UVC, Sara Miller | “expendable... I thought I was a miracle?” | Water Into Wine - Spoken Word Testimony

We hope you enjoy guest preachers, like Edgwater member Sara, who’ve committed to sharing throughout our sermon series ‘Disabled Jesus, Disabled Love.’ Disabled leaders, thinkers, and advocates have always been at the heart of Christian communities. In the US, one in four people live with a disability. Yet our faith has a long history of teaching about our bodies & needs in ways that hurt, limit and erase. Join us as we learn from and consider the experiences of disabled leaders in our communities to better understand how we might begin to create access for one another, build community, and live into the belovedness of our bodies

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CONTENT WARNING: mature language is used. A script of Sara’s testimony is below.

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Water into Wine, by Sara Miller

It’s buried deep in my DNA, so deep no one knows where,

Less like sunken treasure and more like the loch ness monster 

 

Every morning I wake to learn I’ve lost in an altercation with my sheets

The pain is excruciating 

As my joints slide and creek

A body that's held together by dollar store white glue

Every thought trudges through jello

Only for words to get lost in the fog

My heart murmurs a daily marathon

Running from a bear that’s not there

A wave pool in my stomach

And a strong aversion to gravity.

All that’s left is fatigue, a fancy name for the tired that lives in my bones

 

My body is trying to kill me and keep me alive

It’s killing me to stay alive 

But that’s just on the inside

Invisible

 

Hidden behind a river of smiles

And an overflowing well of “fine”

And a deluge of “normal”

 

In the waiting room

An elderly man looks up at me to say

You’re too young to be here

And all the eyes in the room on me seem to agree

I am invisible

 

More offices, ERs, and lab draws 

But doctors don’t learn about me in medical school

So it must be all in my head 

Or this magic catch-all cup they call anxiety

Except the real anxiety comes when they don’t know how to help

And send me away

Unseen

 

You don’t *look* disabled

I’m going to need proof

 

So I fill out all the forms

And send all the files 

To make sure my medical history is listed with the court cases

As an easy to access public record 

Defending my existence 

Drowning consent just to simply show up as me

Cue visibility 

 

I’m rolling down the hallway in my wheelchair, all eyes are on me

They move out of my way, a parting of the Red Sea

Not like I’m a celebrity but as if to flee a plague of disease

They stare ready to investigate 

What part of me is broken

 

Sometimes they speak,                   

I hate it when they speak

 

What happened to your legs? 

What’s wrong with you?

You’re such an inspiration

Here let me “help” you

 

But then, I stand up, and I’ve walked on water

It’s a miracle the self-appointed saviors say

 

And suddenly, I’m invisible again 

 

Except nothing really changed from that moment to the last

Or from this moment to the next

When the pandemic hits and they decide that I’m expendable 

I thought a minute ago I was a miracle 

I guess I’m not the miracle they wanted 

 

People always talk about coming out like its a one-time thing

As if it’s not a revolving door of ocean waves in a storm

Knocking you down again and again and again before you can catch your breath

Swallowing gulps of saltwater and everyone’s opinions

About how I should be both seen and unseen

 

Some days I want to be invisible

No matter how much it might cost

Not having to field all the questions

Or to stare down the barrel of pity

Or answer to the face of confusion

 

Yet, the trickle of doubt about my own existence 

Has become a roaring river of reminders 

That my body doesn’t belong here

 

I don’t want to be that miracle, attaching God’s name 

Only when I’m socially acceptable 

To imagine my body with inspirational value

Only because you can’t imagine living in it

 

But, 

I am a miracle 

 

A miracle

Of water into wine

Gallons of drunken and delicious

Fermented, prohibited, liberated

Full-bodied, embodied

Filled to the brim of vessel of being

Obscene oceans coursing through me

Where the last shall be first and the first shall be last 

Raise a toast

 

What a miracle my body is

For showing up just the way it is

What a miracle my body is 

To fight through the bullshit and win

What a miracle my body is 

Without producing something to call worth it

 

I belong in my body

In the moments I love it 

And the moments I don’t 

And in all the moments in between

I belong in my body 

In the moments it looks the part 

And in the moments it says screw the fucking part

I belong in my body 

In the moments it keeps me alive 

And in the moments it tries to kill me

I belong in places that I am seen and unseen

Because I,  am a miracle