My Disability Doesn’t Empower Me: Lament of Hope Podcast
Danielle Richardson interviews Sydney Anne Bennett
Motherhood, Body Image, and Living with Functional Neurological Disorder
Danielle Richardson: Good afternoon, listeners. Thank you so much for listening to Lament of Hope podcast. Thank you for your support. Please like and subscribe, and check out Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. Wherever you’re watching or listening, we’re moving people over to as many platforms as we can.
I’m really excited today because I’m speaking with Sydney Anne Bennett. I came across her story while researching mothers with disabilities. Partly because of my own mental health struggles, one of the things I’ve always been insecure about is becoming a mom. It’s something I’ve always wanted, but it’s also something I’m afraid of. Right now, I think the fear is a little bigger than the desire.
When I found Sydney’s channel, I was so encouraged. She has Functional Neurological Disorder, or FND, and she shares on Instagram about being a mom, living with chronic illness, using a wheelchair, living with chronic pain, navigating the medical system, and the judgments that often come with disability.
She also released a book just over a month ago called Fearfully and Wonderfully Broken. I’ll make sure to link it below because I really encourage you to check it out. I listened to part of the audiobook, and the very first sentence immediately grabbed me. For anyone going through something difficult—whether it’s chronic illness or any other kind of suffering—it was so authentic and so true.
I’m excited to dive into her story today. I hope this conversation encourages you, especially in a time when I think we all need hope.
Sydney, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Sydney Anne Bennett: Thank you so much for having me. I’m so glad to be here.
Danielle: I have to say, your voice is so hopeful. You look young, but your voice sounds even younger than you look.
Sydney: (laughs) Yeah, I’m twenty-seven. I was actually just going to comment on how beautiful and soothing your voice is, too. You make a great podcast host.
Danielle: Oh, thank you.
For people who don’t know your story—and I know you’ve shared it many times—can you tell us how your Functional Neurological Disorder began, how you received the diagnosis, and what life with FND looks like today?
Sydney’s Diagnosis
Sydney: Yes.
For about a year before I got married—I was twenty-two when I got married—I had a lot of unexplained chronic pain. It kept getting progressively worse, spreading throughout my body and affecting pretty much every aspect of my life, but no one could figure out what was going on.
We got married knowing something medical was happening. We had no idea it was neurological or what was about to happen.
Two weeks after our honeymoon, we had a normal newlywed date night. We were driving home when my hands suddenly became paralyzed.
We stopped at the emergency room. We were living in rural Kansas, so there wasn’t a lot of testing they could do there. They ran some preliminary scans but couldn’t find anything, so they sent me home with my hands still paralyzed.
Within the next two weeks, everything really snowballed.
I lost the ability to speak, the ability to walk, and my sense of taste. I started having excruciating chronic pain, seizures, and hallucinations.
We went back to the emergency room several more times, and eventually they told us, “Stop coming back here. We can’t help you. We think you might be dying.”
During the first month of our marriage, we were wondering whether we were looking at a terminal diagnosis.
About a month later, I finally received the diagnosis of Functional Neurological Disorder, which, thankfully, is not terminal.
FND basically means that my brain doesn’t send the correct signals to my nervous system and the rest of my body.
We had the good news that it wasn’t terminal, but it was also a difficult diagnosis because it carries a lot of stigma in the medical field, and there is still very little research or many treatment options available.
The way things currently stand, if you don’t get significantly better within the first several months to a year after symptoms begin, your chances of recovering go down quite a bit.
Four months after we got married, my husband deployed, so that entire first year of disability was spent figuring out how I was going to live with these very debilitating symptoms on my own.
That was five years ago.
If you fast-forward to today, I still experience all of those same symptoms. I’m much better at managing them with medication and mobility aids.
Like you mentioned in the introduction, I’m now a mom. I have two little girls—a two-year-old and an eight-month-old—and we live in Idaho.
I remember what it felt like to receive a diagnosis and think, My life is over. How am I supposed to live the rest of my life with this pain and this loss?
I wanted to start sharing, not from the perspective of someone who had overcome suffering or come out the other side, but from the perspective of someone who is still in the middle of it and is learning how to walk with the Lord through that struggle and through that sense of loss.
That’s really where my ministry, my Instagram, and my book have all come from.
I simply want to come alongside other people who are suffering and say, “Yes, this is real. This is what suffering looks like. So how do we faithfully live in it for the rest of our lives?”
