If I can be honest, in the back of my mind, I didn’t think it could possibly be that hard.
Every day of his life, Superman rocks out a surgically modified hand and accomplishes everything with four fingers that takes me five.
I’d seen him cook and clean and write and hang with a hand missing a thumb and an arm missing a radius, and he, in all his superpowers, made life with only one fully functional hand look just so easy.
So when I gave up the full use of my dominant hand for Lent, both to better contemplate the sacrifices Christ made for me leading up to Easter and also better view the world through the eyes of a superhero who blows me away with his handy-capabilities every single day, I assumed my life wouldn’t look a whole lot different.
Except that I was terribly, absolutely, flat-out, all kinds of wrong.
I got my first hint on Ash Wednesday.
Within minutes, I found tasks that normally took seconds were taking minutes, tens of minutes and more.
My left hand wasn’t practiced at brushing and blow drying, and my wrapped hand with no opposability couldn’t hold a styling utensil to save its life.
I dropped my blow dryer on my toes no less than five times, couldn’t figure out how to wrap a ponytail holder without the right-hand finger muscles with memory that could wrap them in my sleep and I quickly decided that no left hand of mine was coming anywhere near these eyes with an eye pencil or a mascara wand unless I desired to be permanently blind.
Lotion application included using my weak left hand to squeeze some vanilla bean onto my right arm and then snaking my arms together in a kind of Michael Jackson dance move to get the lotion on the elbow of the right arm, and brushing and flossing was more of a left-handed, the-brush-at-least-got-inside-the-mouth kind of cleaning than an exact oral hygiene science.
I nicked my legs left-handed shaving nearly every day the first week, and by the end of week six, I still hadn’t figured out an effective way to use a left hand to lather deodorant on a left pit to spare the nostrils of the brave and gracious bystanders around me.
I gave up on zippered and buttoned clothes before I even started, and I essentially vowed to live in yoga pants and sweatshirts until Jesus rose again.
By the end of Day One, I’d already waved the white hygiene flag and relented to the land of make-up-less, loose-ponytail-holder-tied, wet-hair-only existence for the next six weeks of my life (minus the few days Superhero 2 took pity on me and attempted makeup that would have made an 80s prom queen proud).
And that was all before I entered the kitchen.
Cracking eggs with one hand essentially turned into an exercise of Hulk smashing them between my left fingers (and then spending the next 10 minutes sorting out all the broken shells), and using a knife with no opposable thumb became a danger to anyone standing within 10 feet.
It took me twice as long to dress, twice as long to cook and twice as long to leave the house for any scheduled activity every day.
After a week in an Ace wrap and a few more days in Super-Spouse wrapped medical tape, my hand was cramping, my fingers were starting to sport sores and my now cooked-in, sweated-in bandage smelled like some mixture of onions, garlic and death wafting through the air wherever I went.
That’s when Superhero 2 came up with the brilliant idea for a new restraint.
A tube sock.
For the last five weeks of Lent, I donned a folded over tube sock on my right hand, which moved the curious questions of onlookers from, “Oh sweet girl, what happened to your hand?” to more simple and straight forward strange-girl stares that let me know one-handed tube socks were actually not in style this year.
This, of course, led to God’s gift of humility.
If dressing in a wet ponytail and sweatshirt every day of your life isn’t enough to humble a girl who finally gets to exit her house and enter the outside world, doing it with a tube sock on your right hand is. (This is also why I purchased and repeatedly donned THIS.)
Because in the period of Lent, I ran two half marathons, served as the greeter at church five of six weeks, attended or conducted some of my first social gatherings in an entire year and met the brand new neighbors who moved into the house that the previous neighbors had lived in for 17 years — all with (mostly) no makeup, no buttoned or zippered clothes and sporting a tube sock on my right hand.
Mental note to you: If you want to make a fantastic first impression, meet the people you will likely live next to until you die or move into a nursing home while sporting your son’s Gold Toe. And then explain nothing.
(This beautiful couple still to this day has not asked why I donned a tube sock on my hand for the first few weeks of our new neighborship. Because they are gracious. And amazing. And probably wishing they had chosen more normal neighbors for their forever home. But I could tell that the woman at Walmart who helped me clean up the bottle of sparkling cider my slippery socked hand dropped and smashed all over the floor, however, really, really wanted to.)
It turns out that holding onto anything without the assistance of an opposable thumb is actually trickier than it looks.
After spilling hot coffee all over myself on the drive to school, I started crossing over my body with my left hand to pick it up out of the cup holder on my drive. (This, however, was a small sacrifice next to the husband who GAVE UP COFFEE for Lent. I would literally rather give up my right hand.)
