Alison Reynor reflects on her life as wife, mother and carer in a family that lives with disability as part of their everyday life and experience. Ali lives with her husband, two boys, and a golden retriever and works as a nurse in Hampshire. She is learning to juggle the joys and the challenges of living alongside disability & chronic illness and figuring out how her faith works in the midst of all of that.
Disability is often something that is perceived from afar as “other” – something that doesn’t happen to us, doesn’t affect us and is something that someone else, possibly much better qualified or experienced is probably taking care of…
That is, until it lands into our lives one day, unexpected and uninvited, and a whole new world can be opened up to us that we didn’t know could be so beautiful, hard, rich, challenging and surprising in all it reveals to us about God, ourselves and others.
My husband had a major brain injury aged thirteen, and although he was seriously ill at the time, made an incredible recovery and went on to finish school, go to university and was holding down a challenging teaching job. Life was full and fun – living in Brighton with our one-year-old son, Joseph. Then a series of seizures, followed by a far more serious one, resulted in him being rushed to intensive care and our life became derailed. What I thought was a quick detour became a long-haul deviation from what I thought was the life mapped out for us.
After four weeks on a neurology ward and months in a wheelchair, my husband made a painfully slow recovery to what would be his ‘new normal’ – a life massively impacted by daily seizures and chronic fatigue. He had to take medical retirement from his teaching career and carve out a new way of being.
Then our second son arrived, with an unexpected post-natal diagnosis of Downs Syndrome and a few years later, autism spectrum disorder was added to the list, along with some medical complications. Life was complex, hard, and exhausting in my son’s early years, and we were definitely living “the life unexpected” but there was still so much beauty I could see right in front of me. It was hard to put it into words for others, but it was real and tangible for us.
I remember looking into my son’s face when he was tiny and having a very strong sense of “being in on a beautiful secret”. There was so much, at that stage that I couldn’t articulate, but I knew very strongly that God had much to reveal to me about himself through the disabilities my growing family were now experiencing.
I began asking questions, listening to podcasts, reading Disability Theology books, biographies, anything I could get my hands on. I was asking lots of questions like
“What makes a life worthy?”
“What makes us human?”
“Will there be disability in heaven?”
“How can I help others see the extraordinary beauty that I see in a child with complex needs that many in society would rather didn’t exist?”
“How can we do church for people who don’t fit into our model of Sunday Worship?”
I knew that a good understanding of the theology of disability would help me understand and care for my beautiful family but also help me share what I felt was real treasure with those around me.
One of my finds was an American author and podcaster on all things disability called Amy Julia Becker. She hosts a wonderful podcast called “Reimagining the Good Life: Disability. Faith. Culture”
A quote from her struck a chord and I have come back to it again and again. She says
I’ve come to believe that if I understand God’s logic around disability, I’ve come to understand God’s logic about humanity. I understand myself and everyone else more clearly if I understand how God sees people with disability.
I was recently asked to speak at my local church on “Disability, Difference and The Kingdom of God” as part of a series of teaching on Unity in the Church. It was a joy to bring some of my reflections on themes I’ve been pondering and wrestling with over the last ten years, such as worth, being made in the image of God and belonging, to my church community to spark the beginning of what I hope will become an ongoing dialogue. Disability matters to each one of us as together we learn more of what it means to be God’s image bearers. So, I offer my talk that I gave back in February 2026, to my local church, Hope Church Petersfield, to you here, for you to listen to and share with others. My prayer is that we find ways of sharing more of the stories from those living with disability and see the richness and beauty of the image of God within us all. And we might see the “other” as the “us”.
You can also find an article by Alison entitled ‘The secret places’ at
https://thebeautifulwithness.com/the-secret-places/
This article was written for the Summer 2026 edition of the Disability Ministry newsletter from the Diocese of London.
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