Love in the Disabilities Paradigm: A Normal Person’s Need for Healing

We function in a disabilities paradigm where people are broken in a multitude of ways and where, having recognized their brokenness, we seek in our benevolence to remake these broken people in our own image. There is, however, another paradigm in which one might live, a paradigm of love. In that paradigm, people are not divided between “normal” and “broken” but live together on a common spectrum of light. In this paradigm, people are not so much “disabled” as they are waiting to be believed in, and in this paradigm, the greatest need for healing is in the capacity to love.

In the paradigm of love, love is not just a word or a feeling. Instead, love is a gut-wrenching compulsion to action in response to the need of another. In this paradigm, love is not a feeling or a choice one makes. Rather, it is love that defines all one is.

In the paradigm of love, families flourish, miracles happen, and even scrawny trees can save children.