Living with Symptom Fluctuation
Danielle: I was going to ask about that because obviously you’re speaking with me now. You’re moving around, you’re talking, and I know there are times when you’re using a wheelchair.
Was medication what helped? Was it physical therapy? How did you regain some of the movement that you had lost?
Sydney: The strange thing about FND is that the symptoms fluctuate.
Before I became disabled, I thought disability was static. I thought if someone used a wheelchair, they simply couldn’t walk.
After becoming disabled and connecting with people who had real disabilities—not just the kind I had seen on television or in movies—I realized there’s actually a lot of symptom fluctuation.
With FND especially, you can have days where you feel almost completely normal, and then the next hour—or the next day—you might not be able to get out of bed.
For example, last night I had a really difficult seizure. I lost coherence, and my entire body became completely paralyzed.
Within about an hour, I had some movement back. Then I woke up this morning feeling much better. I’ve been able to move my hands today, and I’ve been able to walk a little bit.
I’ve learned to use my wheelchair to manage those symptoms because I can usually tell that if I push myself too hard, I’m probably going to end up back in that place again.
One of the hardest things is trying to explain that fluctuation to other people.
People will say, “I don’t understand why you’re using a wheelchair. I saw you walking yesterday.”
Learning that disability doesn’t always look the way I thought it did—and helping other people understand that—has been one of the biggest adjustments.
It’s honestly just as strange to me as it is to everyone else that my symptoms can fluctuate so much.
Part Two: Parenting with Disability, Seizures, Motherhood, and Raising Children Through Suffering
Danielle Richardson: I was just talking with a woman the other day who has an autoimmune disorder. Some days she’s choking in bed because she can’t breathe, and then the next day she can get up and move around.
Even personally, I’ve had people in my life who’ve gone through chronic illness, and I’ve watched how there are stages and phases. They have to have so much grace for themselves, and the people around them really need to see the bigger picture instead of judging them by one day.
I’m curious about your seizures. You’ve experienced them for a while now, and you know what they’re feel like. Has the fear gone down over time? Are you able to think, “Okay, this is happening, but I know I’m going to come out the other side because that’s what’s happened before?” Or are they still as scary as they were in the beginning?
Sydney Anne Bennett: That’s a great question.
The fear has gone down a lot.
For what I call my “normal” seizures, I know when they’re coming. That’s actually one of the ways I’m able to take care of my children. I know when a seizure is coming, so I can get them settled, get them to a safe place, explain what’s about to happen, have the seizure, recover for a few minutes, and then continue caring for them.
For my more severe or violent seizures, I can still feel them coming on. They don’t scare me unless I start becoming incoherent.
That’s a symptom I’ve really struggled with, both mentally and emotionally, as well as physically. It’s hard to explain, but you can actually feel the confusion beginning to come over you. You know that pretty soon you’re not going to understand what’s happening, and that can be really frightening.
For my more severe seizures, I still experience fear when I enter that incoherent state.
For my regular seizures, though, I don’t experience fear anymore, and I’m really thankful for that because every seizure was terrifying in the beginning.
One of the tools one of my mentors gave me—and I talk about her in the book—is that when you feel a seizure coming, even though you know you won’t be able to pray during the seizure or during that period of incoherence, you can pray before it happens.
You know what’s coming.
I’ve started doing that much more, and I’ve realized it applies to other areas of life as well.
You can feel depression beginning to come back.
You can feel an anxiety spiral starting again.
You can feel a difficult anniversary approaching or a temptation you’re trying to overcome.
You can feel those things coming, and that’s often what creates so much fear.
I’ve started seeing those warning signs as a gift from God because they give me an opportunity to pray before the storm arrives and ask Him to carry me through it.
Knowing that He will hold me through those moments has been a tremendous gift, and it’s helped me navigate these symptoms so much better.
Danielle: I love what you said about your children because I think there are two extremes that parents often fall into.
Some parents tell their children everything. Every emotion, every fear, every struggle gets put on the child until the child grows up feeling overwhelmed.
Other parents never talk about anything. They don’t expose their children to sickness, death, disability, mental health struggles, or suffering at all. Then, when something difficult happens, the child has no framework for understanding it.
You mentioned that you’re able to tell your children, “Mom’s about to have a seizure, but I’m going to be okay.”
First, have you ever struggled with guilt over that? Especially when you first became a mom?
