My name is Chelsea Zimmerman, I am 27 years old and live in Holts Summit Missouri. I was born in Maryland, moved to Florida a year later, and have been in Missouri since I was nine. I still consider myself a Floridian, although I do love mid-Missouri. I have a slight intolerance for cold weather. I like a beautiful snowfall here and there, but I’d rather be outside enjoying abundant sunshine on breezy 75-85 degree days. I’m a small town girl, I prefer the beach or a quiet country setting to a big city.
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.
Ten years ago, 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 last year 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. Apart from working for my parents, I do a number of volunteer duties 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 nation. 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! I have a great life because I’m a human being, dammit, and I know my life has value!
“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
