Update:
I spent most of the day on Tuesday at my office and all of it in my
wheelchair. I have to wait until the abrasion
on my leg completely heals before I can wear my prosthesis again. I tend to heal slowly but I’m praying that this
happens quickly. I think it will be at
least a week before I am two-legged again!
Patience and contentment are my new companions that I am seeking to get
better acquainted with.
I have become so used to standing on my own two feet and the freedom
that it gives, I had forgotten how mobility limited I was in a wheelchair. Since I can still stand on one leg, if I get
positioned correctly I can reach most things that I want. But I cannot go up and down stairs to do my
laundry, or carry a table out of the room that is in my way, etc. Everything definitely takes longer for me to
do. And the tendon in my hip aches after an hour or two in the chair. To find relief I have to lay face down on the
floor for 5-10 minutes. That is really
sort of weird to do during the day at the office.
Tuesday evening I had fun. The
Altoona Police and Fire Departments had a joint training exercise. Although I was wheelchair bound I attended as
both departments’ chaplain. I enjoyed
spending four hours with some of my favorite people. As we were leaving the exercise site, I was going
around the back of my truck to load my wheelchair. I was about a foot away from the squad car
parked behind me. I didn’t notice that
the officer had already gotten in. He
hit the siren and startled me. We both
laughed about how high I jumped even while sitting in my wheelchair. Later at the Police Department, I told him if
I thought about it I should have fallen out of my chair and played dead when he
blasted me. He told me that he would
have really felt bad if I had done that.
Don’t worry pay back is coming…
When I got home it was sprinkling.
I had driven through rain on the way home so I knew that I couldn’t wait
out the rain, I needed to go ahead inside.
It takes a while to get out and get inside with my wheelchair so I knew
I would be getting wet—but what can I do?
I had forgotten to leave any lights on at home so it was really dark on
our street as I rolled down the driveway to the sidewalk. Just about the time I got to my ramp, my
neighbor across the street turned on his outside light. Right after I got my key in the lock and made
it inside, his light went out. He must
have seen me and turned his light on until I got inside. That little act of kindness was very
encouraging to me! Thank you!
Thought for the Day:
“In ‘Life’s Greatest Lessons,’ Hal Urban writes, ‘Once
we accept the fact that list is hard, we begin to grow. We begin to understand that every problem is
also an opportunity. It is then we dig
down and discover what we’re made of. We
begin to accept the challenges of life.
Instead of letting hardships defeat us, we welcome them as a test of
character. We use them as a means of
rising to the occasion. …most people don’t
accept like as hard and will continue to look for the quick and easy way
instead.’ There is no quick and easy
way. Nothing worth having in life comes
without effort… If we don’t understand
and accept the truth that life is difficult, then we set ourselves up for
failure and we won’t learn.” [John
Maxwell, Sometimes You Win and Sometimes You Learn].
I am so glad that in my life, I have encountered a
mixture of easy and hard. I’ve encountered
many blessings as well as faced a few defeats.
It is that balance, the give and take of life that makes it worth living
and enjoyable. Some days we have to work
hard to achieve what little we get—that helps us appreciate what we have even
more. Other days things go so smoothly
and we quickly realize that we’ve received a gift from God—a little evidence of
His mercy and grace towards us.
Depending upon your life and what’s currently
happening, it may be easy to see all the blessings or they may be buried under
so much rubble of disaster that you have to work to uncover them. Take the time to discover them. Some may be large and many times they may
just be the tiniest little nuggets of blessing that are hard to see unless you
look closely for them. But in every
life, no matter how difficult, I believe that we’ll seem a mixture of
difficult/easy and happy/sad. If you
tend to be a negative person it might take more work on your part to see through
your difficulties to find those nuggets of blessings.
So don’t be surprised when life turns sour and
things are difficult; but also don’t lose perspective and abandon hope. Find that balance in life that accepts how
hard life can be at times and still enjoy life and whatever blessings you have to
their fullest. Remember that our
difficulties do not mean that God has abandoned us—hang onto hope!
2
Corinthians 4:7-9 “But we have this treasure in
jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God
and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not
crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but
not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
No comments:
Post a Comment