And second, how do your children respond when you explain what’s about to happen?
Sydney: Those are great questions.
I have carried a lot of guilt over it, especially on my harder days.
My children don’t see how severe my symptoms can become. They’re still very young, so we’re protecting them from those more intense situations. They don’t know that I can become incoherent or experience some of the more severe neurological symptoms.
But when it comes to my seizures, that’s something they are around.
Because they’ve grown up with them, and because we’ve never hidden them or treated them as something terrifying, they’ve actually handled them very well.
It doesn’t faze them.
My two-year-old understands the most.
When I feel a seizure coming, I’ll tell her, “I’m going to have a seizure in a couple of minutes, so I’m going to lie down. I’m going to close my eyes. I won’t be talking for a little while, and then I’ll wake up and finish reading your book.”
I actually have videos of her sitting on me and reading a picture book while I’m having a seizure because she’s completely unfazed by it now.
I receive a lot of messages from people saying they think I’m going to traumatize my children because they witness my seizures.
Almost every time, those comments come from someone who isn’t familiar with disabilities or medical episodes and simply thinks, “That sounds scary.”
Or they come from someone who experienced an unexpected seizure with a parent or loved one, and that truly was traumatic.
The difference is that trauma often happens when something unexpected overwhelms your nervous system.
When something is expected, when there’s a plan, and when you’re able to respond with your brain instead of your nervous system, that’s actually what protects us from trauma.
If you’re a child and your parent suddenly collapses without warning, starts convulsing, and you have no idea what’s happening, that absolutely can be terrifying.
But growing up with a parent who knows when a seizure is coming, explains it in simple language, has a plan, always wakes up afterward, and never places the emotional burden on the child—that’s a completely different experience.
I’ve heard from many adults who grew up with disabled parents or parents with seizures, and they often tell me, “This is exactly how my parents handled it, and I loved my childhood. It was never scary because I understood what was happening.”
There are also healthy boundaries.
I want my children to understand the things they’re already going to notice.
If they notice that I’m using my wheelchair, walking differently, unable to move one of my hands, or about to have a seizure, I want them to understand what’s happening.
But if I’m carrying depression, fear, grief, or I had a terrible night and they wouldn’t otherwise know that, I’m not going to place that on them.
I don’t want my children becoming my coping mechanism.
Those heavy emotions belong with my husband, my friends, my counselor, and ultimately with the Lord.
But when there are things my children naturally notice, I don’t want to hide them.
I want them to see how I faithfully live through those things.
Danielle: That’s such a healthy distinction.
Sydney: I also think there’s a unique gift in growing up with a parent who has a disability or chronic illness.
Children get to see their parent rest, and they learn that resting is okay.
They get to see weakness.
They get to see someone faithfully living through difficult things because one day they’re going to experience weakness too.
They’re going to experience suffering.
They’ll have a living example of what it looks like to walk through those things.
I’ve found that many children who grow up in homes like this become incredibly compassionate, empathetic, and cheerful.
I’ve heard that from other parents with disabilities, and I’ve seen it in my own children.
I’m not saying those qualities are unique only to children who grow up with disabled parents.
What I am saying is that when we fear our weakness is going to hurt our children, we sometimes miss the fact that our faithful perseverance can actually become a gift to them.
They’re not always going to feel strong.
Showing them what weakness looks like—and what faithfulness looks like in the middle of weakness—is a tremendous gift.
Danielle: That’s beautifully said.
I’ve been wrestling with this because one of the women I recently interviewed had terminal cancer.
Her insurance company denied chemotherapy treatment, but when she asked about physician-assisted death, they told her it would cost one dollar and twenty-eight cents.
She was stunned that it was cheaper for her to die than to live.
We’re living in a time where people reach a point of suffering, isolation, and hopelessness, and ending their lives is increasingly celebrated.
Then I meet people like you.
Your life isn’t easy.
You’re living with disability and chronic pain, yet you’re living your life as fully as you possibly can.
It doesn’t look perfect.
It isn’t less painful.
But it’s beautiful because you’re still living it.
I think that’s a completely different way of looking at suffering.
Part Three: Faith, Hope, Chronic Pain, God’s Faithfulness, and Finding Purpose in Suffering
Danielle Richardson: You mentioned the Lord, so I know your faith is a huge part of your life.
