By James Abernathy, TGC.
The “dignity” offered by the “you are not your body” comment turned out to be a fraud. It was based on the bogus teaching that autonomy is the source of dignity.
There I was in all my glory . . . or, more accurately, the lack thereof. I couldn’t look away from my reflection, in a train-wreck sort of way. This is God’s craftsmanship? This is God’s image?
I don’t think so.
It had been a long time since I’d seen my whole naked body. My reflection that night in 2022 was the result of a spinal cord injury from diving into a pool in 1995, when I was 15 years old. But on this night, 27 years later, the brief glimpse of my body—as my wife and a nurse rolled me in a hospital bed, prepping for a procedure—undid me. What I saw disgusted me.
Was this reflection really me? I hoped to God it wasn’t: skinny legs whittled down to skin and bone, a protruding belly lacking muscle and form, bleak arms that barely worked, uncontrollable fingers that curled up in spasms, and a head disproportionately large compared to my frail, withering body.
Surely this broken body I saw through tears of shame wasn’t me.
Offer I Couldn’t Refuse
On August 11, 1995, I stretched a double into a triple after hitting a line drive off the outfield wall more than 300 feet away.
Only a month later, my occupational therapist cheered as I used limp hands to slide children’s blocks into a hole while a chest strap kept me from face-planting on the therapy board in my lap.
A year later, I was riding the dreaded “short bus” as a junior in high school.
I was in full identity-crisis mode.
That is, until an offer I couldn’t refuse gave me an identity apart from disability. A year after my injury, a well-meaning loved one simply said, “You are not your disability. You are not your body.”