My name is Chelsea Zimmerman, I love Jesus and college football. I am the editor-in-chief of CatholicLane.com. I am also a managing editor for Ignitum Today and Catholic Stand. I often write about life issues and Catholic spirituality.
Born and raised Catholic, I am constantly striving to deepen my faith and strengthen my relationship with Christ and the Church. I have a strong devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the rosary, enjoy spiritual reading, spending time in front of the Blessed Sacrament, frequent confession and going to daily Mass.
When I was a junior in high school, I received a spinal cord injury in a car accident that left me paralyzed from the chest down. I have a beautiful, blessed life, but not a day goes by that I don’t face some new challenge or limitation. The idea for the name of this blog actually came from an email that I sent out to friends and family on the sixth anniversary of my injury. I looked back and reflected on things that I had come to realize over the previous six years and came up with the following:
Reflections of a Paralytic
Death is imminent
My body does not belong to me
Animals can sometimes be better companions that humans
The love and support of family is often underestimated
I love my Daddy
My mom and my sisters are the most beautiful and insane women I know
Life is beautiful
Love is the most wonderful/awful feeling in the entire world
True faith demands conversion – God wants all of me
All that matters in my life is to live the Gospel and live it well
Mary saved my life
I have an abundance of friends already in heaven
Probably the most beautiful and important of all the things that I have learned is that suffering is the key to salvation. To quote a more reliable source, St. Therese of Lisuix says, “sanctity consists in suffering.” Early on after the accident, I remember hearing somewhere that those who suffer are the best friends of Christ, those most closely united to Him. It was then that I realized that this thing that had happened to me was not a bad thing at all. God was actually giving me a unique opportunity to unite myself more perfectly with Jesus on the Cross. It is not only from my wheelchair that I suffer, but in the every day trials of life there are opportunities great and small to suffer for the Lord – to recognize those moments is indeed a great blessing.
Despite being in a wheelchair I still live a relatively “normal” life. I still have the love of my family and the ability to love in return. In short, I have a great life because I’m a human being, dammit, and I know my life has value!
Apart from my editing duties, I also do a number of volunteer activities in my parish and my community. I am a self avowed pro-life activist, doing what I can to help defend the dignity of human life in my community and the world. I want to help others, especially the youth to realize their Christian vocation to love as God loves and thus build up a culture of life in the world!
If you want to know even more about me, you can watch my episode of EWTN’s Life on the Rock:
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“Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” 2 Corinthians 12:10
“To offer myself as a victim of Divine love is not to offer myself to sweetness, to consolation, but to every anquish, every bitterness; for love lives only by sacrifice, and the more the soul wills to be surrendered to love, the more must she be surrendered to suffering.” ~St. Therese of Lisuix
Would that everyone might know I should already be damned were it not for Mary!
~St. Louis Marie DeMontfort