We maneuvered up to the curb in
front of the physical therapy center. He with a new knee only a week old, stared
at the elevation of the concrete edge a moment.
Sometimes a single step can seem
mountainous.
“I think I could do it if I had
someone to lean on,” he said.
Over the years, he’d battled
cancer, had a heart attack, and multiple knee surgeries, but I never heard him
say this before. He’s an “I can do it myself” kind of guy.
He could probably dead lift me, no problem. Strong for a man of any age.
Though he outweighed me by sixty
pounds, I didn’t hesitate. “Lean on me,” I said.
I had leaned on him plenty of
times. After breast cancer surgery, when trying to emerge from a Phenergan and
morphine fog, I had to walk, and it seemed impossible even to stand. I leaned on him.
So now he put his arm on my shoulder,
lifted the good knee up to the curb, and followed with the bruised one, raising
himself to the sidewalk.
He wasn’t heavy at all.
In another cultural reference
that’s sure to date me, a few lyrics drifted to mind from Bill Wither’s song, “Lean on Me,” and I hummed the tune under my breath as we navigated through the door
of the center.
I once witnessed a friend who was
recovering from having suffered over forty broken bones in a car accident try
to get out of bed one afternoon. She stared at the floor a long, long time.
Sometimes that single step takes
all the courage we can muster, but we can climb all kinds of mountains if we have someone to lean on.
As Bill wrote, there will absolutely
come a time when each of us, without exception, will need that shoulder. That
is true in the natural realm and in the spiritual realm.
Deuteronomy 33:27 reads, “The
eternal God is your refuge and underneath are the everlasting arms.”
This morning, after I had already
written this post, I came across these words in Streams in the Desert, “God is constantly trying to teach us our
dependence, and to hold us absolutely in His hand and hanging upon His care. This
was the place where Jesus Himself stood and where He wants us to stand, not
with self-constituted strength, but with a hand ever leaning upon His, and a
trust that dare not take one step alone. It teaches us trust.”
We will face situations for which
a human shoulder just will not do. So good to know that God is eternally
steadfast.
D.L. Moody once said, “When a man
has no strength, if he leans on God, he becomes powerful.” I love that in our
weakness, we may lean into his strength and find grace for every situation.
It’s my privilege to have my guy lean
on me. But more than this, we are both leaning hard on God.