Wednesday 8th May 2013

29-year-old Stevie Wills is a writer and performance poet. She has had cerebral palsy since birth, and is a community education officer with Christian Blind Mission, Australia’s leading Christian disability charity. She’ll be performing at the upcoming River of Life conference in Melbourne to a crowd of 45,000 people—her biggest gig yet. This is her story:

I became a Christian when I was14-years-old. My aunty from New Zealand was in Australia on holiday and she told me about Christianity (she’d become a Christian a couple of years earlier). When she left, she gave me a gospel tract of the book of Luke and I read it one night. That night I prayed the prayer at the end of the tract.

The first 18 months I pretty much did it on my own, with very little influence from other Christians. And then a lady who worked in the office at school told me I could come to her church, which was just down the road. So I went there and I’ve been there for 12 years.

I have a lot of fatigue, so need to rest a lot. I get to hear from God because I’m not busy all the time. I spend a lot of time just thinking and reflecting on things, and I think that he gives me a lot of wisdom in talking to other people who are struggling. I’m able to pass on to other people what I’ve learnt through my struggles.

I did very well academically at high school, but it was no good in the friend department. I was very lonely. I was always good at writing, but then I went through a time when I was pretty hurt and I couldn’t say what I wanted, but I could write it down. So poetry became my vent, my way of getting things out. And then I grew a real love for it.

When I first left school, it was a given I’d go to university. Everyone thought I’d be at uni, so I went there. At school I had a full-time integration aid, so I had support. I’m a very slow reader and writer, so she’d help me with that. But at uni, there was no support. You got a note-taker in class, but you didn’t get any help outside of class. So I dropped out, and that’s when I became really depressed. I struggled a lot. There was a lot of grief, as I was always going to do uni, and I could do it mentally, but physically I couldn’t, unless I did one subject at a time, and that would take me years. So I went to Tabor Bible College and did a Diploma in Christian Studies, which I guess is what you do when you don’t know what to do. And it was at college, during a time of great depression and emotional pain, I started thinking about how there must be a lot of pain in the world, so I started a Diploma of Counselling, because I wanted to be amongst that.

It took me six and a half years to finish my diploma. Graduating was like the best day ever, because the course had been so hard. Along that journey I became passionate about raising disability awareness. Then I learned about disability poverty and got really passionate about writing to promote social justice, and getting people to care about what’s going on in the world.

The church is in a unique position to reach out to people with disabilities. There are a lot of people with disabilities who only know people who are paid to be with them, whereas the church offers real friendship. My friends know what I need because they’ve gotten to know me. I was a friend before I was someone that needed help.

Image: Stevie Wills and CBM – used w/ permission.

One day my friends gave me a wombat brooch. God spoke to me that night and said, “I created the wombat to be slow, and slowness is not an inadequacy.” So I do things in the time I’m meant to get them done, which is not in the time I’d like to get them done. But sometimes even now, if I’m not well, my friends and I will say I’m having a “wombat day”, because I need to be reminded it’s not about how much I do but about who I am. It’s such a hard thing to learn. We’re so focused on doing, doing, doing. But on days when I can’t do anything, I learn things from God that I wouldn’t have otherwise. And that’s bigger than getting things done.

A key verse for me is 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” His grace is sufficient for me in my weakness; he is strong. And I see God using me in ways that I don’t understand. So many people tell me I’m an inspiration to them. I just do what I have to do, you know? But God chose me to inspire others.

One of the most annoying things people can do is offer to pray for me to be healed, like I should be somebody else. Out in public, it’s amazing; if we’re at a café, most people will ask somebody else what I want. All I know is, I have been made perfectly by God, just the way he wanted me to be. I don’t know what perfection is. I don’t know what heaven will be like, but I do question this idea that there will be no “disabilities”. We all have weaknesses; some people can’t walk; some  can’t do maths. Disability seems to be put in another category, like it’s something that needs to be fixed or is part of the Fall. I don’t know if it is or not. All I know is, I’m what I’m meant to be. I’ve been made perfectly by God. And if I was anything else, there’s no way I’d be doing what I’m doing now.