Holy Week began with a thud — or, more precisely, a sharp pain that stopped me in my tracks. I had injured my hip and SI joint while moving furniture I should never have moved alone. It was a busy week, and I told myself there wasn’t time to wait for help. As soon as I finished, I knew something was wrong. My body had reached its limit, and I had ignored every signal it tried to send.
The next morning, as I prepared to teach, I walked to my car, sat in the driver’s seat — and couldn’t move. I couldn’t shut the door or get back out. For half an hour, I sat there, trying to will my body to cooperate. It refused. Eventually, I called a friend and said, “You can laugh — because if we don’t laugh, I’ll fall apart.” She came to my rescue, and later another friend insisted I go to the emergency room, where I received medication and care to ease the pain and begin healing — or so I thought.
I spent the weekend resting, convinced I was getting better. By Wednesday of Holy Week, I was back in the hospital. A friend sat with me through the tests, reassuring me about the services I felt I was failing to lead. When the results came back, it was clear: I was in over my head. My friend looked at me and said, “I will lead worship this week.”
Having a father with back issues has made me keenly aware of the ableist language and theology that persist in the church. I’ve watched him struggle, and I’ve seen how often the church says “all are welcome” while remaining inaccessible to those who use walkers or wheelchairs. That same ableism appears on college campuses too — in old dorms without elevators, in chapel steps without ramps, in well-meaning speakers who say, “Please stand,” without realizing the exclusion that command can carry.
As a chaplain, I’ve worked to unlearn ableist habits of thought and speech, but my injury revealed how much I still had to learn. Suddenly, I had to adjust schedules, adapt teaching methods, find furniture that didn’t make things worse, learn to say “no” more often, and ration my energy each day.
Through that season, I began to understand – just barely – what daily life can be like for people living with chronic pain or disability. I hadn’t known the number of decisions required to plan a single day or how exhausting it can be simply to move through an able-bodied world. I hadn’t felt the sting of being met with pity instead of recognition.
The experience taught me that inclusion is about more than changing our language; it’s about how we respond to one another. It’s about noticing when someone is left out, or when a space quietly excludes, and then doing the work to repair it.
I now think more intentionally about my words, the spaces I help shape, and the small daily ways my ministry can resist ableism — learning, unlearning, and beginning again.
