By the time I was able to sit, I had been diagnosed with hearing loss, and by my late twenties, I had been diagnosed with Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), which has led to my becoming legally blind. As a result, I have known disability and adversity my entire life. Life with disability has been a major source of pain and frustration, but it has also been a source of faith and growth.
As a child I experienced rejection and bullying from my peers, and plenty of adults in my life. I was continually barraged with messages of being less than worthy, which I eventually began to believe and internalize into how I saw myself, which then led to struggles with depression and anxiety.
Over time I came to withdraw from the world out of fear and pain, and I eventually began to convince myself that it was the world rejecting me. I came to hate the world because of the pain I experienced, but even more I hated God. I had grown up in a Christian family and my parents taught me about how God had created me, and I came to believe that if God really existed then He was a capricious and cruel God because that meant he had made me in order that I would suffer. In the end I found myself desperately seeking ways to numb the pain of depression and anxiety, turning to alcohol and prescription drug abuse.
During my late teens, I even struggled with thoughts of suicide and almost killed myself because of the pain. What broke me out of this period of my life was the experience of losing a friend to suicide when I was in my early twenties. This friend had everything I had ever wanted, and yet because of his own mental health issues he was blind to the good in his own life. When I realized that someone could be so blinded by their internal pain, then perhaps I could also be blinded to what was good in my own life.
My life did not magically get easier. I still experienced struggles as I tried to move forward with my life. While I no longer rejected the world or God, I was unwilling to trust anyone, or even God for that matter. In the end God used my developing blindness to force me to confront this distrust head on. It is hard to be fully self-sufficient as a blind person. I was forced to accept the goodwill of others as I tried to simply get around my community.
When I was first diagnosed with RP, I had almost completed my undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering. This shocking news that I was going blind on top of being hearing-impaired led to a year of emotional struggles before I was able to pull myself back together again and complete my degree. After three years of being unable to secure a job as an engineer, I finally accepted that no one wanted the liability of a blind engineer and had to rethink what I was going to do with my life.
My church at this time was an amazing source of support for me. I credit the people of that church for much of my healing, as it was through those people that I finally began to experience genuine unconditional love and acceptance in my life. I was able to begin learning to trust God more fully. Through these experiences and others, I finally fully surrendered my life to Jesus in October 2017.
Since the day of my surrender, Jesus has worked wonders in my heart and life. He has helped me to recognize that everything I have experienced was to serve His good purpose (Romans 8:28). Where there was pain and bitterness, I now sense His love and joy (Galatians 5:22-23). I believe that He has brought me here for a very specific reason. I am convinced that His purpose is to use me, and my past, in the lives of others as I serve Him and them as a therapist.
