Living with Multiple Sclerosis means learning to navigate a body that does not always cooperate. It means wrestling with faith, asking hard questions about God, and redefining independence.
With this, there is a metaphor in my head I can’t shake.
It was planted during Dan’s and my conversation with Pastor Dana Hendershot for Episode 96 of our A Couple Takes on MS podcast.
We were digging into faith, suffering, and the question so many Christians living with chronic illness eventually ask: Why did God let this happen?
Pastor Dana, our pastor at Immanuel Lutheran Church, shared a vivid story about painting a winter scene in a class at Art Reach of Mid Michigan. She said she was nervous about possibly messing up her painting of a tree, afraid to dip her brush in the paint and ruin what she had started.
Someone next to her laughed gently and said, “If you make a mistake on a canvas, you cover it with white and try again. You can just paint over it.”
But then Pastor Dana followed up her story with the metaphor that stopped me.
Multiple Sclerosis, she explained, isn’t a bad brushstroke.
It’s a rip in the canvas.
You can’t paint over it. You can’t smooth it out. The tear is permanent.
I felt that in my bones.
I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1997. Five years later, I lost the ability to walk. MS reshaped my independence, my mobility, and how I move through the world.
It changed how I enter rooms—always scanning for ramps and accessible bathrooms, wide doorways, and power-assist doors. It altered how I connect with friends, participate in church, navigate grocery store aisles, and advocate for disability rights in public spaces.
Chronic illness does not politely adjust your life. It rewrites it.
I can’t repaint my nervous system. I can’t “white out” my disability. I can’t reimagine my wheelchair into something that doesn’t exist. There is no undoing the day Multiple Sclerosis became permanent.
The rip is real.
We discuss this metaphor and the deeper faith questions behind it in the podcast with Pastor Dana. You can listen to the full conversation here: Taking on Pastor Dana Hendershot & why did God let MS happen to us?
When chronic illness changes the picture
What struck me most was when Pastor Dana said we still get to decide how to handle the rip.
Do we hide it?
Do we paint around it so no one notices?
Do we integrate it into the picture?
Or do we let it become a focal point?
For a long time, I tried to minimize mine. I did not want to be “the woman with Multiple Sclerosis.” And I never have liked that disability may be the first thing people notice about me.
But the truth is that my rip is why I sit across from legislators and talk about disability rights and accessibility. It is why inclusion isn’t theoretical to me. It’s lived. It’s daily. It’s personal. It’s why my conversations about faith and chronic illness are honest and not always polished.
And Dan has his own rip.
Living with Multiple Sclerosis as a husband and care partner reshaped his sense of strength differently from mine. Caregiving within marriage is not abstract for us. It is daily logistics, daily humility, daily grace. MS has altered our marriage in ways that require constant communication and surrender.
Yes, we each had a rip in our respective canvases.
But they stopped being separate when we got married on September 10, 2005 (you can read more about our 15th wedding anniversary here).
We are painting on the same canvas.
We can’t fix the tear. But together, we decide what to build around it.
Faith, disability, and the question of why
Multiple Sclerosis is not something we believe God “designed” for us as a lesson. But it is something we refuse to waste.
For many Christians living with chronic illness, the question, “Why did God let this happen?”becomes unavoidable. We pray for healing. We pray for strength. Sometimes we receive peace instead of a cure. Sometimes we receive community instead of answers.
Maybe the deeper question is not ”how do we paint over this?”
But “who will we become because it is here?”
If you are living with Multiple Sclerosis, navigating disability, or wrestling with faith amid suffering, you are not alone. The canvas may be torn, but the story is not over.
The canvas still is yours.
The post Multiple Sclerosis and faith: the rip in our canvas appeared first on A Couple Takes on MS.
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