When the pain gets really hard, when things are really rough, and maybe you wish you didn’t have this life or wish things looked different, what is your rock in those moments? Why does that rock matter more than the pain? Because the pain is affecting you right now.
Sydney Anne Bennett: Listening to what you were saying about someone feeling so broken over their pain and what their life looks like, I can understand how someone would be driven to suicide or to wanting to give up this life.
I have been there before. I’ve thought many times, What if it wouldn’t be so bad just to end it? Or, What if I just can’t carry on?
Like you said, I believe in the Lord. I trust in the Lord. I have the promises of God that He’s going to turn this into something good, that this life is a gift He has given to me, and that my purpose here is to live it for His glory.
But just like you said, there often seems to be a disconnect, when you’re working through suffering, between the hope and the promise and the pain that’s hitting you right now.
I’ll be very vulnerable here.
I had a really difficult night last night. I was in excruciating pain. It’s been a little while since I’ve had a night that bad because my symptoms tend to get better postpartum. I’m right at the eight-month mark, and they’re starting to come back more.
Last night was the worst it’s been in quite a long time.
I was in tears, crying out to the Lord, saying, “I don’t know if I can do this again. Please take this pain away from me. Please heal me. Please do something that will deliver me from this right now.”
I don’t know if that’s God’s plan for my life.
I don’t know if He’s going to heal me.
This may simply be my body and these symptoms for the rest of my life.
If my hope is only in physical healing, then I’m going to be driven to despair because, if I don’t receive that healing, what is the point?
My hope has to be in something bigger than physical healing.
I think that’s where the rock comes in.
We know God is good.
We know His promises are true.
We know God hates the brokenness of this world so much that He came, lived, and died to be broken by the brokenness of this world—and then conquered it.
Because He rose again, if we trust Him, we will rise again one day into perfect, glorified bodies.
I know that’s coming.
That’s what gives my pain meaning right now.
That’s what connects my suffering to hope.
I know one day my body will be redeemed.
All of this pain will be turned into glory.
Redemption isn’t just a future point in time that I can’t touch.
It’s so powerful that it actually works backward through time and gives meaning to the pain I’m experiencing today.
That can be hard to see.
But we’re not supposed to look at our entire lifetime and ask, “How am I going to live like this forever?”
God hasn’t given you strength for your future yet because you’re not there.
He’s only given you strength for today.
The question isn’t, “How am I going to live my whole life like this?”
When you ask that, you’re imagining a future without God.
The better question is, “How do I live this moment right now?”
Look to Jesus in the pain you’re experiencing right now.
Yesterday, when I was in so much pain, I kept thinking, “How am I going to take care of my kids like this? All I want to do is curl up in a ball on the floor and not move for hours.”
I found myself in constant conversation with the Lord all day long, which I don’t have when I’m feeling better.
It was, “Lord, help me get through this next moment.”
“Lord, please give me patience right now.”
“Lord, please hold back my tears until the kids go down for their naps.”
It was just this raw, honest dialogue with the Lord because I knew I didn’t have the strength in myself.
As you continue walking through suffering, it’s not that you stop experiencing despair, anxiety, anger, or grief.
It’s that, as God forms you into someone more like Himself, you become quicker to turn to Him.
You still experience those emotions, but you’re faster to bring them to the Lord instead of trying to carry them yourself.
The growth happens when you take those raw emotions and lay them before God, knowing that’s exactly what you’re supposed to do with them.
That’s not a lack of faith.
It’s actually evidence of faith.
It’s a sign that God is doing something in you, and He will give you the strength to get through today.
Then, when tomorrow comes, He’ll give you the strength for tomorrow.
Recognize the Pattern of God’s Faithfulness
Danielle: Your relationship with the Lord has probably deepened so much because of this.
It’s one thing to be a Christian, but it’s another thing to be in minute-by-minute conversation with God because you’re constantly saying, “You’re my friend. You’re my helper. Please help me.”
Then, at the end of the day, you realize the pain may not have gone away, but He carried you through it.
Sydney: I was in a wheelchair by the age of twenty-two, and a lot of people saw that as an added burden because I was so young.
I remember my mentor telling me, “What a blessing that you’re suffering so young.”
I thought, What on earth are you talking about?
She said, “When you go through intense suffering—the kind that permanently divides your life into before and after—you experience God in a way you simply cannot experience Him otherwise.”
It’s a gift to receive that early in life because you’ll know God in that way for the rest of your life.
