how c.s. lewis’ thumbs changed his life
While I was reading through C.S. Lewis’ spiritual memoir Surprised by Joy, he shared an anecdote about his childhood that struck me. As a young boy, Clive (as he was known then) had inherited a developmental defect from his dad: his thumb only had one joint, not two, like most of us.
This development difference wasn’t severe, but it did affect his life. He writes:
What drove me to write was the extreme manual clumsiness from which I have always suffered. I attribute it to a physical defect which my brother and I inherit from our father; we have only one joint in the thumb. The upper joint (that furthest from the nail) is visible, but it is a mere sham; we cannot bend it.
Because of this physical defect, he was terrible at most of the physical activities and games that his peers participated in. He said:
Nature laid on me from birth an utter incapacity to make anything. …I can still tie as good a bow as ever lay on a man’s collar, but with a tool or a bat or a gun, a sleeve link or a corkscrew, I have always been unteachable. I longed to make things, ships, houses, engines. Many sheets of cardboard and pairs of scissors I spoiled, only to turn from my hopeless failures in tears.
But while this physical defect seemed like a costly sacrifice to his social standing when he was young, it changed the trajectory of his entire life.
Because Lewis couldn’t do any of the physical things that other boys his age did, he would spend his free time up in his family’s attic, living in his imagination. During these hours alone, he dreamed up an imaginary world he called Animal-Land, full of little animals dressed like humans, going on adventures in a medieval world.
Because holding a pencil was one of the few things that Lewis could do, he spent his childhood writing and illustrating stories about “chivalrous mice and rabbits who rode out in complete mail to kill not giants but cats.” Without this physical defect, Lewis concludes, he would never have been interested in writing stories about imaginary worlds.
As I read that, I couldn’t help but marvel at how God created us each with such care, wisdom, and attention to detail. It seems likely that if Lewis hadn’t been born with this thumb problem, he never would have written The Chronicles of Narnia, one of the most popular children’s series of all time.
Why do I share this? Because it’s so easy for all of us to focus on what’s wrong with us, rather than using the gifts, strengths, and opportunities that we do have.
It’s so easy for me to grumble at God, questioning why I don’t have some ability or talent or strength that someone else has, instead of recognizing that I’ve been given everything that I need to fulfill my calling in this life. It’s easy to wonder:
God, why can’t I do this?
God, why didn’t this happen?
God, why am I not good at that?
God, why do I have this weakness?
God, why did you make me this way?
But I want to encourage you to quit thinking about all of the things that are wrong with you and instead ask yourself, “What’s right with me?” Rather than questioning God for not making you like that person over there, spend some time asking yourself, “How has the way God made me uniquely equipped me to serve him?”
What a loss it would have been for all of us if Lewis had spent his childhood pouting about his thumbs, instead of running with the imagination and gifts that he did have.
Here’s my question for you: have you accepted your limitations? We all have them, places where we think God messed up. But it’s only when we let go of our anger and disappointment over our limitations that we are free to start using the gifts and abilities that we do have.
I hope that we’ll all become a little bit more like Lewis, who didn’t spend his life grumbling over his limitations but instead used the gifts that God did give to him to point others to Him in such incredible ways.