I dropped my phone on average five to six times per day. (Thank you, cheap glass screen protector from Amazon, for saving the it’s-now-cracked-in-four-different-places-instead-of-my-screen-itself day.)
And I only burned myself a few times after dropping the contents of oven-hot trays using mitts that were intended for people with access to their thumbs.
(Vin Liesel, let’s pretend like I tried lifting my squat bar for six weeks before giving up and counting morning runs to the coffee stand for recovery bagels and doughnuts as my daily exercise. 😊)
All of these, however, felt like minor inconveniences compared to the colossally daunting tasks of writing and TYPING.
Let’s just be honest.
This girl has a lot of words.
As a writer and blogger and extrovert whose only talent is stringing together more sentences than necessary to communicate all the things at all the times, I depend on both hands to efficiently and effectively text, type, blog and send emails to Bible studies and virtual teachers and soccer teams and co-ops that run somewhere near the length of the Affordable Healthcare Act.
I’ve tried to quit, I really have, but I’m a word addict, and I just can’t not use all the words at all the times.
But typing ASDF style with a well-trained left hand and a right hand that could barely smash its fingers together to form one sock-covered blob that could press one key at a time (but only if I was really careful to not simultaneously hit the three keys surrounding it) was PAINFUL.
Emails that normally took five minutes to compose took 10 and 15, and blog posts took two and three mornings to complete.
One morning, I spent more than two hours composing a particular co-op email, and tiny tasks like editing paragraphs and papers here and there for friends were consuming half the day.
My notes in my Bible looked like a 3-year-old had written them, and birthday cards for February, March and April featured giant left-handed birthday wishes that I am 100 percent positive made no person feel happy that he or she had turned a year older.
One day, while I was attempting to write birthday card No. 20-something for the month, Superman saw the slop his mama was trying to sell as a celebration.
“Hey, Mom,” he asked a little hesitantly, “would you like me to help write the birthday cards for you?”
Although my brain thought it should possibly be offended by this gesture that obviously indicated that my third grader was concerned about my penmanship, my worn and wobbly left hand could not turn over the pen fast enough.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I cried as I started dictating to this sweet superhero the words to appear on each card.
“That’s okay,” he replied. “I don’t think anyone can read the words on the cards you wrote.”
100 percent truth.
Because of the extra time writing and typing and cooking and ALL THE THINGS I was failing at every single day required, I started waking up at 2:45 and 3 a.m simply to check and return emails and keep up with my regular life administrative tasks, which meant I was fully asleep on Super-Spouse’s shoulder before 8:30 every night.
I found myself napping for five minutes at a time in every pick-up window possible, and for all six weeks, I was just absolutely, completely, totally physically and emotionally EXHAUSTED.
I had no idea the physical and mental effort it required to constantly modify and adjust and think ahead and get creative with body parts that worked differently from the rest of the world.
I had NO CLUE the challenges Superman and others with handy-capabilities faced EVERY. SINGLE. DAY as they tackled the tasks the rest of the world crossed off their lists in two-opposable-thumbs ignorance and joy.
As I found myself grumbling under my breath with every twisting lid I couldn’t open and every left-handed, misspelled text I tried to send, I could hardly believe the optimistic outlook and can-do attitude the 9-year-old boy in my house had displayed his entire life LONG when six weeks in a sock nearly sent me over the edge.
By Easter morning, exhausted, sore and spent, I just stood (with a much-missed and returned right hand) in absolute amazement, admiration and awe.
Of superheroes like Superman and Superhero 4 who effortlessly sport special needs like stylish designer accessories and superpowers in disguise.
And of a God who sacrificed far more for me than the full use of His right hand for six weeks.
I’m still processing and praying over this experience and asking Jesus how I’m supposed to apply this new perspective to my old life.
But what I do know is this.
I walked into this Lenten season thinking I was getting something of a hand transplant.
When in actuality, God wanted to give me a HEART and EYE transplant.
The kind that filters special needs through new lenses and handy-capabilities through new eyes.
The kind that values people over productivity and time in His terms, not mine.
The kind that recognizes that EVERYTHING I’m so blessed to enjoy in this life, down to the full functional use of my dominant hand, is not a right; it’s a privilege.
One I get to enjoy only by His grace each day.
Lord, let these newly opened eyes move hands and hearts in ways that honor superheroes I never knew were so super and a Savior whose sacrifice I've never appreciated more. 💓
