How do we transcend disability? How do we see beyond what we think we are looking at by staring at it and denying its existence? In this episode of Disrupt Reality, host Tonya Dawn Recla is joined by Dr. Joye Pugh as they talk about transcending disability. Dr. Pugh shares her experiences as a child and how they brought her to realize how we are all connected as God’s children. Dr. Pugh also highlights that if we only look at the internal spirit that lives within all of us, then we can do much more than we ever thought we could. Join Tonya and Dr. Joye Pugh in today’s episode to discover how we can transcend disability.

Hello everyone, this is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert and I am so delighted about today’s show where I’m talking today with a woman who needs zero introduction, just this beautiful light in the world in her courage and bravery and radical stance in faith. And we love to see that here. That lights me up. It lights you all up. And I know that you’re hungry for more examples of how to do that and where to turn and so we’re going to keep pouring that into you as much as we can. Dr. Joye Pugh is, like I said, this light. In a second here we’ll bring her on and I know you can feel it now, but the dynamic personality that backs up just the wealth of wisdom and experience and dedicated service to so many amazing areas of this expansive, transformative times that we’re in.

I don’t think it’s a little bit, my dear. I don’t think it’s a little bit at all. In fact, I’m seeing you standing in the boat being like, “Keep back in the boat.” It’s comparable to Jesus going, “Move the net.” Just move the net. It’s not difficult folks. So beautiful. Well, we honor your courage and just the number of areas that you dive into that are really loaded. I mean, not just your work in spaces around really helping this kind of this idea of transcending disability, but also in your work of prophecy and really helping people understand that we do have a roadmap. If it’s a map that you choose to believe in and look at, it’s present and available to you.

And that’s just a couple of the spaces that you’ve traversed. Those are some really significant arenas to find yourself thrust into. And in one of my deep studies, as I’ve pursued the human psyche and human behavior for many decades, is what is it that determines when somebody will continue to stand and speak? And what determines when somebody won’t have the courage to do that? And it’s odd because until people are in the forging process, you don’t really know how you’re going to respond. And you may think you do, but we get surprised.

And so as you were speaking, I really was holding that as I mean, I’m sure, well, maybe you’re not like me, but I’m thinking you might be in a sense of why you? Like why are you willing to do that? Because you can point to all the life circumstances and all of that, but ultimately you could have chosen differently in every single one of those moments. Have you come to any sort of conclusion about why you? Like what is it that has you standing when others will?

Well, I think that it probably started when I had a really strange dream when I was six years old about the end of time. And that I felt like that I really saw Jesus and heard his voice and that I really had this understanding about something that was going to happen in the future that was going to be very serious and that I myself was here for a purpose and I wanted to know why. And as I began to pursue that, going through school and then, of course, studying through my education and things, I found that there were people who were also looking in the same directions with no really a direction to go in. And I’m like, I believe that God gave us everything that we need to know, but we’ve got to sometimes take initiative to find out what it really is a little bit deeper.

And so, I was willing to take those next steps to find answers to the difficult questions. And then the more that I did that, I found that we’re all very connected to each other, that we are God’s children, he did not really want us to have to go through such terrible things that we’re having to go through, but to get us back to paradise is absolutely something we’ve got to do. And so to encourage one another not to give up, to not to believe that we came from an ape, not to believe that we’re just grains of sand floating on an ocean and onto the beach, once you get science and religion kind of connected, and that’s what I did and I still do with my research in my books and work that I do, it really proves really that what the biblical scriptures have been, that science is catching up with it and literally proving that.

So there’s this aspect of people when they feel like, “Why am I here? Why is this happening?” And they get that depressive mentality. It seems that if you can make them see this internal thing, this internal spirit that lives within all of us, that we really can do much more than we ever thought we could. And that was one of the reasons that when I worked with a handicap for a little over 13 years, I began trying to help them transcend what their bodies had said you can’t do, but what their internal spirit may say if they believed in it and that kind of thing enough, where it could take them. And what happened was I started to see people with broken bodies start to fly in their spirits.

And then all of a sudden, what psychological and what analysis as far as behavioral assessments and those kinds of things would say, well, this person, let’s just say if they were a down syndrome that they could only have this capability and nothing else. Well, all of a sudden, those parameters when I was able to expand opportunity and make them believe, they went so much further than psychological evaluation could have ever said they could have gone. And all of a sudden I’m like, “Oh my gosh, this means if it’s within them, that same spirit is also within me.”

And I found out at an early age when I was in college because I had a group of individuals that were in the most adaptive physical education class when I was doing my undergraduate work. And I was going to have to teach them how to play softball and be in a Special Olympic competition. I’m talking about those broken bodies to people you can even envision. And I had to break it down into the skill levels that will allow them to learn just to pick up a ball much less, throw it or hit it. what happened was by the end of the work that I did with them, and it made me stop and look at how things are really learned? How do we really get better? What is it within all of us that sends us to a greater and a much greater height?

