Our Life Our Way: A Memoir of Active Faith, Profound Love and Courageous Disability Rights

Our Life Our Way, A Memoir of Active Faith, Profound Love, and Courageous Disability Rights explores an extraordinary love story grown out of engagement with both disability rights advocacy and Christian faith communities. This important memoir contains thoughtful, often-entertaining, and sometimes heart-wrenching anecdotes of a couple’s journey to create their profoundly intimate relationship and Christian marriage, in a world not yet ready for them.

William Rush and Christine Robinson’s timely meeting, when the United States was close to granting civil rights to all Americans with disabilities, sets the stages for their intensely human and difficult journey of breaking down many societal and systemic barriers to full participation in the larger society.

How will the couple deal with the local KKK grand dragon who is threatening William, an outspoken person with a significant disability? How will they respond to posturing state politicians using persons with disabilities as bargaining chips with potentially dire consequences? How will they react to well-meaning but not always well-informed government officials pushing quick fixes? Against such opposition, can they create their own life, supported by their local disability rights and Christian faith communities?

Girded by a local Christian congregation’s willingness to engage with this nontraditional couple, their faith is tested and grows stronger through much adversity. Faith-filled acts of mercy and grace and active and meaningful participation provide restoration on their arduous journey. Deepening their relationship with God results in a desire for a Christian marriage.

Through a series of vignettes, several deeply human themes are explored: developing enduring relationships, standing up for one’s rights and advocating for one’s needs, and what it means to growing deeply in love with a faithful God while tribulations abound. Through sheer grit, they model for each of us how to create our own lives, our own way.