Beyond the Pre-determined Lines

Today we’d like to introduce you to our friend, Chris Simning. The only better gift than reading his story would be to sit across the table and hear him tell it. As a teenager, Chris’ life took a dramatic shift when he woke up unable to lift his head. God has done some tremendous work in his life and now he travels as a speaker of God’s faithfulness.

My heart raced while beads of sweat formed across my brow. Three-ring binders popped opened while about a hundred medical students from the University of San Francisco sat mesmerized in an amphitheater-style lecture hall.  They began to write feverishly between notebook paper lines, concentrating meticulously upon jotting down every terminology used, then glancing upwards in sporadic intervals at the neurologist explaining to them a diagnosis that they had only read about in textbooks.

They diverted their eyes to a terrified eighth grader before them.  Me!

Where was God? And did he love me?

If so, why was I so alone with a rare muscle and nerve disease not all too common for humanity?

Why did I have to stand in front of a crowd of white smocks being on display for them to study a hot new specimen with a condition that seemed to become my epidemic and nobody else’s problem?  Yes, I suppose I was one of kind but for reasons where I thought I no longer mattered because now I looked awkward and could not function the way that I used to in a society so apt to judge a book by its mere cover.

My life was changed somewhere in the course of one lone night in the year of 1983. The next day on Easter morning I awoke to discover that my world was rattled and somehow I turned up bruised.  Everything turned to chaos from the moment I stood from my bed and I found my chin touching my chest.  My head was lumped over so far for no apparent reason and it spun my life into pandemonium.  Going from your average, run of the mill kid, an obscure muscle and nerve disease immediately gripped my life forever from that day forward and pulverized me for the ensuing years.  Scars from brokenness made a mark that reeked havoc upon my soul.

I didn’t have a choice but to embark upon an unwelcome adventure. The cutesy, psychological sentiment of “one of a kind” emerged from others, although in this case I did not want to be labeled as such.  My body had twisted, contorting itself into something like a pretzel.  The back of my neck had a muscular bulge that might as well have been the size of Mount Rushmore that caused me to be self-conscious of my appearance.  I suddenly became sensitive to any comment or snide smirk that came from a wandering eye who feasted their eyes upon me and in turn lashed their tongue to form words that pierced me with jagged arrows.

I didn’t fit in anymore and my confidence was shattered. As a junior high student, I felt utterly alone as if I was left to scrape up the discombobulated pieces that were once my life to try to retrieve the normalcy of childhood innocence once again but it was met without success.  Instead to my dismay, I grieved a death to the whimsical charms of youth not knowing how or even if I wanted to move ahead into the mystery of the unknown.

I was forced to grow up, and yet to the scrutiny of being judged for how I looked and for a lie that for many years I would come to believe about who I was.

Did I somehow fall through the cracks? Did the Lord forget me?  Then, why was I cheated, robbed of my youth?   My life became an existential quandary as I grappled with my reality, envisioning a life similar to paralysis that from its onset would worsen initially.  The prognosis of my muscle and nerve disease each and every day for the next five years after waking up with it eventually put me into the confines of a wheelchair with a speech that was slurred.

My mom was planning out the music she was going to play at my memorial service at the age of 18.

Needless to say, I’m not your typical Christian because I can’t afford to be. To be frank, I do not even like the term “Christian” due to its misrepresentations of church services being transformed into what is the cultural norm.  I rather prefer to be called a follower of Christ.

I started going to counseling, but in a rather kind of a holistic manner.  My sister babysat for a family of three daughters.  The mom was busy like most, and the dad was a pilot in the United States Air Force and on the side did some counseling for others.  One night before coming back home, my sister asked the dad if he would be willing to see me due to the difficult transition in my life of dealing with the rarity of a newfound muscle and nerve disease. This began a six-year relationship with a man that the Lord used to change my life, and I did not go to an office, but he came to me when he wasn’t flying on a mission and his payment was sitting with us and having dinner with my family.  After time around the table with all of us, my family would leave and this dear man would simply open the Bible and talk to me about God’s love, how I was created in His image, and how His faithfulness would show itself true in the most difficult of circumstances.  Tuesday evenings became sacred to me!

Years later, I stumbled upon a couple of verses that have since become my life’s ambition, the essence to what drives my passion, and the calling that I wasn’t looking for but somehow found me.

“But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:27-29, NIV).

The disease I have is known as torsional dystonia, or today it may be referred to as torsion dystonia. At first, it overwhelmed and taunted the very fabric of my being, poisoning me by the power to believe things about myself with society lending to that reinforcement.  I eventually made a conscious decision to choose to serve the Lord Jesus regardless of where this debilitating disease would take me, which possibly meant death and certainly confinement to a wheelchair for the rest of my days.

No, I never envisioned ever being able to walk again and now I have been miraculously doing so for years (through the tool of water therapy that the Lord used) and I have gone on to do things such as drive, live on my own, and earn a Master’s degree in clinical psychology.

I declare myself to be healed though to the outsider a disability is still obvious in how I walk, look, and talk.

I was working on summer staff at Hume Lake Christian Camps when the Lord provided me with an opportunity to speak my story to a group of high school students every week of that particular summer. One opportunity turned into other opportunities and the snowball effect happened.  Before long, I was speaking more regularly about how God’s economy does not depend upon our definition of success or upon our prescription to what heals.  Rather, he chooses to use what we deem to be foolish, weak, lowly, and despised, because He nullifies what we assign as wealth and prestige to make us look so small in His winnowing power that leaves us breathless.

I have since been given the unheard privilege to speak to those who get lost in the crowd and to those in church parking lots who experience heartache feeling that they have to put on a happy face in order to enter the doors of a sanctuary to garner an acceptance. My heart aches for them and for the disillusion of what has become protocol.  I proudly tell people that I am a missionary to Christians, which seems counterintuitive, yet believers are desperate for Him without even knowing.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ is about finding meaning in our brokenness, knowing we are redeemed through a Savior. This amazing grace allows us to live out a purpose in the imperfect world of our trials instead of stifling ourselves by its distractions, stuck in that unending façade in how we think we rid ourselves from those “ugly” things about us when all the while they still remain.

I am living a dream that I once believed to be a nightmare.

I started Chris Simning Ministries (a.k.a. OBSCURE Ministries) in 2000 based from 1 Corinthians 1:27-29.  It is a non-profit organization that is an evangelical speaking entity whose mission it is to validate pain, restore hope, and to build resiliency out from the clouds of seemingly impossible hardships.  The aim is to promote growth in those who are wounded whether emotionally, physically, or spiritually, and to enhance their faith amid the difficult questions of why.   I want people to see Jesus in the reflection of their pain and to live out the blessing of being comfortable in their own skin.  God uses the OBSCURE things of life to bring about a CURE for our souls.

Today, I span the country, sometimes the globe speaking about the power of story and the Lord’s faithfulness in the trying times of brokenness that is often used to lead us to an abundant life in Jesus Christ.  My life is a thematic expression that attests to His faithfulness . I have been granted this life as a gift.  To the Lord Jesus be the glory that He would choose somebody like me to declare to others to never underestimate the power by which God silences the masses by His miraculous hand to all who believe!

I praise God for my family and a few close friends who were influential in the way that they loved me when I couldn’t see Jesus in the midst of the dark days of my soul and a life that I certainly did not sign up for.

We are loved. We are worth it.  It’s why He paid the ultimate sacrifice by dying for our sins on the cross and having victory over death by rising again.  Stand restored! “For in him we live and move and have our being…” (Acts 17:28, NIV).

–Chris