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He was born dead on Oct. 20, 1973, his mother said, with the umbilical cord tight about his neck.Doctors pushed him aside and, just as his twin sister was being born, they heard a cry in the back of the delivery room.Doctors said he had cerebral palsy and would never walk, talk or even think for himself.They were wrong.His father walked away that day, but his mother worked two jobs to take care of him and his six siblings. Three afternoons a week, she took him to speech and physical therapy in Baton Rouge, La., 40 miles from their home.Despite his progress, his teachers did little to encourage his development when he started school at age 6.He was pushed to the back of the room and left strapped in his wheelchair, he said. Some days, he soiled his pants because no one took him to the restroom."No one talked to me," he remembered the other day. "No one even wiped my nose."Little by little, Coleman began to define himself by the way those outside his family treated him. He wondered why he'd even been born.Little by little, his mother passed on her faith in God.Coleman taught himself to read, crawling at night into the bathroom and poring over his sister's books while his family slept.He graduated among the top five in his high school class of 1993 and spent a year studying pre-law before dropping out of Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, La.Coleman said he felt God urging him to let go, to do more with his life. If he remained home, he thought, he would never become totally independent. He decided to move to Georgia, so he could be his own person and have more opportunities to grow.Coleman moved to Marietta to finish his education at Southern Polytechnic State University. He was assigned a personal assistant to help at with daily tasks.One day in 1998, Coleman sneezed, spraying the assistant. He expected him to become frustrated and annoyed as others had, but the assistant didn't."It's OK," the man told him."I didn't hear him," Coleman said. "I heard God say, 'It's OK.' "That was Coleman's second birth.All his life, he had struggled with who he was, with why he'd been born in a body that didn't work like everyone else's. He was the burden on the world's shoulders.It was in that moment, Coleman said, that his life changed for good.Christopher Coleman was OK.That's the message he's spent the last 10 years taking to others.Come June 19, he will share that message again when he is scheduled to speak before performances by Grammy-nominated Christian singer TobyMac at noon, 2 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. at the Atlanta Fest in Stone Mountain."I want other people to know it's really OK to be who Christ made you to be," Coleman said.It is then, when we love ourselves, he said, that we can fully begin to love others as God commands us.Christopher Coleman, who went on to graduate in 1998 from Southern Polytechnic, becoming the first in his family to graduate from college, likens his life in a wheelchair to the blind man in Chapter 9 of the book of John.It's a familiar story in which the disciples questioned Jesus why the man had been born blind. "Who sinned," they asked in Verse 2, "this man, or his parents?"The answer was neither. The man was born blind so that "the works of God should be manifest in him."And that's what Coleman believes — that he was born with such challenges, so that the works of God be demonstrated in him.Coleman admits it was a long road to such a peaceful place. But through faith, he said, he realized we all have wheelchairs in our lives, things that keep us from being all we can be."I don't live my life in a wheelchair,'' he said. "I live my life from a wheelchair."If you've spent any time in Sunday school or ever read the Bible, you know that the blind man's story doesn't end there. Jesus anointed the man's eyes, told him to go wash in a pool and the man's sight was restored.Coleman believes he, too, was restored, as soon as he found his life purpose: teaching others to rise above their circumstances and see God's grace.To learn more about Coleman's Empowered Ministries, visit http://www.christophercoleman.net/.
By GRACIE BONDS STAPLES
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As in the days of Noah...
