Healed
Baby Girl,
You woke up from a dream yesterday that excited you. What was it?
I have a friend who was born with Cerebral Palsy who invited me to an evening of worship and prayer last night. She has been frustrated recently because people assume she is deaf because of her struggle with speaking. They also assume because she cannot speak clearly that she is mentally slow and cannot understand.
Is she?
No. She is not deaf and she is fully capable of understanding. When I am with her, I see how people look at her and how they speak to her and knowing how she feels about it, I feel her frustration.
What do you do?
What do you mean?
When people are making those assumptions, what do you do?
I tend to jump in to tell people about her differences.
Why?
They bend over, talk louder, slower and usually use a falsetto, higher pitch voice like they are talking to a baby. They often ask her an overly simplistic question like, "I bet you love Jesus, don't you?!" and when she says yes, they move on and start talking to me or to someone around me.
What did you tell the woman who said that to her last night?
I said, "She absolutely loves Jesus. In fact, she has written the lesson and will be teaching our Celebrate Recovery group in two weeks. She is well-educated and well-spoken. She just struggles with expressing herself verbally because she was born with Cerebral Palsy."
The woman said, "Oh, well, good for you," essentially patting her on her head like I told her a five-year-old was an amazing artist and kept moving.
Why does this bother you?
Because I know it bothers her. She constantly feels misunderstood.
You have another friend who is autistic and is treated differently as a result. You have a similar frustration when you are with her. Tell Me about that.
She is one of the most incredibly intelligent, inquisitive, compassionate, loving, and humble people I know. She is getting another degree in March. She is very well educated, and while she can appear somewhat awkward in social settings, she understands Your heart towards people in a way I have very rarely seen in anyone in my lifetime. I have gotten to know her extremely well over the past four months over text and email primarily.
When we are in person there are generally many people around me and I've been stuck mentally and emotionally unsure how to best approach the subject of introductions and including her in conversations.
Because of how her brain works, it takes her a moment to mentally process all that is being said and formulate an appropriate response based on the person, social expectations and context. By the time she is prepared with an answer, people have assumed she will not be answering and move on from the conversation.
I imagine that has to be incredibly frustrating and I have probably unknowingly done that to a LOT of people over the years. In my ignorance and impatience, I often fill in the blanks and finish people's thoughts for them to keep the conversation going.
So what you're saying is that your frustration with people is hypocritical?
Hypocritical = behaving in a way that suggests one has higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case
This is the first time I have ever said this to You… but that word doesn't seem to fit.
You are judging other people's reactions to your two friends as being unkind from a place of ignorance. Tell Me about the conversation you had with that second friend and the assumption she made about you.
She said, "I already know, to an extent, that you do not like talking to me in person. At least that seems to be indicated."
When I got that text I thought, “That's not it at all.” It's not that I don't like talking to her in person; it's that I don't know HOW to talk to her in person when other people are around us. I am afraid I will make her feel uncomfortable if I put her on the spot with someone, so then I avoid pulling her into the conversations.
So in your attempt to make social situations more comfortable and help her feel understood, you are behaving in a way that makes her feel like even you don't enjoy talking to her in person. What did Colleen used to tell you about your approach to her?
She said her brain didn't work as quickly as mine so she asked if I would be able to pause and give her time to respond rather than answering for her when people spoke to her.
Did you honor that?
Rarely.
Why?
Because whether it was one of her doctors, a cashier or someone else, if she was taking a while to formulate an answer, they would just move on. I would jump in to answer because her answer was important and I didn't want it to be missed.
So, you did to her exactly what they were doing to her: you were impatiently answering for her and then moving on.
I was trying to help.
Maybe you should quit your day job and become a human sales rep?
You could follow your misunderstood friends around in their everyday lives telling people about all their wonderful qualities and bidding others to see what you see in your friends while they stand by feeling honored by your noble attempts to shield them from their daily reality of being misunderstood and devalued by the people around them.
I think I am getting Your point.
Your desire to help the people around you understand your misunderstood friends is noble but your approach is ineffective. Did you successfully get that woman last night to see your friend differently by telling her that she would be teaching a lesson at your recovery meeting?
No, she still gave her the "Well, isn't that nice" pat on the head.
Tell Me about that dream.
Well, one day over a year ago, when I was praying over my friend with CP I felt to pray, "LORD, loose her tongue." I wondered if that was You saying that You wanted to heal her and help her to speak freely. There were a series of things that happened leading me to believe that it was possible that You not only wanted to but that You would. We both dove headfirst into reading scripture about healing and formed the conviction that You had already healed her, even if we had not seen it yet in the flesh.
Twice in the gospels, it says that everyone who touched Jesus was healed. There are examples of Jesus healing people who were blind and deaf from birth so we believed it was possible. Scripture says it is faith that heals people and in Isaiah, it says that by His stripes we ARE, not will be, healed.
In faith, his friend has reached out and touched You and we BOTH believe that in the Spirit, she is ALREADY healed.
That caused issues at church.
Yes. She claims to be healed of CP and people think that I am hurting her by encouraging her to believe that.
Are you hurting her?
I don't think so. Because she believes You have healed her but she just hasn't seen it in her flesh yet, she has become bold in her willingness to speak publicly. She traveled to speak at a college event, she prayed over dinner Thursday night at church, and she is teaching a lesson at our recovery meeting in a week using both her text reader and her natural voice with the words on a PowerPoint behind her.
She says that she is going to use the voice God has given her while she trusts that someday she will speak more clearly when she sees her healing.
What if she never speaks more clearly?
She has such strong faith in Your ability to heal her that I believe even if she dies of old age having never seen it in the natural, she will die truly believing You healed her all these years ago.
Do you believe she is healed?
Yes. For my testimony, You said "even if someone is born with what the world calls a defect or a deformity, that is not an example of Your unfaithfulness."If Your Word says that everyone who touched Jesus was healed by faith, and in faith she is reaching out and touching You, I do believe she is healed, even if she hasn't seen it in the natural. The farther I move into a life of faith, the less I rely on what my natural eyes see to determine what I believe. I have experienced too much with You to believe anything less than that You are true to your Word whether I understand it with my natural mind or not.
What was your dream?
My friend was talking on the phone with it on speaker phone. I don't remember hearing her talk in my dream but, when she got off the phone, I excitedly said, "Did you see what just happened?! The person on the phone didn't ask you what you said once!! They understood every word you said!" She was excited and said something about it and her voice was as clear and normal as anyone else's.
She was startled by her own voice and, just like Peter who was walking on water, she started to doubt and quickly her words trailed off and became difficult to understand again. I said, "DON'T DOUBT, FRIEND! YOU WERE SPEAKING!" She hung her head in defeat and the dream ended.
Little One, keep believing in My Faithfulness and My desire for healing and wholeness.
In wholeheartedly loving and accepting your friends for who they are, you are being a healing agent. When you try to force the people around you to understand your misunderstood friends, it is like putting a dirty bandage on an open wound. It makes you feel better to not see their pain, but it doesn't take their pain from them.
Allow them to answer the questions that naturally arise from the obvious differences, knowing that many times people will be ignorantly dismissive, impatient and unknowingly hurtful. Your attempts to correct that ignorance only compounds the problem.
Love your friends as they are. Seek to understand them and show up in that understanding but don't answer for them. Sit in your discomfort and allow your friends the space to answer for themselves. In doing so, you will do more good than harm. When you answer for them, you are no better than the people you judge for ignorantly treating them as unable to answer for themselves.
Back to bed.
LOVE,
Daddy
Hebrews 11:1