indeed, in the last few months, alongside the very real threat of losing the ACA, Lucia’s Medicaid benefits, and healthcare for millions of Americans, there’s also been the more subtle feeling of frustration that this fight has also taken its toll on my academic and pastoral passions, reduced me to someone who wasn’t producing or creating so much as maintaining vigilance, waiting on others’ words and others’ actions–merely responding.

And I hate being in response mode.

I, like so many Americans, truly despise the discipline of waiting on anybody or anything–I’m even kind of lousy at waiting on God.

When there’ve been great gushes of joy as there are in everyday life alongside Lucia, I felt resentful that they still felt tinged by a foreboding, ominous fear.  How can you mess around with joy when you feel such aching fear and trembling, I’d cringe.  And then I’d smart because I’d be angry that 13 men in a private room were even threatening to take my joy from me.  How dare they do that?

This summer has been filled with ups and downs, victory and solace punctuated by deep uncertainty and angst—so many bills, so many promises, a little hope, very little peace.  So even the things that normally come naturally to me–forging ahead with bravery and decision–have been called into question, fretted and flummoxed by the helplessness and fatigue I’ve felt.  I’ve found that it’s easy to be brave when it’s just you, but it’s much harder with someone else depending on you.  Or when you’re made to feel that bravery is foolish or may count for little in the end.

Speaking at the RunRAllWomen Rally on Friday night.  Photo by Evan Schneider.

But what has made all the difference in the last few weeks, through the wise spiritual counsel of trusted friends, is to discover that bravery is possible even in the face of tremendous fear and uncertainty, because joy is resilient, defiant, and knows no boundaries.  This is the message I shared last night about our life with Lucia at a rally for equitable healthcare–that joy may be an unlikely home for advocacy but it’s effective because it’s genuine and human and resounding.  That being human means sharing vulnerability and fragility but it can also mean finding joy in the most unlikely of circumstances and working together for change.

In these last couple of weeks, even before the Republicans voted against the repeal of the ACA, even before so many of you stood up for the needs of those on Medicaid (THANK YOU!!!), I realized that even if they take away Lucia’s healthcare and they deem her life of little value, our family will still have our joy in each other and in God, and we will rise in the face of all of it.  We will go on and create and make beauty from ashes because that’s what we do, and nobody can take that transformative joy that we’ve found in Lucia, one another, and in God away from us.  It doesn’t make any of it okay, of course–the assault on the healthcare of the most vulnerable in this country.  It almost makes it worse that in a world filled with real life challenges of health and life and death for kids like Lucia, it could be something manmade that’s the death of them.  But it reminds me that I’m not waiting on our government’s bills or decrees or approval to live my life–I never was.  Instead, I’m happily and graciously bound to a family and to a God and to people who love us and whose love is real and here and stable.

Of course, the one problem is that however lovely these words, they are tinged with privilege.  Many people won’t be able to lean on family or something as seemingly ethereal like creativity, but practically translated as amazing university employment.  People will be so hurt and scarred by revoking healthcare and Medicaid and those the most hurt won’t be me or my family but those whose dignity has not just recently come under assault but rather has long been denied by the classist, sexist, ableist, racist undertones of America’s unrelenting “greatness.”

But I do think it’s something–it’s certainly not nothing–to feel joy amidst fear and live to tell about it.  Indeed, this is what I find defying and powerful about so many saints of the church, champions for justice, and seemingly ordinary people who have gone before me.  Please, please don’t hear me wrong.  I’m not giving up, but rather recalibrating our fight.  I’m suggesting that we bravely, boldly live our joy-soaked lives even, perhaps especially in the face of such an assault.  Taking pleasure and joy in our humble lives becomes an act of resistance in itself, a luxury that many struggle to find.

Our family celebrating at my sister’s installation service.  

And this is precisely why we must not measure ourselves by human standards because we see human standards faltering in our midst everyday.  I’m reminded these days that they can’t take our joy because our lives never belonged to them or even to us but to God.  And same thing with that joy.  It’s roots are deeper, wider, grander than many of these legislators have ever encountered.  May they feel its fury, its vibrance, its resilience and may they be led beyond fear, as I have, to seek justice.

 

Why we need to learn to see differently

It’s the stunning yet simple basis of all anthropological knowledge, really–this truism that we’re not all the same, we’re different.

Take my daughter, for instance.  Whereas most people get up out of bed every morning and walk, she giggles or cries until we come get her.  Whereas most kids her age start to brush their own teeth, put their own backpack on, eat breakfast through their mouth and head to school, we do the brushing, Lucia’s backpack hangs on her wheelchair, and she eats her meals through a feeding tube that’s attached to her stomach (she eats a lot of her food through the same tube overnight, which is actually pretty efficient!).

But even anthropologists who believe in the wisdom of learning from others are only human.  Because we, like everyone, only have one primary perspective, one pair of eyes and ears through which we experience the world, we still tend to succumb to ethnocentrism–the belief that not only are people who aren’t like us weird and different, they’re less than.

Lucia gets that a lot.

People presume that because she rides through life in a wheelchair or because she gets her feeds through a tube and perhaps most especially because her brain is different that all this comparatively limited functionality that she has amounts to a pretty pitiful and dull, if not brutal life.  They ask me if she will ever do certain things like walk or talk or eat, if she will “be like that” forever, and when I tell them she likely won’t walk or talk or eat in typical ways, they frown and shake their head or grimace.

But what if I told you that some of the very things that make you skeptical about her quality of life, like that wheelchair or that feeding tube, are the things that bring her mobility, joy, and comfort?  Lucia eats through a feeding tube because her body can’t process food orally without it heading into her lungs, which caused numerous scary and painful bouts of pneumonia until we got that tube.  Lucia rides in a wheelchair because that enables her to feel the wind in her hair, to head outside and to school, when otherwise she might be in the house all day.

