The Lord is a Great Travel Partner

I’ve done a lot of traveling over the last couple months, and one thing I have to say about the Lord is He is an AWESOME travel partner. When I listen to the Spirit, I am led in ways my natural intellect just can't fathom. The Lord helps me (when I'm obedient!) know when to keep my mouth shut (a lot!), what question to ask, how to wait so I can come up with the best response. And how to observe others in the meetings so I better pinpoint the buzzwords and "majority opinion" that would make my viewpoints more acceptable to them. The Lord has helped me do a good job (and get paid) during my travels, and to not only be courteous but enjoyable to those around me which has resulted in many travel perks.

Sure, normal people don't have to rehearse things in their head like some of us Aspies do. I could be upset about that, or I could praise God that He came into my life and is now leading me and guiding me.

I have another medium-length trip coming up. After that, I will hopefully get to post the blog notes I’ve written during my travels. I've got blog posts written in my journal on such great topics as face recognition, nonverbal communication, sound overload, and other goodies I observed while traveling. Stay tuned!

Why God Wants You To Take Care Of Yourself

I'm currently watching Joyce Meyer's Battlefield of the Mind. At one point she goes on a slight tangent about taking care of ourselves -and why we DON'T that really hit home with me:

You only get one body… You can’t go somewhere and order another one…You destroy this one, you’re out!

God wants to work through you; and if you destroy your health and you destroy your body, then He can’t do anything through you either. So you’re cheating yourself, you’re cheating Him, you’re cheating the people around you that God wants to use you to bless.

I think a lot of people don’t take good care of themselves b/c they got a bad attitude toward themselves they don’t think they’re worthy of doing the things they need to do to take care of themselves properly.

Some of you think that all you’re good for is work, work, work, work, all the time you grew up in an atmosphere where the only time people were happy with you was when you were working and producing. And the devil’s got you convinced that to enjoy your life is carnal and a sin. READ John 10:10

WOW! Jesus came that we might have life and that more abundantly!!!

But, especially for those of us with social impairment, we have found that people only "liked" us when we were working hard to please them or make them look good or doing something for them. And so we run ourselves into the ground trying to prove our worth for other PEOPLE, instead of guarding ourselves, and protecting ourselves, so we have enough energy to be used by HIM.

If you are interested in watching her video or reading it's accompanying book, here's the links:

A Disabled God

Let me start off by saying I do not agree with many of the late Nancy Eiesland's views, however, I do think that the part that I've bolded and highlighted below bears consideration.

Nancy Eiesland Is Dead at 44; Wrote of The Disabled God


By DOUGLAS MARTIN
March 21, 2009


By the time the theologian and sociologist Nancy Eiesland was 13 years old, she had had 11 operations for the congenital bone defect in her hips and realized pain was her lot in life. So why did she say she hoped that when she went to heaven she would still be disabled?

Nancy Eiesland specialized in the theology of disability.

The reason, which seems clear enough to many disabled people, was that her identity and character were formed by the mental, physical and societal challenges of her disability. She felt that without her disability, she would “be absolutely unknown to myself and perhaps to God.”

By the time of her death at 44 on March 10, Ms. Eiesland had come to believe that God was in fact disabled, a view she articulated in her influential 1994 book, “The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability.” She pointed to the scene described in Luke 24:36-39 in which the risen Jesus invites his disciples to touch his wounds.

“In presenting his impaired body to his startled friends, the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God,” she wrote. God remains a God the disabled can identify with, she argued — he is not cured and made whole; his injury is part of him, neither a divine punishment nor an opportunity for healing. [emphasis mine]


Ms. Eiesland (pronounced EES-lund), who was an associate professor at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta, died not of her congenital bone condition, nor of the spinal scoliosis that necessitated still more surgery in 2002, but of a possibly genetic lung cancer, said her husband, Terry.

Ms. Eiesland’s insights added a religious angle to a new consciousness among the disabled that emerged in the 1960s in the fight for access to public facilities later guaranteed by the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. The movement progressed into cultural realms as disabled poets, writers and dramatists embraced disability as both cause and identity.

Pointing out that anyone can become disabled at any time, the disabled called those without disabilities “the temporarily able-bodied.” They ventured into humor, calling nondisabled people bowling pins because they were easy prey for wheelchairs.


Ms. Eiesland’s contribution was to articulate a coherent theology of disability. Deborah Beth Creamer, in her book “Disability and Christian Theology” (2009), called Ms. Eiesland’s work the “most powerful discussion of God to arise from disability studies.”

In an e-mail message, Rebecca S. Chopp, the president of Colgate University, who is known for her feminist theological interpretations, characterized Ms. Eiesland as “a, if not the, leader of disability studies and Christianity and disability studies in religion.”

In four books and scores of articles, Ms. Eiesland’s scholarship also included a much-cited book on the dynamics of churches in an Atlanta suburb. Groups like the World Council of Churches asked her to speak on disability.

For 10 years, she consulted with the United Nations, helping develop its Convention on the Rights and Dignity of Persons with Disabilities, which was enacted last year. The convention describes the disabled as “subjects” with rights, rather than “objects” of charity. It explicitly endorses spiritual rights for the disabled.

Nancy Lynn Arnold was born in Cando, N.D., and grew up on a farm nearby. Operations to remedy her birth defect began when she was a toddler. Her parents also took her to faith healers. She wrote that she was a poster child for the March of Dimes, a charity that some advocates for the disabled criticize for its appeals to pity.

After she was fitted with a full-leg brace at age 7, her father told her: “You’re going to need to get a job that keeps you off your feet. You’ll never be a checkout clerk.”

In high school, she won a national contest with an essay on the inaccessibility of rural courthouses in North Dakota. She organized a letter-writing campaign on the issue.

She enrolled at the University of North Dakota, where she campaigned for ramps into the library and accessible parking spots. She dropped out after her beloved older sister was killed in an automobile accident.

Nancy and her stricken family joined the Assemblies of God and moved to Springfield, Mo., where the church has its headquarters. She enrolled in Central Bible College, which trained ministers, and graduated as valedictorian in 1986. She became an Assemblies of God minister, but gradually drifted away from the denomination.

She became a student at Candler, where she studied theology under Ms. Chopp. Ms. Chopp remembered Ms. Eiesland’s complaining that for all Christianity’s professed concern for the poor and oppressed, the disabled were ignored.

“I looked at her and said, ‘That is your work,’ ” Ms. Chopp said.

After a stunned silence, Ms. Eiesland accepted the challenge as fodder for a master’s thesis, which evolved into “The Disabled God.” She earned her master’s degree in 1991 and her Ph.D. in 1995, both from Emory.

Ms. Eiesland is survived by her husband; their daughter, Marie; her parents, Dean and Carol Arnold; two brothers, Neal and Victor Arnold; and two sisters, Katherine Arnold and Jocelyn Gracza.

As she strove to define new religious symbols, Ms. Eiesland’s metaphors were startlingly incisive. She envisioned God puttering about in a “puff” wheelchair, the kind quadriplegics drive with their breath.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 22, 2009, on page A29 of the New York edition

Books By Ms Eiesland:

The Disabled God

A Particular Place: Urban Restructuring and Religious Ecology in a Southern Exurb

The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability

Human Disability and the Service of God