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It is 7 A.M. and I lie awake in bed, waiting for somebody to come help me get ready for the day. The night was peaceful, restful. I feel my arms begin to twitch, my fingers wiggle, and my shoulders shrug. Uncontrollably.

I hear a key opening the front door. Soon my friend Scott walks into my room. "Klein, it's time to get up," he says. "You have a big day ahead of you." I smile when I realize that I'm preaching in church this morning. I roll onto my stool, as my friend makes my bed.

I scoot over to a computer voice box and begin typing, not with my fingers—I can't control my fingers at all—but I can type with the big toe on my right foot. I push the talk button. "I want to wear brown pants and the blue dress shirt," the machine says. The device sounds stilted and manufactured, like a robot from an old sci-fi movie, but it has been my voice for years, the one everybody is used to hearing.

We go into the bathroom, and Scott removes my clothes. He helps me onto the toilet and runs the water for the tub. After I'm done using the toilet, he lifts me into the tub. "Hey, Klein, do you want the full body wash?" he says with a smile. He washes my hair and then scrubs my body with a washcloth.

Scott is my older brother Jeff's best friend. He and I have known each other since 1990, but our friendship grew in 1996 when he accompanied me to the college basketball Final Four playoffs in Salem, Virginia. We had a blast, and we've been close friends ever since.

After the bath, Scott dries me off and helps me onto my stool. Soon we roll back to my room to get dressed.

What was God thinking?
I was born in 1973, a warm spring night on the first day of June. My mom's labor was going as planned, but all of a sudden the doctors realized I was struggling for my life. The umbilical cord was prolapsed, so they had to shove me back into my mom, knowing that they were cutting off my oxygen. As they did the emergency C-section, they were fighting the clock. Forty-five minutes later, I was born. I wasn't breathing and my body was blue. They started CPR, but I had gone without oxygen for more than an hour.

	Throughout my childhood, I read stories about Jesus healing the lame. I longed to experience that healing.

"Thank you," my mother said to the doctor who brought me back to life.

"You might not thank us someday," he said.

The lack of oxygen caused an injury to the motor portion of my brain. I have a disability called cerebral palsy. I am classified as an athetoid, which means my muscles never stop moving. The expectations for my life weren't high.

My parents wondered what my life would amount to, and they asked God why he allowed this to happen to their child: Did they do something wrong? Was God punishing them?

But their faith never wavered. They trusted God to get them through whatever was ahead, and they passed that faith on to me.

As I grew up, I was aware I was different from the rest of the children my age. My disability affects every muscle in my body. I am unable to do the regular daily tasks that people usually do on their own. I am unable to talk or use my arms and hands, but I can control my feet and toes. As a young child, I couldn't communicate with people. I couldn't tell my family what I wanted.

It was incredibly frustrating. But my mom was convinced there was a smart boy trapped inside my body.

	I had faith in God, but I didn't rely on it because I thought God had given me a bad deal.

Judy, my speech therapist, wondered if I might be able to speak using a communication box, so I was given my first one when I was 6. We took it home and mom let me try it. I used my left big toe to operate it, and by the next day I was talking in complete sentences.

It was a Godsend. The whole world seemed to open up to me. I was put in the regular classroom full time in 3rd grade, and I was able to make friends.

I went to church and learned about God, about his amazing power. Throughout my childhood, I was told that he could cure illness, diseases, and disabilities. I read stories in the Bible about how Jesus healed the lame, gave sight to the blind, and cured lepers. I longed to run with my friends on the playground and play sports. I longed to be healed by Jesus.

I prayed for a miracle, but Jesus didn't heal me. This frustrated me. I prayed to God: "Why are you leaving me in this condition? I have faith in you, so why did you do this to me? I know you have the power to heal me, so why don't you do it? Is my faith lacking? Please, Lord, make me understand."

Out of my hands
Back in my bedroom, Scott continues to dress me. We have put on my pants and I take a seat in my chair to get ready to change the gloves on my hands. My hands have been a problem my entire life. The gloves are worn for protection, so I don't hurt myself. But it's not easy. It's a huge challenge every day.

He wrestles with my right hand, holding it with both hands, as it starts to wiggle more. I cannot control my hands, and they are constantly wiggling and moving. My friend bends my wrist, like someone holding the head of a poisonous snake, and my hand opens voluntarily. The doctors don't know why this happens, why the muscles just seem to relax. But it does. As he keeps the wrist bent down, he removes the wet glove from my hand and starts to put on the new dry glove. He's struggling, trying to get the cuff over the knuckles. Finally, it slips over and now he's struggling to put each finger into the finger holes. After about seven minutes, he gets the glove on the right hand. It is onto the next hand, and the process begins again. After 14 minutes, the hardest part of the morning is over.