In the moment, you don’t feel like you’re growing.
You feel like you’re right back where you started.
You think, I can’t believe I’m struggling with this again.
Why am I still grieving these symptoms after five years? I should be over this by now.
When those valleys come, it feels like you’ve gone all the way back.
But God doesn’t work that way.
God only moves us forward.
Yes, you’re in another valley, but you’re hundreds of valleys farther along than you were at the beginning.
When suffering forces you to rely on God because you’ve run out of strength yourself, He really does grow you.
In the middle of it, it often feels like the opposite.
It feels like you’re doubting more.
It feels like you’re struggling with your faith more.
It feels like you’re wrestling with anger, grief, and questions Christians aren’t supposed to have.
But God is actually using all of that to shape you.
Later, when you look back, you realize how much He was carrying you, even when you couldn’t feel it.
One of the ways I’m able to cope now with those difficult seasons is by looking back at the pattern of God’s faithfulness.
At the beginning, every seizure, every episode of paralysis, every time I became incoherent, it felt like my world was ending.
Then God carried me through.
The next episode came, and once again I thought my world was ending.
Again, God carried me through.
Eventually you begin to recognize the pattern.
The pain doesn’t disappear.
The sadness and loss don’t disappear.
But you remember, I’ve done this before with God.
I’ve seen Him be faithful before.
I can trust that He’ll be faithful again.
I think that’s one of the gifts God gives us in this life.
We’re not always allowed to see all the ways He’s using our suffering.
He’s promised that understanding when we get to heaven.
But here, He lets us see His faithfulness repeated over and over again.
Throughout Scripture, whenever God revealed His faithfulness in a remarkable way, His people built memorials.
The Israelites would pile up stones, and later their children would ask, “What do these stones mean?”
Their parents would tell the story again of God’s faithfulness.
Those memorials reminded them, “God proved Himself faithful here, and He’ll do it again.”
That’s what we’re called to do.
When we find ourselves back in familiar places of grief or suffering, those moments should remind us, I’ve been here before, and God was here with me then. I know He’s here with me now.
Danielle: Did you have that mindset before becoming a mother?
Were you already thinking, “The Lord will give me strength when I need it?”
Sydney: I didn’t think I could have children.
There was hardly any representation.
I couldn’t find anyone online who was parenting from a wheelchair.
There was one woman, and I thought, She’s amazing. I could never do that.
I kept searching for confirmation that I could be a mom.
Part of me wondered, Am I even allowed to be a mom if I use a wheelchair? If I have seizures? How could I be a good mother with these symptoms?
Honestly, if I’d been waiting until I reached the point where I finally felt completely ready, I don’t know if I ever would have gotten there.
I became pregnant unexpectedly.
The Lord gave us that gift before we were ready, and I think that was a tremendous blessing because I don’t know if we ever would have felt ready on our own.
I remember looking at the positive pregnancy test and just feeling completely overwhelmed.
But I also remember feeling so much love for that little baby already.
I realized, I hadn’t accounted for that part.
I thought becoming a parent was entirely a head decision.
I had no idea love would make me willing to walk into something without knowing what it would look like.
Part Four: Motherhood, Disability, Identity, Beauty, and Hope
Danielle Richardson: Looking back, I think even parents who believe they know what parenting is going to look like quickly realize they don’t.
You go into parenting and think, Whoa, I did not plan for this at all. This is not what I expected.
That’s true for healthy parents and unhealthy parents.
Sydney Anne Bennett: Exactly.
You’re always walking into parenting a little blind, and that takes a lot of faith.
When it comes to disability—or any kind of chronic suffering—it can be difficult because you already know where your weak points are.
You think, I’m already struggling with this. How am I going to handle it with the added responsibility of children?
What I tell parents is this: first, you really can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.
You’re not going to figure out today what parenting will look like months or years from now because God isn’t giving you strength for that season yet.
When you get there, the strength will be there.
The creativity will be there.
You’ll get through it, and it will be a blessing.
When you already know your weak points, you’re actually already doing the hard parts.
A healthy parent may say, “This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
For the first time, they’re experiencing sleep deprivation, changing capacity, physical exhaustion, and realizing they can’t do what they used to do before children.
For many people with disabilities or chronic illness, we’ve already been living with those things.
I was already living with sleep deprivation, changing capacity, and physical symptoms long before I had children.
That part actually felt familiar.
