It's Good To Be Here: A Disabled Woman's Reflections on God in the Flesh and the Sacred Wonder of Being Human

by Christina Chase

Overview

“I can't walk; I can't sit up straight; I can't feed myself. If you and I meet, the first thing you notice will be my body crumpled in a wheelchair. Once I could at least sit up, but now my weak neck is bent over and my spine bent so much that my head falls heavily upon my left shoulder and my hunched back.”

So writes Christina Chase, the twenty-first century Thérèse of Lisieux whose “littleness” is as humble as that of the Little Flower, and whose spiritual power is, by every discernible measure, of comparable intensity. Crippled though she is, Christina's fearful disabilities have led her not into anger, bitterness, or despair, but rather into a profound and exceptional encounter with God's love itself—an encounter that you, too, can experience through the gentle allure of Christina's witness.

Locked now for decades within her own fragile, helpless body, Christina has been graced with extraordinary insights into the similar helpless

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781644131077
Publisher:	Sophia Institute Press
Publication date:	11/21/2019
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Christina Chase writes about life’s profound beauty while living with disease, disability, and dependency. Christina’s love for the truth leads her to explore life’s big questions. A revert to Catholicism, Christina was briefly an atheist and considered Eastern religions before finding, in God’s choice to intimately share our humanity, what it truly means to be fully human. When she isn’t writing or blogging, Christina enjoys her loving, care-giving family and explores nature, genealogy, and theology.

Table of Contents

Crippled: A Preface xi

1 Here I Am, Lord

Fearfully and Wonderfully 5

God So Loved the World 9

Among the Smells and Ills 21

Childlike Wonder 25

2 This Is My Beloved

Finding Out about Christina 31

Unrecognized 35

Into the Desert 41

In the Beginning 49

3 If You Will It, Lord

Imperfect 55

Why Are You Thinking Such Things in Your Heart? 61

Begging Bowls: Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit 69

Ask and You Shall Receive-Sort Of 71

4 See, I Am Doing Something New

Joy: "Why Are You So Happy?" 79

Closer to God: The Story of Zacchaeus 85

Casting into the Deep 89

And He Loved Them to the End 97

5 No Greater Love

The Way of the Cross 105

Stripped 109

INRI 113

My Soul to the Netherworld 117

6 A Place for You

The Hope of Heaven 121

Glorified Wounds: Suffer These Things and Enter into His Glory 129

Weird and Wonderful: The Essence of the Ascension 133

The Assumption and Every Body 137

7 I Will Be with You Always

Good News 147

Sitting in the Back and the Real Presence 151

Well Done, Good and Faithful Servant 155

The Strawberry and the Sacred Heart of Jesus 165

Acknowledgments 171