I Noticed You Don't Limp

What keeps you going?  I do not know about you, but I need someone to push me when I won’t start, guide me when I need direction, pump me when I am down, move me when I am stuck, soothe me when I hurt, embrace me when I am lonely, and stand beside me when I struggle. 

I pray that as I face the uncertainties of life that I always have hope.  I have known several people that have given up hope and the result was death.  I want to have a living hope and that is difficult when I realize how fast evil is growing in our world today.  You and I must avoid killers of hope such as betrayal, trials, and death.

I had a yearly checkup with my knee surgeon on August 29, 2016.  After x-raying of both knees, Dr. Steele examined his handiwork bending my knees, straightening them, and swiveling them.  He asked if I had any issues.  Having none, he said, “I will see you in five years.”

That was great news considering that the last year had been a healing year.  Skibo, my knee therapist, saw me the one night at a Quarterly Men’s Meeting at Fairhaven Baptist Church in Demopolis, Alabama.  He said, “I watched you walking at Walmart the other day and noticed you walked without a limp.”  I responded, “I didn’t know I was supposed to having two new knees.”   He continued to tell me how good I did and how I was a poster child for his clinic Genesis Rehab.

Prior to my surgery, I was on the verge of giving up hope.  My greatest fear was losing the use of my legs.  I knew that there were hundreds of people that loss the use of their legs, especially veterans of the Middle East.  The uncertainty of total knee replacement, especially those I knew that were not totally successful, those that walked with a limp, got infections, and had to re-operate and replace replacements, made me doubt.

My knees deteriorated for over eight years after the initial diagnosis of severe arthritis, bone on bone, and a recommendation of total knee replacement.  The harder I tried to aid in the healing of my knees before surgery, the worse they became.  I eventually destroyed the ACLs in both knees and tore ligaments reaching the lowest point in my life physically, but it was beginning to affect me emotionally and spiritually.

Having had both knees replaced, Erma Davis from Dixons Mill Baptist Church, one of the churches I served, encouraged me have the surgery.  A pastor friend of mine told of a member of his family who had the surgery and wished he had done it years earlier.  When I started having fever, could not do steps, could not bend my knees, and could not move laterally, I paid attention to those trying to give me hope.

At our eldest son’s birthday dinner in Birmingham, we and our daughter, Angela went shopping in Brookwood Village.  Not being able to walk, I sat in the car.  It was a beautiful day for January 18.  I watched handicap students from the University of Southern Mississippi exit a van.  They were in town for a handicap tournament.

I noticed a student that had a prosthesis leg.  He wore shorts and tennis shoes.  I watched him move effortlessly in the parking lot.  I made up my mind that day that if I did lose my legs, I could do as this young man did.

During the pre-op for the first knee replacement, the lady in charge of pre-surgical exercises apologized for being late.  She had helped an eighty plus year-old lady into her car.  This little lady had had total knee replacement that morning.  I made up my mind.  If that little old lady could do well, I could.

The morning of my surgery, I had a Biblical, a Godly peace.  I knew that people were praying for me.  I knew that regardless of the outcome, that God would be with me every step, no pun intended, of the way.

I remember that there was no pain in my knee.  Sure, the knee was sore from the cutting of muscles and ligaments, the pulling, hammering, and cutting of bones, and especially the tourniquet, but there was no pain in the joint.  That afternoon after the surgery, I started walking.  Actually, having not bent my right knee in years, I learned how to walk again.  I couldn’t wait to replace the other one and wished I had not waited so long.

Learning to walk again is what we must do when betrayal, trials, and death wounds us, zaps our energy, and consumes our being.  Peter’s hope was obliterated after the betrayal, the trial, and death of Jesus.  But, after the Resurrection, Jesus picked him up from the pits of self-destruction and self-pity and challenged him.  Examine the difference in Peter when he wrote the early Christians when they were being persecuted.    

  

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.  Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ: Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory: Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls (I Peter 1:3-9 KJV).