What I hadn’t experienced was the immense joy and blessing of having children.
I was already carrying the hard things without the immediate reward.
One of the beautiful gifts of parenting is that now I experience both.
Sleep deprivation is still difficult.
I’m still waking up at night with my eight-month-old wondering why she won’t go back to sleep.
But I also get to experience the gift immediately.
With so many difficult things in life, we don’t get to see the beauty that comes from them until heaven.
With children, you experience the hard thing and the gift together.
The hard thing and the beauty happen side by side.
When someone with chronic illness worries about parenting because they’re already carrying so much, I remind them that they’re already doing many of the hardest parts.
What they haven’t experienced yet is the beauty.
God will give them the strength for the hard things just as He already is.
When I was pregnant, I had no idea how I was going to hold a baby while using a wheelchair.
Then I became pregnant again and thought, “Oh my goodness. I only have one lap. How am I going to hold two babies in my wheelchair?”
I couldn’t have figured those things out ahead of time.
But when I arrived in those seasons, God simply gave me what I needed.
You become creative.
You learn.
All of parenting is learning on the job, and God is there while you’re learning.
I Don’t Think Disability is Empowering
Danielle: That’s so truthful and encouraging.
I’ve interviewed several disability advocates, and many of them didn’t like being called “disabled.” They preferred different terms.
Is the word disabled offensive to you, or do you find it empowering?
Sydney: There’s a mixture of opinions within the disability community.
Most people I’ve interacted with actually prefer the term disabled because it isn’t meant to be a bad word. It’s simply an honest description of what’s happened.
Some people are uncomfortable with it, and sometimes people outside the disability community will say things like, “I don’t want to call you disabled. I’ll call you differently abled.”
For me, that feels more like a euphemism.
I’d rather just call it what it is.
I prefer the honesty of the word disabled.
I don’t know that I would say I find it empowering.
I simply find it truthful.
I think one of the problems with the cultural conversation around disability is that we’ve tried to understand brokenness apart from a biblical framework.
We tend to do one of two things.
Either we flatten disability into something that’s only inspirational, or we dilute it into something that’s good in itself.
I don’t think it’s either of those things.
You can have disability without turning it into inspiration.
You can also recognize that disability isn’t the way things are supposed to be.
It’s not good in itself.
The Bible teaches that God created a perfect world.
We were meant to have perfect bodies, perfect souls, and perfect fellowship with Him.
Disability, physical pain, and physical loss are results of the Fall.
They’re part of the brokenness of this world.
From a biblical perspective, someone can experience real brokenness in their body and still possess immeasurable worth because they’re made in the image of God.
Sometimes people struggle to hold those two truths together.
It can feel like if you say someone is broken, you’re saying they have no value.
Or if you say they have value, then you can’t acknowledge brokenness.
When I use the word disabled, I’m trying to hold both truths together.
My body isn’t the way it should be.
Something is lacking, and I live with that every day.
At the same time, I’m a human being made in the image of God.
That’s where my value comes from.
Because of that, I know this brokenness won’t last forever.
One day it will be taken away, and I’ll become everything I was created to be.
That’s where my hope comes from.
It’s not that I want to convince myself disability is good all by itself.
It’s that I know God is going to turn it into something good when He finally removes it.
This is Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be
Danielle: That’s so interesting because you’re saying disability itself isn’t good, but what God does with it will be good.
I think about death the same way.
People often say death is natural, but Scripture says death entered because of sin.
God didn’t create death.
Christ came to defeat death.
When someone dies, something inside us recognizes that this isn’t the way things were supposed to be.
One of the things I love about Christianity is that it’s a faith rooted in reality.
It forces us to acknowledge both the hard and the good.
Like childbirth—it’s one of the most painful experiences imaginable, yet mothers often describe it as one of the most beautiful because of what comes afterward.
Sydney: You said that so perfectly.
When we’re presented with that tension, we usually want one side or the other.
Death is either completely good or completely bad.
Disability is either beautiful or terrible.
We don’t naturally know how to hold both together.
When we experience death, there’s something inside us that recognizes how wrong it is because it is wrong.
When we try to frame death or disability as entirely positive, I think it actually undermines the reality of what people are experiencing.
It’s often meant to be empowering, but it can become another burden.
If I’m mourning someone I love and someone tells me death is natural or good, I begin wondering if I’m grieving the wrong way.
