Sound of Surviving Blog

Last Friday, I had the privilege of attending the prom for the students at the medical facility where I volunteer. Each student was dressed in a stunningly beautiful gown, or a handsome dress shirt and pants. The cafeteria was transformed with table cloths and centerpieces, hanging streamers, floating witch hats hanging from the ceiling, and Wicked-themed photo backdrops. Many of the patients’ families came to spend the night with their loved one, dancing and laughing the night away. I had brought my Polaroid and was taking many photos of the patients and their families for them to keep. In addition, I was taking photos and videos on my phone as well. My favorite video I took was of one of my students dancing to Defying Gravity from Wicked. She had chosen the song to dance to ahead of time, with her teacher and her teacher’s aide.

As the song came on over the speakers, everyone cleared off the dance floor so that she could dance with her teacher’s aide. As the song played, her aide spun her in circles in her wheelchair, slowly and exquisitely. Her arm was outstretched the entire time she spun around, and the smile on her face was the brightest light in the room in those moments. Everyone in that entire room was watching her in awe. As I recorded the dance on my phone, I felt goosebumps on my skin, and had to fight to keep from crying. It almost seemed as if that song were written just for her.

You see, some of the lyrics to this song are “I’m through accepting limits, because someone says they’re so. Some things I cannot change, but until I try, I’ll never know. I think it’s time to try defying gravity, I think I’ll try defying gravity.” Defying gravity is exactly what my student was doing, by dancing to that song, arms outstretched, smiling wide, dressed in an amazing pink ball gown, having the time of her life. She is confined, physically, by a wheelchair, and by medical conditions beyond her control. Yet, she, and every other patient that night, was defying gravity. Defying the things that this world we live in tells them should not be so. Proving that just because their lives don’t look like what everyone else’s do, their life can still be just as meaningful, as anyone else’s, and are something to be enjoyed, and lived to the fullest extent. My student spun and twirled, dancing in her wheelchair. That is truly the most fearless and daring act of defying gravity.

You see, we’re all capable of defying gravity. It’s choosing to look doubt and fear in the face, and then spinning around on our heels, walking towards hope and light. It’s deciding that this world and society don’t get to tell us that we can’t live a “good” life, unless we’re doing this or that. Defying gravity is daring to dream of accomplishing things we’re told are impossible in a handicapped body, it’s choosing faith over fear, hope over doubt, even when others tell us it’s not possible. It’s choosing to find purpose even in pain and exhaustion. Defying gravity is looking Satan in the eye and saying, “God didn’t give me a spirit of fear, but one of power, and of love, and of self-control.” (2 Timothy 1:7) Defying gravity is trusting that God did not bring us this far to leave us here; it’s being strong and courageous, not because there’s nothing to fear, or because our lives are perfect, but because we know who is walking by our side in the midst of fear, in the midst of the imperfections and struggles.