The Blueprint I Already Had On Holy Spirit as Guide: Reflections on Partnership, Process, and Disabled Identity"

The Ritual I Didn’t Know I Had

A few therapy sessions back, I was telling my therapist about a recent dental procedure that gave me a lot of anxiety. While sitting in the dental chair that day, I began to visibly shake. Past memories of trauma and dental procedures gone wrong began to flood my mind.

I told my therapist that as a way to help calm myself, I just began to pray Psalm 121 in my mind. The words came automatically, like muscle memory: “I will lift up my eyes to the hills, from where comes my help. My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

My therapist leaned forward slightly. “Rasheera, is this what you would do in times past?”

“Yes,” I said quickly, the recognition washing over me even as I spoke. “Whenever I would have surgery, since the time I can remember as a little girl, I would go through this same process—reciting scripture. ‘The Lord is my light and salvation, whom shall I fear.’ Psalm 27. Psalm 121. Sometimes bits of both, woven together into my own prayer language.”

She nodded, then asked a question that would crack something open in me: “Where did you learn to do this? Who taught you this?”

I sat with that question. Turned it over in my mind like a stone I’d been carrying without knowing its weight.

“I don’t know,” I finally said, my voice smaller than I intended.

I’m sure growing up in church had something to do with it. But I couldn’t recall anyone ever sitting me down before a surgery and saying, “Rasheera, when you’re scared, pray these words.” I couldn’t point to a single moment when someone taught me this ritual that had become so central to my survival.

It’s just something I did on my own.

And then something deeply spiritual happened. Right there in my therapist’s office, it was like God was highlighting something I’d been too close to see. That was Him all along—coaching me, becoming my fortified place, even when I didn’t have language to recognize what was happening.

This ritual, this turning to scripture in my most vulnerable moments, had been woven into my life throughout the decades and hundreds of surgeries. It wasn’t something I consciously chose or learned from a manual. It was something the Holy Spirit had been cultivating in me since I was small.

It was God, then and now, formulating a guide for me—a blueprint I didn’t even know I was reliant on, but that was very present in my life.

The Blueprint

I always used to say I’m not sure God ever gave me a blueprint for how to walk out this life and navigate the nuances, social and health challenges of living with a disability.

And He gently reminded me that He indeed has left a blueprint—His Holy Spirit. The one we are called to partner with daily in steering our lives.

He is our guide. He is our blueprint.

So I am never without guidance or instructions.

Before I was born, He gave me the tools to navigate disability throughout my lifespan—from birth, through childhood, to the grave.

So that in any and all instances where I am challenged in my identity or disability, He is right there with me, helping me make sense of it all.

For this I am humble and grateful.

My disability does not exclude me from partnership with Holy Spirit.

Nothing can separate us from the love of the Father (Romans 8:38-39).

The Rhetoric of Not Enough

The internal rhetoric that plays over and over, often making me feel excluded from spaces, is that I am not abled enough.

And although ableness or appearance may be man’s measurement, it is not God’s. And if He doesn’t exclude me, then I won’t exclude myself.

If my race, my gender, my disability don’t determine my worth in Christ, then why am I overly consumed with the co-signing of men who have neither hell nor heaven to put me in—only social categories?

For I did not come to earth to be bound by a single binary, category, or identity. But I came to earth that I may have life, and have it more abundantly.

The Sanctifying Work

This time of year we all become just a little bit more reflective. And lately, my internal processing was harsh and unkind.

I was reflecting back on moments this year—areas I was still struggling in and wrestling with. I decided that by now, at my big age, those things shouldn’t bother me anymore. I should be past this. I should have overcome.

And here I was, still wrestling.

It was in this same moment of critiquing myself that again the Lord and His gentleness reminded me: the narrative I’ve been deconstructing over the year is not a narrative you overcome overnight. We constantly go through a process of transformation.

This renewal process is also sanctifying—the process of coming out from under is the holy work of transformation.

It’s not quick. It’s not always comfortable. But it is sacred.

Coming out from under the weight of ableist expectations, internalized shame, and the constant pressure to justify my existence in spaces not designed for bodies like mine—this is spiritual labor. It’s the kind of work that reshapes not just how I see myself, but how I understand God’s vision for my life.

Sanctification isn’t about becoming more “acceptable” by the world’s standards. It’s about becoming more fully myself—the self God created before the world told me what I should be. It’s about unlearning the lies that my body is a problem to be solved, a barrier to overcome, or evidence of divine disfavor.

This work happens in partnership. The Holy Spirit doesn’t demand I do it alone or perfectly. He meets me in the mess, in the questions, in the moments when I’m tired of fighting to belong—even in the moments when I’m frustrated with myself for still struggling. He reminds me that transformation is a process, not a destination. And that I already belong.

So cheers to this new year, this new era of shaping me and the reality I am oh so privileged to move and walk through.

Cheers to the Holy Spirit—my comforter and my advocate—who strengthens me daily to live this life and to walk in this Disabled body of mine.