If I’m struggling with disability and someone tells me I should simply see it as beautiful, I can start believing I’m grieving incorrectly.
That only adds to the burden.
Christianity confronts reality.
Death is wrong.
Pain is wrong.
Disability is part of the brokenness of this world.
Those things are real.
But we don’t grieve as people without hope.
We know what’s coming.
We know this brokenness will one day be turned into glory.
That’s how we hold those two truths together.
I honestly think Christianity is the only worldview capable of holding that tension.
We can acknowledge that this world is deeply broken and still have hope because we know what comes next.
Disability and Body Image
Danielle: I want to wrap up by asking one more question.
How has living with disability affected your confidence as a woman?
Body image, motherhood, clothing, using a wheelchair—all of those things are different.
Spiritually, we know our beauty comes from Christ.
But practically speaking, women still want to feel beautiful.
How have you learned to feel beautiful, even in a wheelchair?
Sydney: That’s such a real question.
I think all of us struggle with this in different ways.
When you have something physical that people immediately notice—whether it’s a wheelchair, a body that works differently, a birthmark, or anything else—it can make you wonder how you’re supposed to feel beautiful.
It’s definitely been a process.
Our bodies are always changing.
You finally become comfortable with one season, and then everything changes again.
What’s funny is that I struggled with insecurity long before I became disabled.
Looking back now, I think, What was I even insecure about?
Then I became disabled, and it felt like a completely new level.
I remember reading through the book of Ephesians and writing down every description of who I am in Christ.
It was almost every sentence.
I was trying to learn how to find security, not in myself—which is always changing—but in who God is.
We often use the word insecure to describe a feeling.
But the word itself is actually objective.
It means you’re not secure.
So when I say I feel insecure, that feeling doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.
In Christ, I actually am secure.
Understanding that changed the way I thought about myself.
I began taking those insecurities to the Lord.
One of the hardest moments for me was taking a bath because I had to sit on the floor, and that was emotionally difficult.
I would pray, “Lord, my legs aren’t working right now, and I don’t like the way they look. Thank You for giving me my legs.”
I just talked honestly with Him about every insecurity.
Practically speaking, I also found that leaning into my disability helped.
At first I felt embarrassed about mobility aids.
Then I decided to stop avoiding them.
I invested in wheelchair wheel covers with flowers on them.
I found canes that felt stylish and matched my personality.
Instead of seeing them as something to hide, they became something I actually enjoyed using.
That changed my perspective.
I also learned to act opposite to how I felt.
Whenever I noticed people staring, my instinct was to hunch over, avoid eye contact, and look at the ground.
Instead, I forced myself to sit taller, smile, make eye contact, and carry myself confidently.
People often say, “Fake it until you make it.”
In many ways, confidence works like that.
Eventually, your feelings begin catching up with your actions.
Now I can go out in my wheelchair and genuinely feel confident.
If people stare, my instinct isn’t to hide anymore.
It’s simply to smile.
As I internalized that the stakes really aren’t that high, those moments became much easier.
It takes practice, but over time those confident actions become natural.
Closing Remarks
Danielle: I also want to say that you speak incredibly well.
You speak with so much confidence that people listening immediately think, “She knows exactly what she’s talking about.”
Sydney: (laughs) Thank you.
A lot of that really was faking it until I made it.
Now I genuinely do feel confident in what I’m saying.
A few years ago, I would have wondered whether I was saying the right things.
Danielle: Sydney, this has been such a gift.
You’ve encouraged me so much.
I came into this conversation tired from the week. My energy didn’t match my excitement.
But I’m leaving so encouraged.
I think so many people are going to walk away from this conversation feeling the same way.
It feels like one of those moments where you’re sitting on a porch with a glass of lemonade, taking a deep breath, and simply resting.
Thank you so much.
You really blessed me.
Sydney: Thank you so much.
I felt so encouraged too.
Your questions were wonderful and thought-provoking.
This conversation encouraged me as well, so thank you.
Danielle: You’re so welcome.
For everyone listening, I’ll include links below so you can check out Sydney’s book, Fearfully and Wonderfully Broken. It’s available in both print and audiobook.
I’d also encourage you to follow her on social media.
Your Instagram is @the.annegirl, right?
Sydney: Yes, that’s right.
Danielle: Wonderful.
Thank you again, Sydney.
Sydney: Thank you. Have a great day.
Danielle: You too. Bye.
Sydney: Bye.