The last couple months have been a battle of wills between me, myself, and I. With the seemingly ever-present haunting question of: "Am I over doing it again or not doing enough" always at the back of my mind. Post the D.C. wedding in late May, it took about two-ish weeks of getting back to where I was prior to travel. After that, I ditched the crutches and, per my PT's and chiropractor's instructions began to jog. Oh what a wonderful feeling! And I don't even LIKE jogging!
Surprisingly, the very week I began to be significantly more mobile was the beginning of my personal battle of wills. In my oh so logical mind, if I was jogging 5-8 minutes every other day then wasn't it about time I should be ready to move back to Colorado and get a full-time jog? I repeatedly had to remind myself that 5-8 minutes of jogging was all I really did the entire day and I was still largely unable to be up on my feet for long periods. It became a unique struggle to find myself gaining mobility - I was JOGGING! - while staying grounded knowing I still never knew how I'd wake up each day and my body continued to be inconsistent with where I felt it should be by this point in recovery.
Then....after the fifth day of jogging I had the worst day in over two months. We've found sometimes it's easier if I drive places because most bumps in the roads are closer to the passenger side (the things you learn!) Charis and I went to visit her sister and brother-in-law in a town nearby and as I went to get out of the car I could barely walk - again. Major problemo since I didn't have crutches to lean on. Stubbornly, I thought I was being a wimp and tried to keep walking toward the house as tears of pain came. Charis ignored my senseless "I'm alright" and helped me inside. The rest of the day I had to be carried twice and could barely walk across the street to the neighbor's pool for an entire week after that. Nevertheless, those darn crutches stayed put in my bedroom!
Needless to say it was beyond frustrating. Since we found out the ironic fact that younger, active individuals take longer to recover from pelvis injuries than 90 year olds people have been suggesting that perhaps once I do start gaining ground it will progress quickly. Just when I thought FINALLY it was starting to happen and I could start rehabbing hard, things were drastically moved in another direction. How great I felt that week and a half of jogging was another false summit.
I'd voice some of my frustrations to friends and would continually be encouraged as each of them reminded me: "You could have died! You could have been paralyzed. You could still be in the hospital. You've come a long way!" I certainly didn't feel like I'd come a long way; after all how many goals have I had to rewrite? A couple friends have reminded me by bluntly stating, "Heather, sometimes I think you forget or don't even realize how serious your accident was." Yeah, I suppose so! Because it happened to me! If it were to happen to anyone else I'd be saying the same thing my friends and family have said to me. But because it's me, my injury, my pain, my goals...the same logic doesn't apply!
While I may need to assess my quantitative reason skills in pertaining to myself, something else comes to mind.....G-R-A-C-E.
I would have hoped by the end of this process to have a much more profound understanding of grace. Here is what I've come to realize though: the more I understand grace, the more I realize I have to learn about grace. Of course, that thought could readily be applied to any and all of God's attributes!
Back in March, while in the thick of the awful opioid withdrawals, I was initially struck with that weightlessly heavy word: GRACE. At the time my mental state was beginning to come back (although my dad definitely told me we had the same conversations four days in a row) but I still had next to no concentration and my poor body was dilapidated from lack of sleep among many other things. Even so, I kept thinking: "Okay, so I've obviously been given this amazing thing called time. How many Americans can say that!? Let's make the most of it!" I wanted to study study study. There were high hopes of listening to tons of sermons and teachings online, reading not only the Word for hours a day, but classic books of the faith that I never can seem to get into. It seemed like a perfect blessing in spite of everything!
Yeah, so that didn't really work out quite as planned. Instead, the Lord opened up Matthew 6:34 in ways I've never experienced before: "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." I felt like a sitting duck wondering how many bills were piling up, what to do about all the loose ends, how long it would be before I could work again, and so on. As I camped out on this verse and the surrounding passage, there was such comfort. "Okay. Today I can't fill out that paper work or go through the mounds of mail. Maybe tomorrow I can. It's just getting through today. God's got it." GRACE.
The Greek word for grace is charis (Yes, for those of you following my blog, that's the same name as my friend Charis. Here ya'll thought she just had a funny name!) Charis is often simply defined as unmerited favor. But what does that even mean? I like the basics, and basically put it means we do not earn any of the goodness in the love and salvation of God. It is freely given. A second way to define charis is that we are sufficient in Him. We are enough. We are filled up in God!
Paul speaks of his physical trial in 2 Corinthians 12:9 and says, "But [God] said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me."
As I've been thinking about charis and briefly studying it, a word picture comes to mind. I really like kitchen appliances and think refrigerators with external water dispensers are so cool! I realize they're the norm now, but it must go back to when I was a teen and people first began to get "high end" refrigerators. I really wanted my parents to get one! Anyway, while visiting my aunt and uncle last year I would repeatedly get distracted as I got water from their fridge (usually I was talking) and ended up making a puddle streaming down the door onto the floor. In my defense, I'd gotten used to a different refrigerator that took eons to fill a glass while this one seemed to have a special H2O Miracle Grow inside or something! That's how God's GRACE is. We are filled up and overflowing in His goodness and mercies! Silly word picture? Yes, I know but it totally make sense to me and I wanted to share it. : )
As Paul shared, even in our weaknesses we are still enough and filled up because of God’s completeness and strength in us. GRACE.
Hannah Whitehall Smith, a lay evangelist who was ahead of her times, wrote: "Once I knew what it was to rest upon the rock of God's promises, and it was indeed a precious resting place, but now I rest in His grace. He is teaching me that the bosom of His love is a far sweeter resting-place than even the rock of His promises." Ms. Smith is not saying to cease in reading and trusting in the promises found in God's Word. Instead, she is saying we can believe the promises in God's Word, but even greater solidity is found when we both believe in His promises and simply learn to rest in His LOVE and GRACE.
I continue to struggle with this idea of grace, but it sure is encouraging to know while all of God’s children are complete in Christ, we are also daily learning and growing! My prayer is to continue to rest in Him, be humbled by Him (that’s a scary one!), and abound with Him.
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