Kathleen Norris: A Sister's Reflection on Faith, Disability, and Love

Good Faith

News, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

5 • 1.8K Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2025

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How Does Kathleen Norris Show Disability Shaping Love, Lament, and Christian Faith?

Bestselling writer Kathleen Norris joins host Curtis Chang on the Good Faith Podcast to talk about her new book, Rebecca Sue: A Sister's Reflections on Disability, Faith and Love. They share the story of Kathleen's disabled sister, Rebecca, and how her journey through perinatal hypoxia, bipolar disorder, anger, and finally gratitude reshaped their family's faith. This episode offers honest wisdom on caregiving, grief, and aging parents and siblings, plus ideas for making sense of a loved one's disability through letters and reflection. Curtis and Kathleen also explore how churches can better include people with disabilities who are "hidden in plain sight," and why love, lament, and telling the truth about our flaws are central to a life of faith.

(01:49) - What did disability mean in the Norris family?

(04:00) - Discovering Disability

(08:52) - The Connection Between Love and Lament

(16:24) - Lessons Learned Caring For a Dying Husband

(20:09) - The Complicated Journey Caregiving and Dying

(29:00) - Admiring a Father's Determination

(31:36) - Championing Disability Rights

(37:27) - Tackling Disability Awareness in Community

(41:56) - Are There Connections Between This Story and Norris' Other Books?

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Mentioned In This Episode:

Kathleen Norris' Rebecca Sue: A Sister's Reflection on Disability, Faith, and Love
Listen to Amy Julia Becker (Good Faith episode 145)
A Brief History of the Benedictine Order
Understanding the Holy Fool

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's very much in the Christian tradition.
0:03.1	There's all kinds of stories about the Holy Fool who reveals the truth about things in ways that people who are considered sane often try to smooth over.
0:13.3	The Holy Fool is the person who lacks the filter and will come out and say the things that no one else is willing to say.
0:39.9	Welcome to the Good Faith podcast. I'm your host, Curtis Chang. And the Good Faith podcast is where friends who follow Jesus help each other make sense of the world. The podcast is a production
0:45.8	of Redeeming Babel, a 501C3 nonpartisan organization. On the Good Faith podcast, we often make sense of the world in terms of larger
0:56.2	issues that affect us, such as issues in our culture or politics. But as important as those
1:02.2	issues are, for many of us, our worlds are not just shaped by these issues out there, but also
1:08.6	by the individuals closest to us.
1:11.8	And at this more intimate and individual level, I've been interested in this question.
1:17.1	How is our sense of the world affected when one of those intimate individuals in our life
1:22.9	is disabled?
1:24.9	The question of how the disabled shape us is worth pondering because many of us will
1:30.3	face this question inevitably or have already faced it, particularly as we care for parents
1:35.9	who inevitably become more and more disabled as they age. This topic of disability is explored by the New York Times best-selling author Kathleen
1:47.2	Norris in her latest book, Rebecca Sue, a sister's reflection on disability, faith, and love.
1:54.8	In addition to Rebecca Sue, Kathleen is noted for books such as The Cloister Walk, Dakota,
2:02.6	a spiritual geography, and Amazing Grace, a vocabulary of faith. So Kathleen Norris, welcome to the Good Faith podcast.
2:09.4	Thank you. It's great to be here. So Kathleen, your book is all about your sister. And we'll
2:17.1	talk more about who she was and what she went through.
2:19.9	But if you had to just give a few sentences of introducing your sister to somebody who doesn't know her, what would you say?
2:28.3	I'd say you're going to meet a person with a lively personality, a great sense of humor, who did not let her disabilities define
2:36.7	her. All right. And what was her disability? She was born with what they call perinatal hypoxia,
	...

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