Abnormally normal

I could tell as I entered the locker room of the university where I exercise that something was different. It was more crowded than usual, for one. And most of the people looked odd. In some cases the oddness had an obvious cause: They had Down syndrome. In other cases they looked physically normal but smiled more easily than serious adults, with all our worries and grievances and self-doubts, are prone to smile. The man next to me beamed as I took my gear from my locker. "Hi!" he said.

"Hi," I replied. It was all the encouragement he needed. He strode over to my side and offered his hand. We shook hands and kept on shaking and then shook some more. "I'm gonna play tennis," he told me. We were still shaking hands. The man beside him turned slowly and smiled. "I'm gonna lift weights," he said. This was my opportunity to end the prolonged handshake. I asked them about tennis and weightlifting and told them I was there to run. They were very excited about all of it.

Another fellow sidled up next to me. "How are you?" he asked.

"I'm doing well, thanks. How are you?"

"I'm here for the Special Olympics," he said. His event is swimming. We wished each other well. Outside as I began my run I jogged past another cluster of Special Olympians. They grinned at me, and one of them held out his hand to give me a high five. That's when it hit me: They think I'm one of them.

At first I thought it was funny, in a patronizing sort of way. But then it hit me that I don't belong in their group for more reasons than I first realized. They are delighted to meet new people, which I dread. They are excited to swim or run or simply be there. I go entire weeks vaguely unhappy about everything. They seem to see the world in terms of what it gives them, whereas I see mostly what I am denied.

I chuckled at their mistake, at first, because I carry in my heart the notion that I am better than them. It hit me, as I ran down the sidewalk, that I don't fit into their group not because I am too good, but because I am not good enough.

The lesson is not that the mentally impaired are everything God intended humans to be, or that we should all aspire to a state of ignorance. The lesson, for me at least, is that I am certainly not everything God intended humans to be, either. We are distorted by sin, and in my case the distortions make me less loving, less joyful, less thankful than these people who were kindhearted enough to admit me into their fellowship even as I instinctively bar them from mine.

We call them handicapped to distinguish them from ourselves, but as I consider their childlike kindness and joy, I wonder who is really more crippled. The Lord will change our physical defects in the twinkling of an eye, but this cooperative work with the twisted human heart, it seems to take lifetimes---yours and mine and everyone else who is, to this world, normal.