CW: Injury
Yesterday I watched a video about Garet Frey, who is a quadriplegic. He was injured shortly before his fifth birthday. Medicaid allows him to live at home with his mother in Iowa. He has caregivers overnight, but sometimes no one is available. Because of budget cuts, Frey is worried about whether or not will be able to continue living at home.
The comments section was filled with well-meaning people who were praying for his healing. Prayer will not fix a disability, nor will it fix budget cuts. What Garet needs is not to be healed of his disability, but to have the care and support that allow him to live safely in his own home, when that support disappears because there are not enough caregivers or because Medicaid funding is cut, prayer cannot fill the empty shift.
Too often, disability is treated as a tragedy that medicine or faith should fix. That makes it easy to overlook the things that actually determine whether disabled people can live their lives: reliable caregivers, accessible housing, adequate healthcare, and enough funding to keep those supports in place.
You can pray for someone because you care about them. But prayer should not become a substitute for listening to disabled people. Prayers don’t replace advocacy and action.
As someone with cerebral palsy, I’ve had people pray for me. The first time it happened I was at the local dollar store looking at toys. After this person walked away, I remember asking Ms. Pam why they were praying for me. She said that they were probably praying for me to be cured. I understand that people probably have good intentions, but prayer will not improve or cure my cerebral palsy.
Sometimes the answer is not a cure. Sometimes it is a caregiver showing up for the overnight shift. It is Medicaid paying for the equipment and services a person needs. It is lawmakers’ understanding that what looks like a line in a budget can determine whether someone gets to remain in their own home.
Disabled people should not have to be healed or cured before their lives are considered worth supporting. And no amount of prayer can replace the policies, funding, and people that make that support possible.
We celebrate the person who can do everything on their own and rarely stop to question whether that is a useful way of measuring a life. For many disabled people, independence is possible because other people are there. A caregiver helping someone get ready in the morning does not take away that person’s independence.
This is where conversations about Medicaid can become strangely detached from the people who depend on it. We talk about budgets as though the numbers remain on paper. We talk about cuts as though something can simply disappear from a spreadsheet without disappearing from someone’s life. But eventually those decisions arrive at someone’s front door.
A cut can mean fewer hours of care. A shortage can mean an unfilled overnight shift. A policy that sounds distant and bureaucratic can become deeply personal when it determines who helps you out of bed, who is there when you need assistance, and whether you can continue living in the place you call home.
That is why I struggle with the instinct to respond to stories about disability with prayer. It turns our attention toward a future in which disability has disappeared. We are not focused on the present where disabled people are advocating for their rights when we talk about healing and prayer.
There is nothing wrong with hope. There is nothing wrong with faith. But neither should allow us to look away from problems that people have the power to change.
We cannot control whether someone’s spinal cord injury has healed, or whether or not they need home healthcare. We can help decide whether home care is adequately supported. We can help decide whether disabled people have access to the services that allow them to remain in their communities. We can help decide whether we listen when disabled people tell us that those services are not optional.
Perhaps that is the harder kind of hope because it asks something of us. It is easy to wish that someone were different. It is harder to ask why our society makes life more challenging for people.
Disabled people should not have to wait for a cure. Our lives are happening now. We have people we love, hopes and dreams, and lives to live.
We deserve the support that makes life possible. That includes someone arriving for a shift, enough hours of care, a program remaining funded, and a government recognizing that independence sometimes requires support.
You can still pray. But after the prayer, listen to disabled people. Because sometimes what they are waiting for is not to be cured. Sometimes, they are simply waiting for a caregiver to fill a shift.
Source:
Protect Our Care. “Garret Frey Speaks About Health Care and Human Rights.” Facebook, 26 Oct. 2026, https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1MGKCraKU2/.