Through the Wringer

So my last post is dated January 21. At that point, my butt hurt so bad I couldn’t sit in my wheelchair. I had spent the majority of the previous three weeks flat on my back in bed. When I’m flat on my back in bed I’m really not even able to use a remote control. I can’t turn from side to side… I’m just stuck. I thought I had already been through a lot.

Holy crap was I wrong. Hemorrhoids. I could never have imagined how bad they could be. I was completely out of commission until the past week or so. I lost about 25 pounds. I was always scared to crap. And I was in bed like 18 to 20 hours a day. I wish I could adequately express how emotionally exhausting and trying it has been.

But I think that God has been using this. Actually I don’t think that, the Bible directly expresses it.  So with all this time that I was in bed, I was desperate to find the small (or big) nugget of truth that God had for me. There were two things.

One, it has showed me just how incredible my relationship with my wife is. We have had to spend so much time together (too much time), and she has had to do so many things for me… and honestly, I would say that we are stronger and happier than we even were at the beginning of January. We’ve also been reading through the Bible together in one year starting in January…  the grace that she carries herself with, and the amount that she can get done without the help from me that she grew accustomed to our first seven years of marriage is remarkable. My decision to ask her to marry me is the number one best decision I’ve ever made. She is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. And she is smoking hot.

Two -and I’m still formulating this one-  God is still working on my heart for others. I have such a tendency to be arrogant and prideful, and spending so much of my time in bed for the past few months, I have really learned firsthand a snippet of what it would be like to be either more handicapped or bedbound altogether. I have really just never wanted to try to put myself in those shoes. Wow. Because the bottom line is, I can still set my two year old boy on my lap and show him his videos of choo-choo trains on YouTube on my iPhone. I can pull my wheelchair alongside my daughter’s bed and put my hand on her leg as I pray for her at night.  I can still wrap an arm around my seven-year-old as he goes running by in my wheelchair, dropping him to the floor in glee.

These are all just thoughts spinning around my head. But let me leave you with this. If you think you have your life all under control, you’re wrong. If you think having the right boat, cottage, or set of golf clubs holds any real value, you’re dead wrong. Those things aren’t bad in and of themselves. But if you think that there’s anything different about you, and that they can’t all be gone in a second, you’re wrong.  If you think you have a great job, and you have your 10 year plan all in place, and you think you’re the master of your destiny… you’re wrong. It’s hard to truly grasp the gravity of that. I couldn’t before my daughter died. I couldn’t before my accident. And I can’t now. But I know one thing…

I Corinthians 6 says, “you are not your own. You were bought at a price.”

I’m so glad He bought me.

I sure don’t want any more pain in my life, but I’m glad he’s still talking to me when it’s there.