Finding God’s Gift Through Polio

I am one of the last people in the United States to get polio, just before the vaccine was invented, when I was 8 months old. Polio was like the Covid of the 1950s—people were justifiably terrified of it because it paralyzed muscles and crippled people, if it didn’t kill them.

I was paralyzed from the waist down on my left side but some baby nerve cells sprouted up and I was able to get some use of my leg back. In order to walk at all, I had to use one of those long steel and leather braces, and I have walked every step of my life with a profound limp. I have always been stared at, especially by children, which just piled shame on top of shame. I was different, I was “not okay.” I would beg God to heal me and let me look like the other kids and walk like the other kids . . . and He always said no. And I would get FURIOUS, and then stuff my anger down deep in my heart because “good girls don’t get mad at God,” right?

In college, I heard the gospel for the first time. I learned that not only had Jesus died and rose again for me, but that if I put my trust in Him, He would come to live inside me and change me from the inside out! Whoa! That is crazy good news! I threw open the doors of my heart and said, “YES!!!” to Jesus—and then everything started changing.

I was so hungry to learn everything I could about this new life and I was so blessed to be discipled by Campus Crusade for Christ, which is where I eventually met my husband Ray. (That’s “Mister Ray,” if you’ve had kids in Orange!)  

One day God used a wise lady who helped me to see that I was mad at God—for letting me get polio in the first place, and then for repeatedly saying no to all the times I begged Him to heal me. I didn’t have a clue what to do about all that anger—I mean, I’d never heard a message on “What do you do when you’re so mad at God you want to spit in His face?” That sounds like blasphemy! But God was gracious to show me what to do about it.

First, I was taught that no matter what happens to us, a good and loving God is in control. He surrounds us with His protective grace and love like spiritual bubble wrap, and if He allows something hard or painful to get through that bubble wrap, He has a purpose and a plan for it, for our good and for His glory.

Then He led me to a verse that changed my life: Ephesians 5:20, 

“Always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father.”

Always? For ALL THINGS? Even polio??? That. Is. Crazy!

But if a good and loving God is in control, then He has allowed “all things” through the spiritual bubble wrap and I can trust Him. I can obey His word when He tells me to “give thanks always for all things.”

Asking for His help, I said, “Thank You, Lord, for polio. For my limp. For daily exercises and years of physical therapy. For surgeries. For people staring at me. For never being able to wear high heels. For the possibility that no man may see me as beautiful and want to marry me. That I might never be a mother.”

As I continually gave thanks for these things—and more—that I hated but could not change, something interesting happened—because every “thank You Lord” meant “I trust You, Lord.” And I discovered that with each “thank You,” another chunk of the anger that had carved out a huge reservoir in my heart was being released. One day I realized I wasn’t angry anymore! The anger was gone, and God had replaced it with Himself—specifically, He filled that reservoir with JOY.

It has taken a few decades, but with the eyes of faith I have come to see that polio is God’s gift to me. It has made it so much easier to lean hard on Jesus. I have a physical reminder of the spiritual reality of what leaning hard means because for the last 30+ years, I have needed a cane for stability as my body keeps getting weaker. And I need a scooter for getting around large buildings like the church—and every little boy at CityBridge is fascinated by it!

Polio is God’s gift because I know what it’s like to be different, to be “other than,” so I can have love and compassion for others who are different. I don’t have to imagine it, I live it.

Polio is God’s gift because I get to testify to that He is good, all the time—whether it’s walking with a limp, or burying our first child, or not being able to walk at all for 18 months, or enabling me to have hip replacement surgery that restored my ability to walk and stand again.

God is good. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it!