Advice from a man without arms

This headline caught my eye: “I was born with no arms and thought I was a hopeless mistake–and then this happened . . .”

Daniel Ritchie is a husband, a father of two, and a Christian speaker and writer. He is also a bit unusual in that he eats with his feet, drives with his feet, and brushes his teeth with his feet. As he explains, “I do everything with my feet because I was born without arms.”

People have not always been sympathetic. He has been called names. He remembers a rude kid at Disney World. And the time he and his parents were asked to leave a restaurant because of the way he has to eat.

Daniel writes that, as a teenager, “The words of others began to warp my perception of the value of my life. I felt like damaged goods, broken and unlovable. Isolation and darkness were beginning to sweep over me. I started to hate myself and other people.”

A shift in perspective changed everything

Then he found a verse in Scripture where David prayed to God, “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well” (Psalm 139:14).

Here’s how God used that verse in Daniel’s soul: “I sat in my room and let that verse wash over me. Wonderful are your works God. You have taken your time to make me just like I am. I am not an accident or a genetic mutation. I am, by all accounts, different by design” (his emphasis).

AT that moment, Daniel Ritchie made this transformative discovery: “I was no longer who people said I was. I was who God said I was.”

When he learned to love himself as God loves him, he learned to love other people the same way. Now he invites us to join him:

“That change in my perspective, the realization of that truth, has altered the scope of my entire life. And I believe it’s only that perspective that can change how we relate to one another in our increasingly vitriolic and divided culture–a culture where many demand that their differences are celebrated,…