True Quality of Life
When people learn that most quadriplegics cannot bathe or toilet themselves, feed or dress themselves, they are quick to think, What a poor quality of life!
They think a good quality of life means higher pay, good health, or a stable home. Hardly ever does someone associate a “good” quality of life with disability. Having to be bathed, dressed, and toileted every day? Most people would consider a severe disability to unquestionably result in a poor quality of life, even beneath their dignity.
But I would argue that I have a great quality of life. True, having to be bathed, dressed, fed, and pushed around in a wheelchair isn’t easy. But as difficult as it is, I need to remember in Whose image I am made.
My body may be broken, but I am a God-reflector.
That is what gives me human dignity — not my ability to walk or use my hands or toilet myself. And I want to pass on that encouragement to everyone, no matter what the age or ability.
I used to think that only cultures in dark corners of the earth considered people with disabilities as useless and of no value — places where infants born with disabilities were drowned or discarded in dumpsters. The truth is, even “enlightened” nations view certain individuals with disabilities as valueless. There are places where a doctor can legally put to death an infant or an elderly person with a mild disability. Even those who do not have the medical power to end a life are too quick to fall into the lie that it’s beneath our dignity to be weak and helpless, or that a person is better off dead than disabled.
It’s why I do everything I can to show the world that life is worth living, and that a disability is not a reason to end a person’s life. God made us in his image, and that fact alone gives us true human dignity and a reason to exist: no matter what our abilities or disabilities, we are to be God-reflectors, we are to showcase in whose image we are made. Yes, my body may be broken, but I am a God-reflector. I mirror a God who was pleased to make me in his image (Genesis 1:27).
I discipline myself to rehearse whose image I bear, and like the psalmist, I proudly proclaim the words of Psalm 139: “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made… My frame was not hidden from you… all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
Friend, that is what gives me human dignity. Not my ability to walk or use my hands, or toilet myself or cut my own food. No; my dignity is rooted in Christ in me, the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).
And if God’s glory shines brightest through our weakness – which it does – then our inabilities become the best platform for God’s highest glory. That makes for a great quality of life! All because our life is sanctified by his image.
Oh friend, we all need to be reminded that we are God’s wonderful creation. Only God is the creator and sustainer of life — and it is in Him that we find the true meaning of life. If people judge life-value by one’s autonomy, or abilities, or degree of suffering, they are missing the real purpose for living.
Our world needs us to be a voice for life… for the unborn, the elderly, the disabled, the medically fragile, and the vulnerable. Because ALL people are created in the image of God. Pick up a copy of the One Year Pray for Life Bible and pray to be a voice for life!
-Joni Eareckson Tada
Purchase your One Year Pray for Life Bible Today!
Join Ken and me as we read this life-giving Bible this year. And remember, every Bible purchased helps a child or adult living with disability!