What I found was that the spirit wasn’t about your limited capability. There was something in there that drove you to not give up and drove you to take that chance. And if someone that he or she can do it, that she tried to please them, but in doing so it took you a little bit farther than what you believed in. And when I finished with that group of people, I was like, “Now, if I had so-called normal athletes who were not handicapped in any form or fashion, I could have won. If they’d had the same mental states of belief, those broken people I had, I could have won every state championship, every national championship, nobody could have touched us.” And so that set the spark within me to go, “Okay, I’m limiting myself. I believe in, Oh, well, I just can’t do this. There’s got to be other ways.”

And I had seen that happen in my own life because my mother wanted me to play the piano and I was playing the drums when I was probably about five years old and I wanted to play guitar. I’m a musician. I played a lot of different instruments. But she wanted me to play classical music and my teacher was a classical music teacher. You had to learn to play all the notes and follow this stuff. It was just driving me nuts. I hated it. She would have to make me sit there and sit there. And I’m like, “I don’t like to do this. I want to play something like Romeo and Juliet. I want to be able to sing some beautiful songs at church, and I’m so busy playing the notes and listening to all this stuff.” I hated it. And I wanted to do it.

So what did I do? I finally quit because I didn’t want to do it anymore. So if I had just said, “Okay, that was not meant for me to do that. I don’t have that talent. It’s just gone.” But later on in my life, after I had learned to play the guitar, I had taken lead guitar lessons and then decided to learn to play chords instead of the lead, because you’re so busy doing the same thing, I had a person stop me and say, “Would you occasionally play chords on a guitar? Well, here’s the chord book, you can play it on the piano as well.” I’m like, “What? Now I can play any song that I want to with chord music.” You give me all the notes and all the stuff. And I would have never learned to play any song well.

It taught me that all of us learn in different ways. And sometimes, we box people in and expect that that’s the only way that you can teach somebody and then you limit their capability. I saw that in my own self. If this had not come up in my life where I now play for church and play Oregon and written my own music and have an album, I would have never done any of that had I just said, “I can’t play the piano. That class for me.”

Beautiful.

Well, I’m just adding, I would have given up something that is so important to my life and has been so important to my life. This led to me writing my own music and producing an album and being able to play for people and do specials and bless people’s hearts. I mean, I play for weddings, I play for funerals, I play for graduations, things that I would’ve never been able to have done. So it taught me by working with handicapped people, to look at other areas of my life that I have felt defeated in and go maybe there’s a different way. And even when I was working with the Special Olympics in the 13 years that I’ve written about in this particular book that I’ve just released in August, which is called “Special” Parables of Joye – Triumphs of the Disabled, I explain that, for example, everybody has a natural talent. And like teaching somebody to play golf, there are certain places that you put your hands on a golf club when you’re actually training somebody in those particular skills.

Well, someone that has a natural talent may not hold the golf club quite like the book says, do it. And if you try to change their natural talent to fit the book way to do it, they probably can’t hit the broad side of a barn. It’s what we say in South Georgia. If you let them go back and use their natural talent, they could knock the ball 200 feet down the fairway. I’ve learned that even in working with handicapped people, when we would do the individual specialized plans for them, that you need you to look, don’t keep saying, well, this person is, let’s say down syndrome, or this person has this level of mental problem or whatever. Don’t say that every down syndrome can never play the game of golf because I in my book talk about two down syndromes that became Georgia state champions.

Beautiful. That’s incredible.

And they had their own PGA handicap. I mean, they could go out and play with anybody using their handicap on any course anywhere in the United States. They knew how to pick their clubs, how to get ready, how to keep the score, the whole nine yards. Those were things, the psychological and behavioral assessments when I first started working when I said they could never do that.

Yeah. That’s such amazing work that you’re doing Joye. I want to make sure we have a chance to dive into that further. We need to go for a quick break. Before we do that, where can people go to find out more about you?

Well, my website is dr.joye.com.

Beautiful.

And also my Facebook page is Joye Pugh. And on Facebook, you can keep up with all the work that I do and all the research. I keep a lot of information on my Facebook page. And then, if you have a question, you can also message me there as well, and do private message with me. I try to work with people that are having issues that way. 

Beautiful. Yeah, I think three letters in joy just wasn’t enough for you, so you needed to have another letter.  

Well, I’ll tell you. After the break, I’ll come back and I’ll tell you why my name is spelled, Joye.

Perfect. Well, we’ll touch on that after the break. Folks, we’re talking with Dr. Joye Pugh today about transcending disability. Obviously, you’re not going to want to miss the rest of this conversation. So stay with us and we’ll be right back.

To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.