Yesterday I was sitting sprawled out under a tree, watching my youngest daughter run around playing at the park. I was reading a biography on the great 18th Century evangelist George Whitefield. He was 21 years old when he started preaching to an England so messed up that in many ways it makes the western world of today look civilized. He started a fire that caused thousands upon thousands to give their lives to Jesus, and changed England forever. He died when he was 55 years old. He preached a sermon the night before he died. Dragged himself out of his death bed, to speak to people who were clamoring to hear him unpack the gospel one last time. It is said that he is one of the most influential figures in the history of the English speaking world.

But – no, AND, he had a disability. Not serious enough to be deemed cross-eyed, but pretty close. It was a point of ridicule among his detractors. People called him ‘Doctor Squintum.’

We all have stuff. Go through the list of successful people throughout history. They all had stuff. Challenges, limps, and tragedies. Whitefield’s father died when he was two. What do we do with the uphill battles in our lives? Malcolm Gladwell says such battles are actually advantages – “the advantage of disadvantage” he calls them, or “the theory of desirable difficulty.”

David killed Goliath. You would think that his size would be his greatest disadvantage, but it wasn’t, it was what made his winning strategy (dependance on God) possible. One of the people Gladwell profiles is David Boies, one of the most famous trial lawyers in the world, but, no – AND, who is dyslexic. In Law School Boies would listen and put to memory what he heard. Rehearsing it over and over. “In the 1990’s he headed the prosecution team accusing Microsoft of antitrust violations,” Gladwell says, “And during the trial, he kept referring to ‘login’ as ‘lojin,’” which is just the kind of mistake a dyslexic person makes.”

Nevetheless Boies finds a way. Gladwell points out the absurdity of it, but says “let’s not forget that if you are reading this book, then you are a reader – and that means you’ve probably never had to think of all the shortcuts and strategies and bypasses that exist to get around reading.”

Julie Logan at City University London, argues that a third of highly successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. Richard Branson (Virgin), Charles Schwab (Charles Schwab), John Chambers (Cisco), and Paul Orfalea, founder of Kinko’s, are all dyslexic. Sharon Thompson-Schill recalls speaking at a prominent university donors’ meeting, filled with successful business people, and asked how many of them had been diagnosed with a learning disorder, and half of the hands went up. Gladwell’s insight at this point is profound: There are two possible interpretations for this fact. One is that this remarkable group of people triumphed in spite of their disability: they are so smart and so creative that nothing – not even a lifetime of struggling with reading – could stop them. The second, more intriguing, possibility is that they succeeded, in part, because of their disorder—that they learned something in their struggle that proved to be of enormous advantage. (Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath, 106-107)

I take great encouragement in these stories as someone having grown up with my own disadvantages – Tourette Syndrome and OCD. Certainly these things shape the way I do my job to this day – the way I pastor, lead and teach is forever shaped by these disadvantages, and the experiences they have brought about in my life.

So, in the case of those with set backs and barriers in front of them that seem insurmountable, take courage – the very thing which seems a weight and burden right now is shaping you into all that God intends you to be, and all the ways he intends to use you.

There are advantages to disadvantages.

But unfortunately most of the time we only see them once the giant is dead.