When I forfeited the full use of my dominant hand for Lent, I really had no idea what on God’s green earth I was doing.
All I knew was that I craved to more seriously contemplate the sacrifice Jesus made for me in these six weeks leading up to Easter, and as I prayed about how I could do that in a meaningful way that would actually IMPACT my daily life this Lenten season, what God put on my heart to relinquish was something one of my selfless superheroes goes without EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
The full use of my right hand.
So, with the permission and blessing of our superhero who so beautifully does with four fingers and one bone what takes me five and two, I asked the boy we have always called Superman to restrain my right hand with a wrap so that I could spend the next six weeks viewing the world through his hands and his eyes.
I didn’t make a bunch of rules for this experience, mostly because this Type A first-born control freak really, really likes rules and regulations and boundaries and instructions, and, if I’m just being honest, I too quickly take what God would use to foster relationship and instead transform it into some kind of rulesy, rigid “religion.”
But the one rule I did make for myself was that I was not going to allow my newly restrained hand to keep me from anything I would normally do on an everyday basis.
If Superman and Superhero 4 could face these same things the world calls “handicaps” and prove them time and time again to be handy-capabilities — if they could seek solutions and not excuses and live as victors and victims — I had to at least try.
Now one week into this journey, I just didn’t realize how privileged I really was.
On my first day with a restrained hand, it took me 10 extra minutes to shower and shave (and ultimately decide that long sleeves for the next six weeks is a better solution than continuing to try to shave a left pit with a left hand and turn my shower into a blood bath), five extra minutes to dress, one-handed button and brush teeth and five extra minutes to figure out how to tie wet hair in a ponytail using mostly the fingers on my non-dominant hand. (Note to Michelle: Immediately return to your 80s roots and purchase scrunchies that are easier to maneuver and are more forgiving. Or maybe just decide that hats are your new thing.)
This did not account for the five minutes I stared at my minimal supply of makeup, deciding if I liked my eyes better or the pencil that might poke them out if I lined them with my left hand, before dismissing makeup as something people did outside of pandemics.
The mascara has gone mostly unused for the last 11 months anyway. Why start now?
By the time I entered the kitchen to make breakfast, help pack the bookbags, check the lunch boxes and load the dishwasher (without breaking the plates that were being loaded with a not-very-coordinated left hand), we were already late for morning carpool … and I looked like a 2-year-old had dressed me for preschool.
And that was all just hour 1.
Throughout my day, I realized how much I relied on my dominant hand for texting, typing, responding to five million virtual teacher emails, documenting blog thoughts that normally take one hour and, one-handed typing, took three and four.
Voice text butchered my messages to friends (thankfully not worse than the one autocorrect had once sent to my boss using the word “penis”), and I found words cost much more when I had to type them one little key at a time.
My left-handed notes in my Bible looked more like kindergarten scribbles (sorry, Jesus), and the writing theory books I normally highlight in preparation for Wednesday co-op were lined with wavy yellow lines that looked like kids who had colored in turbulence on airplanes.
With the extra time it took to execute even simple chores, I was late almost everywhere, and the things that were normally 10-minute tasks turned into entire catastrophic “events.”
(Let’s not even discuss how long it took to use a knife to cut veggies and meat I threw in a crockpot, seasoned with the only spice jar I could open and named “dinner.” The name of Jesus has never been called upon so many times in one kitchen cooking session.)
Since that first day, Superman has ever-so-sweetly invested in his hot mess mama, teaching me everything from one-handed sock matching to non-dominant-hand blanket folding. He taught me how to remove a shirt with one hand and, when I get brave enough to stop just slipping my feet into pre-tied tennis shoes, he and Superhero 4, who just mastered this skill with his OT, are going to teach me to tie a shoe.
Until then, I will apparently just enter public as the 3-year-old version of myself, no-tie shoes and all.
Meanwhile, minute by minute, day by day, God is using this experience to upend my previously cushy, comfy, very convenient kind of life.
To reveal the idols I have made of time and productivity, to show me the state of my sometimes proud, a little too independent, kind of entitled little heart.
To give me this once-in-a-lifetime lens into the loss of what most people don’t even consider a luxury … and better see and appreciate the obstacles these superheroes simply choose to view as awesome opportunities every chance they get.
All while I stand in deeper and wider awe of these special superheroes … and of the God who would trust this train wreck enough to allow me the honor and privilege of loving and learning from them.
As locals around town have asked about my bandaged hand, they have made every comment in the book.
“That is just crazy,” one onlooker said, stopping just short of finishing his thought with “crazy DUMB.”
Listen, this dumb rock totally agrees with you.
500 percent and then some.
But you know what’s crazier?
That our God, in all His grace, would send His one and only Son to die for me … in the middle of my hottest, messiest mess.
That He would pay my debt in death … all so I could experience RELATIONSHIP and real LIFE.
That this even FEELS like a sacrifice next to the sacrifice Jesus made for me.
And that these superheroes whose special needs are just superpowers in disguise don’t even act like it’s a sacrifice to do in this life with one hand what totally takes me two.
Because they have learned along the way a secret this slow student is just beginning to understand.
When they are weak, He is strong.
When what they have feels like not enough, they get to depend on a God who is MORE THAN enough.
That He is a God who moves mountains and makes miracles and, in the midst of our mess, makes all things new.
All we have to do is put THESE hands in THE hands of the man from Galilee.
“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.”
~ 2 Corinthians 12:9