The trouble with "inspiring" videos that feature people with disabilities is the implied assumption that people with disabilities are supposed to be inspiring. Most are ordinary folks who go about living their lives the best they can, like everyone else. Still, this video is worth watching as pastor and author Ed Dobson, who has lived with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease) for over 10 years, has come to a place of acceptance and even hope. Anyone who lives with acquired disability has to find a way to incorporate the disability into their lives, or they find themselves filled with hopelessness and despair. Dobson talks about how God carried him toward hope and how God used a surprising instrument in his life to begin that journey toward hope.
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Thanks for sharing this Mark. Ed took (re-took, really) Hebrew with me and others at CTS in 2004 - not so long after he had been diagnosed with ALS.
Scott, interesting. So soon after his diagnosis, he began retooling for the next chapter in his life. I assume the Hebrew class was prep for his year of living biblically book. Not a lot of people use the diagnosis of a degenerative disease as a prompt for setting new life goals!
I imagine the disease factored in a lot. But mostly he talked about how his son, Kent, had gone to Israel to study Hebrew and Ed was inspired by his son's passion. Dr. Williams gave Ed an opportunity to address our class about how much he felt he had missed by not paying more attention to the original languages. It was quite inspiring and contributed a lot to my passion for the Bible languages. Anyway, how inspiring to see his "Yogi Berra" Christianity still being lived out a decade later!
What an awful disease ALS must be! Mind you, schizophrenia is not exactly a picnic at the beach but things could be worse. For example I'm well enough to be looking for work part-time now. I would have been well enough sooner, but I wasn't ready for it psychologically then. I was hoping I'd earn enough money from the sale of my paintings to manage that way, but it didn't materialize so I decided to get back into the workforce, and the director of the day center on whose board I sit has offered to help me out with my job search, but he and the staff person who will be helping me out have gone on vacation for three weeks, so I figured I may as well enjoy some more time off as well. This isn't a very good time to look for work anyway. My mom often says we can always find people who are in worse shape than us, and it's true. Look around and you'll see them.
Inspiring story's ! Attitude towards your illness means everything. God can work with then!
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