The struggle with my hands started at an early age. My index fingers would dig at my thumbs. The constant digging would cause the skin on my thumbs to break down, giving me a painful sore. Mom tried placing adhesive bandages on my thumbs, but that only worked for a while.

When I was 11 years old, I had such a sore on my right thumb that I couldn't leave the house. I had to lie on the floor on top of my hand, pinning it down to hold it open. The pain had become nearly unbearable, and we all knew something had to be done.

I remember the day I went to the hand specialist with my mom and Kathe, my physical therapist. As I sat there, listening to the doctor describe the surgery that he proposed for my hands, I was terrified. I curled up into a ball on my mother's lap and cried. I thought, Why me? Yet, after being comforted by Kathe and my mom, I knew God would be with me.

The surgery was successful, and I was able to finish 7th and 8th grade without any pain. But the problems with my thumbs flared up again when I was a sophomore in high school. It was hard enough not being able to play sports with my brothers, or drive a car, or go out with friends, but now I had to deal with this constant problem. Again, I cried out to God: "Why are you doing this to me?"

As I entered Hope College in Holland, Michigan, we came up with another solution for my hands. Linda, my occupational therapist, decided we should make gloves out of neoprene. I would wear a knit glove underneath the neoprene half glove. It worked.

Free of the nonstop pain, I proved that I could live on my own, with a little help for my daily needs. Every day somebody would get me dressed and feed me. But other than that, I was a college student and I was getting good grades. I was excelling on my own. I went to parties and had a great time, just like everybody else.

Then, God gave me another opportunity to rely on him. During my fourth year at college, I developed a bruise on my thumbnails from my index fingers pressing on my thumbs. They hurt so bad that I began taking three Advil four times a day. I was put on a muscle relaxant three times a day, and though it helped other muscles in my body, the bruises on my nails didn't go away.

The gift of disability
One night I sat in my chair crying because I knew there was no solution. We had tried everything, and nothing took away the pain. I wondered why again, but this time God revealed an answer to me. Or perhaps I was just finally ready to listen to what he had been saying to me my entire life.

He directed me to 2 Corinthians 12:9, where the apostle Paul says, "but he has told me, 'My grace is all you need, for my power is perfected in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.'"

As I read this, I realized I didn't have to be healed physically. My hands didn't have to be healed. All I had to do was rely on the grace and strength of God. It changed my life.

I knew Jesus all of my life. I knew he died to wash my sins away. Yet, I was too focused on my disability to see that Jesus was there throughout my life. He was there keeping me alive on the night of my birth. He was there when I had to ride on the bus for 30 minutes to go to school. He was there every time my hands would bother me. He was there waiting for me to take hold of him and his strength.

I had faith in God, but I didn't rely on it because I thought God had given me a bad deal. But suddenly I understood that God had given me a gift of disability. It is a gift because I am able to boast in my weakness, and people will be able to see Jesus shine through me.

A new plan
I graduated from Hope College in 1997 with a major in kinesiology (the study of body movement). I originally planned to go into the field of adapted sports/recreation, to find new ways for disabled people to participate in recreational activities. But I realized that God had blessed me with a gift to speak his word in a unique way, so I felt compelled to develop and deepen that ability.

I spent three years studying at Western Theological Seminary, also in Holland, Michigan. Then God led me to start Clay Vessel Ministries. Now I travel throughout Michigan, into the Chicago area, and even up towards Wisconsin, preaching, teaching, and speaking at schools and other organizations.

God has a plan for my life. I know that now. His words in Jeremiah 29:11-14 remind me of this: "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart."

'I can do everything…'
I'm in my wheelchair, in front of the church. The congregation looks at me in disbelief. I push the button on my computerized voice box and it begins to speak my sermon. It tells them how Philippians 4:13—"I can do everything through him who gives me strength"—has become the theme for my life. It shares my testimony, the journey from the miracle of my birth to my seasons of doubt and despair to my present mission to declare his goodness and power.

After 30 minutes, it is done and the people rush up to me. Smiling. Hugging me. Taking pictures. Asking questions. Some have tears in their eyes; others just shake their head. God has used my story to touch people again.

These days, I speak two or three times a month and want to talk even more. This is what I have been called to do, my purpose in life. I can feel God working through me. This is what he wanted all along, for me to share my story, to proclaim his truth, to touch lives. I know now that God was there throughout my life, and I want others to know that he's there for them too.

I have a choice each day—to get down and depressed, or to choose to trust God and follow his will for my life. I choose God.

Editor's Note: For more information about Chris Klein's ministry, visit www.clayvesselministries.org.

A Christian Reader original article. Chris Klein lives in Holland, Michigan.

Copyright © 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
Click here for reprint information.

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