We provide meals as a means of coming alongside people who need and want help. We sit and talk and hopefully we get an idea of what kinds of hopes and goals they have and encourage them and give suggestions on how to pursue some of those goals.
We've got a regular who is so unique using a pseudonym would be pointless; you'll recognize him the first time you see him. He's got palsy and is confined to a motorized wheelchair. We allow him to sit next to the serving table and he usually gets served first. The palsy also causes a speech impediment that makes him difficult to understand. We're about the same age so I was stunned when he approached me a few years back and told me that he'd started going to church and had been given a Bible. The thing was, he didn't know how to read. Apparently his family assumed that his speech impediment was associated with being mentally handicapped so he was never properly schooled. I looked into getting him into a volunteer reading problem. The results of that effort will be the subject of a long rant some day. I've tried to help with other things over the years.
There have been nights when he's waited for everyone else to leave so he can ask me questions. . One that stuck up in my mind was how to find a way to volunteer at his church as a greeter or some other way. That led to a discussion that helped me understand how a lot (not necessarily all) about how disabled/handicapped people perceive a fine line between helping and... babying, for want of a better way of putting it. There's no malice in it, but I began to see how annoying it can be over time. I hope I'm explaining this well.
The bottom line is that while i still accommodate some of his physical limitations I sometimes include a bit of tough love. If he asks for seconds, I might just look at him and tell him that he's got a perfectly good motorized wheelchair that works, and he can get them himself. You should the looks on the faces of people who overhear that and can't believe it. Then they see us both laughing - and he's laughing harder than I am.
I guess that the overall point is this: people with disabilities do need to have the disabilities accommodated to some degree, but they still want to be seen as people just like anyone else. How that looks is going to vary from person to person though.
