When Rebecca Sue (Becky) Norris wrote to her sister in tears and said, “I tried to read your book, but it was boring,” Kathleen Norris understood the dig at her 1994 memoir, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, to be an outpouring of jealousy. She saw the tears as an outpouring of love.
Later, when the extended Norris family was together in their Hawaii home for the holidays, Becky turned to Kathleen and said, “You should write a book about me so I can be famous like you.” In a recent Zoom interview, Kathleen reflected on the subtle transformation that had occurred between Becky writing the letter and making the comment.
“Becky had decided,” Norris said, “that a constructive way of dealing with her jealousy was putting me to work.”
The result, over three decades in the making, is the deeply moving memoir, Rebecca Sue: A Sister’s Reflections on Disability, Faith, and Love. The book chronicles Becky’s life with perinatal hypoxia—brain damage that was the result of being deprived of oxygen during her birth.
Pieced together from Becky’s own writings, Kathleen’s memories and conversations with those who knew her sister, Rebecca Sue invites readers into the life of a woman who was simultaneously simple and complex. It reveals the tools Becky developed to navigate the world with a disability, and how she wisely set them aside when they no longer served her well.
A Holy Journey
Through reading the book and visiting with Kathleen Norris—whose writings have deeply influenced my faith—the word that wouldn’t stop nagging at me is sanctification.
The Christian concept of sanctification may come with certain baggage for people raised in highly authoritarian religious environments that demand outward conformity as a sign of inner work. But, at its core, it is simply the lifelong process of moving toward holiness—or, for those uncomfortable with that term, toward wholeness.
Those from contemplative or mystical traditions teach that the true work of sanctification isn’t about changing or adding things to who you are. Instead, it involves allowing those walls of personality we have built up as forms of protection to fall away, leaving behind the pure essence of who God has created us to be.
Two stories that bookend Becky’s life demonstrate how painfully beautiful the process of sanctification can be.
Protective Armor
Kathleen recounts an incident when she was 14 and had received her first tube of lipstick. Becky, who was three years younger than Kathleen, was jealous and used it to write on a wall.
“I knew that hitting her would get me in serious trouble, but I was outraged, and swatted at Becky with a handy book of sheet music,” Norris wrote.
Becky’s response? “You can’t hit me. I’m retarded.”
(While acknowledging how our language around developmental disabilities has, thankfully, changed, Norris has chosen to retain Becky’s voice in the book.)
Kathleen views this as an early manifestation of the narcissism Becky developed as a means of protection against being called “stupid” and “slow.” Most of us find ways to mask selfishness. But Becky’s shell was so raw and visible that, when the sisters would get together and Kathleen began to tell a story, Becky would break in and say, “No, I go first, my story is more important than yours.”
If the childhood quarrel around lipstick was evidence of a protective shell being constructed, an encounter near the end of Becky’s life revealed a tender willingness to let it fall away.
Taking on Tenderness
In February 2013, during a six-month follow-up appointment after learning her cancer was in remission, Becky’s oncologist informed her and Kathleen that, to his surprise, it had metastasized beyond treatment. All he could do was treat her pain.
Becky’s initial reaction was a moment of such radiant humor that it would be unfair to offer up as a spoiler. Her second response came when the doctor asked if she wanted to know her prognosis.
“Becky, because she grew up in our family, which is very verbal, had a good vocabulary,” Kathleen said in our conversation. “But prognosis was a word she didn’t know.”
When the oncologist explained the word to her, Becky replied, “No way!”
In our conversation, Norris said, “I thought to myself, ‘Wow, that’s so good.’ She may have been brain-damaged, but she could make wise decisions when push came to shove.”
In Rebecca Sue, Kathleen writes, “I have never been more proud of my sister. I told her I thought this was a wise decision; without a prognosis, she could go on living her life without worrying when it would end.”
Later that week, Becky’s primary care physician shared all the options for palliative care and hospice. The doctor told her the best thing she could prescribe, however, “was for her to have all the red velvet cake she wanted.”
Becky replied with a grin and her armor almost completely discarded, “You’re a good doctor.”
Rebecca Sue Norris died that April.
Ora et Labora
The gift of Rebecca Sue isn’t just in bearing witness to the transformation of Becky Norris, but also in being reminded of our commitment to each other.
Kathleen took on the responsibility as Becky’s primary caregiver as their parents aged and passed away. It was a role she also assumed for their parents and her husband, the latter of which she documented in her 2008 memoir, Acedia and Me. She attributes the vows she took as a Benedictine oblate to strengthening her for the task at hand.
(Norris writes about her relationship with the Benedictines in many of her writings, most extensively in 1996’s The Cloister Walk.)
The Latin phrase that describes the Benedictine motto is ora et labora—pray and work. It signifies a synergistic balance between physical labor and prayer, where the lines between the two acts of devotion become increasingly blurred.
“Benedictine vows are to stability, but also to continual conversion and change,” she told me. “The vows are wonderfully contradictory. Witnessing the way Benedictine community members take care of each other, especially as they age, I thought, ‘Oh, this is what that looks like.’ Without that witness, I don’t know if I would have had the fortitude I had to do so much caregiving.”
Rebecca Sue ultimately reveals not only Becky’s transformation, but Kathleen’s as well—and invites us all to remember our shared responsibility to create communities where every person is seen and valued as God created them.
Rebecca Sue: A Sister’s Reflections on Disability, Faith, and Love will be available on September 16 from InterVarsity Press.
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Senior Editor at Good Faith Media.
