Finding Your Faith Again

Happy Labor Day everyone! I hope you all had a great weekend and enjoyed what you read on the Voiceless Minority last week. I know in Friday’s post I said that the next blog would be about the topic of when the right time to teach your children about a disability is, however, there’s something that came up over the weekend that has made me decide to move that blog until later into the week.

I mentioned a little about how my faith journey was rekindled in Thursday’s post but as God often does He puts us right where we need to be and to hear the exact word we need to when we need it. On Sunday I was watching church online with Sam. The church is called The Crossing and is located in Tampa. I wish I could go to services in person but the online service will have to do for now.

As I have mentioned several times before I was raised Catholic and for the longest time I considered myself a recovering Catholic, not because I did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, (I never stopped believing that) but because I was disenchanted with the practices of the Catholic church I felt, and this is just my own personal belief that the church did not resonate with me and they were concerned too much about making a profit. I have tried to get back into organized religion on one other occasion. I found a church where I was going to school in Pennsylvania that was nondenominational where I found a “home” for the first time. I did not feel like I was faking it. Unfortunately, due to circumstances that I have discussed in other blogs for this page, I chose to relocate with my parents and move to Florida.

Once I got to Florida you can say that the world or if you like the devil got into my head. I became really depressed, negative, and disconnected from God. At my lowest point, I was ready to forget all about the higher power or as I believe Jesus and why he put me here to live the life I live. That all changed about two months ago when my girlfriend Samantha started getting involved in her faith journey. She has gone down the path of faith since January but really hit her stride two months ago when she told me about the Crossing Church. She had been attending and she also told me they had services online. I’ve only attended two but immediately I was struck by the message that the minister was preaching that day, however, it wasn’t until last Sunday that I knew this was exactly what I’d been looking for. 

He did a Sermon on communication and relationships with others as well as going over the church’s principles he explained that in every church no matter what denomination as long as they believe in Jesus the core message is the same but he referred to each church as a part of the body of Christ. He simplified it by saying each church is like an organ in the body. They have their specific assignment meaning that the Crossing mission may be different than another church’s but they all work together to support the whole body. After explaining this he outlined the principles of the Crossing and related them back to specific passages in scripture. I will attach the message notes at the bottom of this blog so that if you choose to you can read them for yourself.

In closing, one’s faith journey might look different than someone else’s but God gives us exactly what we need to progress further in that journey even if we don’t know that we need it. No one is perfect and by no means do I consider myself perfect. We were all born into sin the only way we will find redemption is through Jesus.

Sorry, this post wasn’t strictly about people with disabilities but as I said earlier in this post God speaks through us, we just have to listen. Some people with disabilities may be down like I was but remember attitude is altitude and He will help you go further than anyone or anything.

Till tomorrow this has been your friendly neighborhood super advocate.

Jay

     

How To Have a Healthy and Long Lasting Relationship With Your Significant Other

Hello again, I hope that everyone who is reading this had a great weekend and enjoyed the posts from last week. 

On Friday, I wrote about privacy and setting boundaries when you have a disability. This post will examine boundaries also but this time from a different angle. In this piece, we will look at the idea that some people with disabilities tend to rarely find themselves in long-term relationships, because of their inexperience with romantic relationships sometimes they end up unknowingly losing themselves in the relationship and neglecting other parts of their life.  This piece will provide some helpful tips to ensure that any romantic relationship you have as well as the other relationships in your life are balanced.  

Anyone who either knows me or reads this blog regularly will be aware of the fact that I am now in a relationship with a little alien by the name of Samantha. What you may not know is Samantha is the first disabled person I have dated and my first long-term relationship since I was 18. My previous relationship lasted a few months so some might not even call it a long-term relationship. Either way, my relationship with Sam is the longest relationship I have had.  We have only been dating for a little over a year but it has been a wild ride in a very good way. I believe until recently we were still in the honeymoon phase, or at least I was.  This is not to say that we are still not learning about each other and growing together as a couple. 

For the first 13 months or so of our relationship, we would call each other every time we got a break in our day, and this was immensely enjoyable but for my part, it eventually turned into a routine rather than a vibrant conversation with someone I love where we had things to share with each other. That all changed after a conversation a couple months ago. 

One night instead of being nerds and reading the fourth Harry Potter which we have been doing for months…will we ever finish it? I’m hoping so but I will let you know when we do. Anyway, back to my point. One night the topic of our relationship came up. As I said on Friday, when you have people constantly around you, they observe certain things even if you do not know it or want them to. In our conversation, it came out that people in our lives were making comments about our relationship, and at the time I thought they were unfounded. However, looking back, maybe these comments were wiser than I realized. To summarize, many people said we both, but for the most part, I had changed. Upon hearing these comments, I immediately jumped the gun and reacted negatively. 

According to some, they felt that I was consumed with Sam. After taking a breath, Sam calmed me down. She made me realize that perhaps because I have not been in a long-term relationship I was going in full throttle, perhaps even a little too much. It’s funny how people closest to you give the best advice but they are the last ones we listen to. Anyway, as a result of that conversation Sam and I now talk once or twice a day so that we have something to talk about at the end of the day.

I found that our conversations were richer and not as forced as they were when we talked constantly. I am thankful for that. An added benefit of the change in communication style between the two of us is my personal growth. 

I am now developing better relationships with close friends, taking time for family and caregivers, and even getting back in touch with my spiritual side. I was raised Catholic but have drifted away from the Christian church, or for that matter, religion in general. Since I have been in a relationship with my alien, my faith has been reawakened, and I am slowly building upon it. For that, I must thank Sam. Even though I have been surrounded by religion my entire life, when you are forced or constantly reminded to find faith you quit looking for it but when faith finds you this is truly the way a relationship with God is supposed to develop. 

Along with my faith journey, since I have changed the communication style in my relationship, I have paid more attention to the opportunities life is providing me. Recently I have found a new passion for self-advocacy and as I mentioned last week, I have found my true purpose in life. On that topic, my sister pointed out to me that something I said in my blog post last Tuesday might have been misunderstood. 

In the blog, I wrote last Tuesday I mentioned it is my new passion to obtain a law degree in public policy and become a civil rights/public policy attorney. After talking to my sister, I realized that it may have sounded as if I was going to immediately pursue that goal and forget about everything else. The opposite is true. That is my end goal. For those who are curious to know I have a plan of action to get me to that eventual goal. In short, next March I intend to apply for a six-month program in which I will learn how to advocate for different legislative policies that affect people with disabilities in depth. Hopefully, this program will provide me with a foundation for my future goals.

In conclusion, in order to have a healthy fruitful, and most of all lasting relationship with a significant other I have learned that there is one key factor. This simply comes down to personal growth i.e.: having a life apart from your partner so that you can come together as a couple and enrich each other’s lives and grow together. 

I hope you have enjoyed this little bit of relationship advice from someone who is still learning. Having said that, please note the above blog and the advice given in it is just that. You don’t have to agree with what I said at all; if you do that’s great, if you don’t I respect that as well. Anyway, until tomorrow, I hope you have a good rest of the rest of your day.

Jay