Together: An Invitation to Friendship
The recent birthday party was the talk of the class, and it was becoming clear that everyone had been invited. Everyone, that is, except one. The recent birthday girl approached her classmate looking a little uncomfortable. “I’m sorry I didn’t invite you to my birthday party,” she said. “It was a pool party, and I couldn’t imagine you wearing a bathing suit, so I thought you wouldn’t want to come.”
It seems a little ridiculous to imagine bathing-suit-wearing as the critical characteristic for attending a backyard birthday party or as an important part of friend-making. Yet many of us reason ourselves to similar exclusions. With false assumptions about a person’s interest or capabilities, we make decisions for others, without their knowledge. We dismiss the possibility for friendship and community before there is even an opportunity for conversation. We make the decision, and everyone loses out.
Friendships form when, as CS Lewis wrote, “one man says to another, ‘What! You too?’” Commonalities create the spark of a friendship. On the other hand, focusing on what makes a person “other” can ward off the “you too?” moment.
Too often we assume a person is too different to build a friendship with us. We think they would be more comfortable with “people like them.” It happens at grade school birthday parties and in neighborhood churches. Missing an invitation to a birthday party is sad.
Missing an invitation to friendship and a thriving church life is tragic.
For a person unfamiliar with disability, a disability can take on giant proportions, overshadowing any potential commonalities. The uncertainties of the what, how, and why can make it so the who is never discovered.
And yet, so many people with disabilities will emphatically stress that their disability is not the most important thing about them.
Their disability often forms part of their identity but is not the characteristic that defines their friendships. We don’t expect left-handed people to only befriend other lefthanders or redheads to keep their friends list to anyone with auburn, strawberry blond, or copper colored hair. If we restricted our relationships to only those who shared our own hand dominance and hair color, we would all experience relational poverty.
Are you relationally impoverished now? Do you wish you had more friends? How might things change if you considered that someone with an obvious physical or intellectual disability may have less in common with “people like them” and more in common with you?
The only way to find out is to extend an invitation. Make space to be with each other. Don’t assume the person with disabilities wouldn’t want to or couldn’t accept an offer of togetherness. Make an offer they can accept and let them decide.
Because physical access can be a real barrier to friendship, you may need to make adjustments to your original plans. If your home has multiple steps between the street parking and your living room, you may need to find a different location for hosting or think through a temporary ramp. A family with a child on the autism spectrum may need to borrow a quiet corner of your house to take a break from sensory overload. If your guest bathroom is pocket-sized, and too small for the door to close behind a wheelchair, you may need to offer the master suite for the access and privacy your guest requires. Since many individuals who use motorized wheelchairs rely on public transportation, your plans to connect may need to include bus routes and schedules.
But you won’t know unless you ask.
What’s true in our home is true in our church. If your church is relationally impoverished, who is missing? Have you asked individuals and families living with disabilities how they can feel more at home in the foyer and fellowship hall? Have you considered putting in a ramp to the stage and a safe, quiet corner in the children’s ministry area? How easy is it for someone who relies on accessible public transportation to arrive Sunday morning and for midweek programming?
Unlike the birthday girl at the grade school pool party, in our churches we can think that we have extended an invitation. However, if we have not thought through access and welcome, our offer is hollow.
The night Jesus was betrayed, he gave his disciples a last-minute cram session for the test before them (See John 13-17). He spoke of abiding in him and loving each other.
And he spoke of choosing his friends.
He said, “I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you…”
John 15:15-16 (ESV)
Friendship is a special kind of choosing, a determination to share life together. For the believer in Christ, friendship includes making known to each other what we have learned from God the Father. Whatever our disability, our hair color, or our thoughts on wearing a bathing suit, that is an ability we all share.
Written—by Rebecca Olson
Rebecca Olson has served with Joni and Friends in various capacities since 2006, and during that time, she has contributed to several books, including The Beyond Suffering Bible, Life in the Balance Study Guide, and Real Families, Real Needs.
Mutual Friendship When Disability is Involved
oday on the podcast, Crystal Keating is talking about friendship with Tracey Motoda, her good friend who has Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) and is a wheelchair user. We all want to be known and have relationships with other people, so listen as Crystal and Tracey share ways that you can really do life with a friend impacted by disability – what it means to have a deep, mutual friendship.