What if I told you that a lot of the limits placed on Lucia don’t come from her differences but from the way we perceive her differences and from the supports and benefits that we deny her especially because she’s different from us?  When I invite my students to view the world anthropologically, through the lens of others, especially people with disabilities, it kind of blows their minds.  The fact that we able-bodied people are part of the problem for people with disabilities never really occurred to them.  It never occurred to them that subtly viewing someone else as less than and placing limits on their lives, compelling them to be someone they’re not, live in a society that’s only made for the able-bodied, and then wonder why they’re not thriving is discrimination, not liberation.  

This ethnocentric way of viewing people with disabilities as less than is called ableism and it’s not just endemic in American society and everyday interactions across differences, it’s front and center in this debate on healthcare.  Maybe you didn’t see it, because your ableism kept you from the truth, but denying life-giving services to people who are different on the basis of their differences–i.e. cutting Medicaid for people for who literally need it to live their daily lives–yeah, that’s discrimination.  Or reserving healthcare only for those whose bodies are “normal,” who don’t have preexisting conditions, or denying hospital services to those who are inevitably going to have to use the hospital because they’re made different and they’re living in a world that’s downright inhospitable to their differences–that’s textbook ableism.

But we all saw Donald Trump begin his campaign by mocking a reporter with disabilities.  We have all seen headlines that compare that same President who mocked someone with disabilities to people with mental illness.  We’ve heard about people with disabilities staging protests in the offices of Senators and being dragged out of their wheelchairs by security on Capitol Hill.

Open your eyes.

It’s not people with disabilities who need to make more concessions to the society that already demeans their existence, down to their very lives and whether they’re worth living–it’s you and me.  We all need to change our way of seeing our fellow human beings, our fellow Americans, as pitiful and less than and deficient.  What is deficient are our healthcare proposals that purport to deny people coverage based on innate differences.  What is deficient is our rhetoric that excludes and codifies people who we don’t want to accept or don’t understand.  What is deficient is a country that seeks to find its greatness at the expense of its very citizens.

Lucia a home wearing a cap during her portable seizure study this past week.  My photo.

Please don’t shake your head or frown or grimace at my daughter’s quality of life.  Instead, please pick up the phone and call your Senator and shake your fist at them for failing to grant the necessary supports that make her different life possible.  Become an unlikely advocate and listen to the concerns of those who are different from you not just because they’re different but because we’re all human.

After all, the root of anthropology is anthropos, human being.  Providing good healthcare comes down to the recognition that we are all human beings but that we’ve constructed an able-bodied world that’s only fit for some.

So don’t cut my daughter’s Medicaid because she’s different.  Affirm the value of her life by keeping it.  Let’s keep the ACA and its supports for all kinds of people.  Let’s keep healthcare that’s working for people like you and me and people like my daughter.

 

Virtual Coffee Date

If we were sitting together this morning having coffee I would tell you that life has lent its typical roller coaster as of late (seizure for Lucia- she’s doing great now, though; running over a deer carcass with my car for me-it still smells; no bus for Lucia’s first day back to summer school on Monday- a friend came to the rescue; nurse pulled out Lucia’s tube on Thursday morning-ugh; and we lost power on Thursday night during the storm-got it back early Friday morning)… and yet, as you see, with God’s help, we’re finding adventure in adversity and somehow holding it together!

Summer has been so full of unexpected joys–luxurious and productive staycation for us in June, thrilling aquatherapy sessions for Lucia covered by insurance and rides to and fro covered by Medicaid–even as it’s packed with challenges, too–I sent my book manuscript off to the editor in early June, have been teaching summer school at Princeton since July, and start a new job at the seminary in the fall.  All this while the healthcare wars rage on Capitol Hill and we worry as Lucia’s care seems to hang in the balance.

If I seem distracted, unable to focus even in the midst of a sentence, it’s because I am.

But I’m trying to trust that (with the exception of maybe the healthcare battle, deer carcass, and tube being pulled out) there’s a real abundance, blessing, and excess in the way my cup is brimming over, inviting me to embrace this season in its chaotic fullness and to testify to what God’s doing with a life and a heart fittingly overflowing with joy.

 

If this isn’t joy, I don’t know what is!? Lucia with her father.  My photo.

So that’s what I’m trying to do (more on how that later), not living a life in response to what others are doing but a life that responds to what God is clearly doing, in a big way in my life, my family’s life, and in this world.

Still, if we were talking this morning, I’d look you in the eye and thank you but urge you to keep making those phone calls on behalf of people who are on Medicaid, who need assurance that health care will be there, not just for the healthy but for the sick, the poor, and the needy.  I’ve put some links below that I’ve found helpful and important in wading through the excess of information out there.  I did a podcast on Medicaid that I hope you’ll share with family and friends who want to understand its benefits and even as I still feel that families with people with disabilities face such an uphill battle in terms of understanding and coverage, I am thankful for all the support and hopeful that concerned citizens are making their voices heard.

I was reading Margaret Mead for one of my seminary courses yesterday: I sat there for like two full hours just reading and devouring–it was incredible, and this quote of hers that has been on my mind for weeks sprung to my attention.  I leave it with you in hopes that you may believe that we can change the world, that God is with us even when we forget it, and that joy is abundant and ample and just as human as fear and defeat!

Some links for you:

• Medicaid Facts that Matter
• A video from the Atlantic about why Medicaid is so critical to helping people with disabilities lead independent lives
• My podcast interview on Medicaid and raising a child with disabilities
• Be encouraged: The Healthcare Resistance is Working!
• And the latest is that they’re planning to vote on one of these bills on Tuesday; let’s be ready with our phone calls to demand better for people with disabilities and others in need!