This is the third and final piece about the accident I suffered back in May resulting in two fractured risks. I’m moving on to other topics in the weeks ahead. If you missed the earlier posts, just keep scrolling below. And there were more than four sweet things, but I might wear you out talking about them all!!!
We
tried to manage post-surgery pain as best we could but still, things got out of
control. I gave birth to a ten-pound baby, and managed a major surgery with
acetaminophen, but this was still challenging. “There’ll be a lot of pain the
first few days,” the discharge nurse had said. She did not overpromise. One
morning around 5:30 a.m. when the pain reached a new height it was just
beginning to get light outside. I was praying, praising, and singing, because
thanksgiving proceeds the miracle, and I sure hoped for relief from this pain.
Sweet
thing number one—The
curtains on the big window in the bedroom where I was were not completely
closed leaving a gap midway to the floor. A shadow moved across the yard, and
then a face appeared—a doe. She stood there a long time staring in at me. I
thought of Hagar who in her grief and pain said, “You are the God who sees me.”
It seemed to me that God sent that doe to remind me that he saw me. This doe
would hang around in our yard and weeks later, give birth to a little one.
It had taken two plates, eighteen screws, and forty-four stitches to put my wrists back together. In the grief process when something like this happens, I sometimes felt anger, but I knew when many Biblical characters like Hagar found themselves in hard desert-like times, those times proved to be pivotal. God wants to use these circumstances as a foundation for the work He has for us. I prayed that it would be true of me. Prior to the accident, I had already been asking God what my next chapter needed to be. Did I need to alter my direction in any way? I was sure listening.
Sweet
thing number two—As
I wrote in another post, for a few days after surgery, I was in a fog, but when
it began to lift, I accepted my neighbor and friend, Lilyan’s offer to come
over and read my Bible and devotions to me. I still couldn’t control my fingers
enough to turn a page. On the first day, she read from Psalm 143, the next
reading in my read-through-the-Bible list. “The enemy pursues me, he crushes me
to the ground.” It did feel as if the enemy had wanted to take me out in this
accident, but God had intervened. And then in Psalm 145, she read, “The Lord is
trustworthy in all he promises and faithful in all he does. The Lord upholds
all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.” The word seemed just for me
that morning and brought with it so much encouragement. This was just one
example of the times the Lord showed up as we met together to examine the word
of God. Sometimes it was even funny. One day, Lilyan turned to a devotion.
“This one is entitled ‘Hardships.’ Do you want to skip it?”
We
both laughed knowing the time for skipping anything had long passed. The
message in that devotion of God’s love being constant despite difficulty and change
resonated deeply. That message continued in a Sunday School lesson we covered
about the rebuilding of the temple and how the exile had nearly destroyed the
lives of the Jews, but God returned them to their land, and it was interesting
the wording here, “Though life may shatter, God’s love never does.”
God’s
presence was so real in our midst that I wanted to say, “Holy Spirit, are you
comfortable. Would you like coffee?” Here’s the thing, even in tough
times, if we know God is with us and that He loves us, we can face it with
greater courage.
In
one moment in time, I was plunged into the world of disability, and even as a
tourist, because I had the hope of getting better, it was breathtaking. The
weeks I spent in that world have sensitized me to a way of life that not many
of us want to think about. I was living in a “I can’t imagine . . .” world,
because I heard that phrase so many times. “I can’t imagine what it would be
like to not have my hands.” I didn’t have to imagine anymore. I knew.
I’ll
never look at another doorknob the same way as I have in the past. They were
impossible for me to turn, and I had a fear of getting trapped in the house in
the event of a fire. The wrist is a complicated thing and for weeks after
surgery, the wrists were immobilized to promote healing and maintain alignment.
The twisting motion could disrupt that.
Sweet
thing number three—Jerry
spent hours swapping our twisting doorknobs to levers, so that I could exit any
room or exterior doors with no issues. Such a blessing.
But
being in that situation sensitized me to how folks with permanent disabilities
see the world and how limiting it can be if accessibility has not been
considered. I have a different perspective on how it makes one feel when we are
blocked from the pathways that others use so easily. I am thankful for those
who continue to lobby for accessibility for those who have disability. And as I
said earlier, I don’t think I’ll ever enter a room without thinking about
whether the doorknob allows for those with disability to enter it as well.
Another
unexpected thing that happened to me was that I felt shame over the accident. I
know that it may be challenging to understand, but I did. I felt shame that my
bones weren’t strong enough to withstand the accident. I later learned that it is not uncommon for folks with disability to feel this way, and I would have never
been able to understand that if I had not passed this way. I also felt
embarrassed that I couldn’t use my hands, that I was essentially helpless.
Sweet
thing number four—But
reading Katherine Wolfe’s writing helped me. She points out (paraphrasing here) that we are all
helpless, it’s just that when something like this happens to you, you know it.
But we really walk around out of control all the time, because our lives are totally dependent
on God. It was an opportunity to reconnect with that truth and ponder how much
more dependent on God I need to be and realize that it is only “In him we move
and live and have our being.” If you don’t know Katherine’s writing, please,
please check it out.
I’ll
stop here for now and move on to another topic next week. I am still in process and will keep
writing about my experience with this accident but share it in another way or
at another time. Again, I pray that some of my ponderings will bring
encouragement to you. I leave you with what has become my mantra, the apostle
Paul’s words, “ . . we are knocked down, but we are not destroyed”(2
Corinthians 4:9 NLT). Let those words carry you through whatever difficult
challenge you may face. Blessings, friends.