Update:
Those who are friends with me on Facebook already know that on Tuesday
afternoon (2/24) I started having painful throbbing in the metatarsal bones on
the outside of my right foot. That is
extremely worrisome to me because of my increased risk that any injury to my
remaining foot will lead to another amputation.
My surgeon and podiatrist have preached to me about my increased odds of
having my remaining foot amputated, so when I have pain in my foot—I pay close
attention and don’t ignore it. Right now
I am supposed to not bear any weight on the foot, so I am back in the
wheelchair full time again. I have a
doctor’s appointment next Tuesday (3/3) for an evaluation. Meanwhile I am elevating, icing, and taking
ibuprofen as needed.
I have a condition called Charcot Foot which means that the bone
structure in my foot is weakened and susceptible to collapse. That is what happened in my left foot which
eventually led to the amputation.
Because of this condition, I’ve been under doctor’s orders not to do
things like hopping or jumping, and have distance restrictions on how far I can
walk. So now I am under more severe
restrictions until my evaluation, and then we will see what the doctor
orders.
All joking aside, I would much rather deal with phantom pain in my left
leg than with this pain in my right foot because of what it may indicate.
Thought for the Day:
Randy Alcorn in his book “Seeing the Unseen” writes about Michelangelo
taking a chisel in hand to slowly chip away at a large marble stone to create
his masterpiece, the statue of David.
Michelangelo transformed the plain block of stone that other artists had
rejected into something beautiful.
“While Michelangelo may not have called upon the stone to cooperate
with him, God has called us to yield ourselves by submitting to His chisel… This transformation does not simply happen
after we die. It starts here and now in
this world. And suffering is the
instrument. God isn’t just preparing a
place for us. He is preparing us for
that place.” [Randy Alcorn, Seeing the
Unseen].
At times this process of transformation feels like someone who comes
into your home without our permission and cleans out your closet and chest of
drawers and throws away most of your clothes.
“You threw away my favorite T-shirt!”
We may feel violated. We
experience a sense of loss. But
eventually we come to realize that most everything that is gone, we never wore
anyway. And some of it should have been
tossed out years ago. We really didn’t
need all that junk anyhow.
Tap…tap…tap… And God removes
something from your life as He seeks to shape you and transform you. It may be a relationship. It could be your health. It’s possibly a possession. It may be a dream that you hoped to fulfill. Whatever is chipped away needed to be removed
so that your truest nature could be revealed.
For most of us it means suffering, inconvenience, pain, or difficulty. These loses help us to discover who we really
are and what is truly important to us.
They demonstrate to the world around us what we hold dear and in whom we
trust when our world is falling apart around us.
Transformation isn’t a painless process and it will take a lifetime to
complete. Michelangelo worked constantly
for two years to create David.
Masterpieces are not created overnight.
It takes time. Think about that
the next time you feel God chiseling away at your life. We usually want the process to be over
quickly; but it takes time to take a rough stone and turn it into a polished
work of art. It should not surprise us
to find that God will be working on us for a lifetime until He’s finished with
us.
Michelangelo said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it
is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”
When God looks at us He sees a masterpiece and begins the process of
chipping away the excess and our rough spots so that we are finally revealed. Remember that there is a reason, a purpose,
and a goal in mind when the process seems painful.
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