Category Archives: trials
A Boy, A Shattered Femur and My Life One Year Ago
It’s Memorial Day. While most people are celebrating their freedom with burgers on the beach or picnics boasting red, white and blue treats, our family is celebrating an anniversary.
It’s been one year since Zach broke his leg.
This blog goes back over five years. No topic discussed in that time has garnered as much interest, as much traffic, as that. Every day someone lands on this site from a google search for “hip spica cast” or “broken femur.” Everyone wants to see pictures. And everyday someone reads about our summer with a handicapped child. It was 10 weeks with a 5-year-old in a half-body cast followed by 4 months of 3-times-a-week PT.
I feel terrible thinking this is something special when so many parents raise permanently handicapped children. Many parents will never see their kids leave the wheelchairs behind. Their struggles may be greater and definitely longer-lasting, but that doesn’t diminish the impact of our story. As I flipped back through the posts of last summer, I remembered how difficult it was. (Can you believe I forgot?) I also remembered how incredibly faithful God was.
Our son has been healed! One year from his accident and we’re spending the day playing baseball and taking turns at the batting cages. How awesome is our God? Rejoice with me!
This all happened “so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. He delivered us … and He will deliver us!”
“We have set our hope on Him that He will deliver us yet again, as you also join in helping us by prayer, so that many people may give thanks to God on our behalf for the gracious gift given to us through the help of many.” (2 Corinthians 1:9b-11)
If you missed it, or if you want to remember and praise God again, here are all the posts from that adventure. I’ve bold-faced the most relevant.
June 3rd: The Newest Dennis Adventure (The accident, hospital stay and cast photos)
July 7th: When A Boy Breaks His Leg … (Photos of x-rays, the wheelchair and life at home)
July 11th: Only Two More Days
July 14th: I shouldn’t blog today. (Disappointment)
July 20th: What I’ve Learned (so far) This Week (Adventures in wheelchairing)
August 2nd: On Many Things (Talk about gardens, hot summers, and inaccurate doctors)
August 4th: Big Birthday Wishes (Zach turns six and gets his wish!)
August 5th: The New Leg of Our Adventure (The cast is off!)
August 9th: A Quickie (First PT appointment)
August 31st: Not Yet Four Weeks Later (videos of his mobility less than 4 weeks after the cast was removed)
Life After Goliath
You would expect a national hero, someone who courageously risks his life and single-handedly saves his people from slaughter and slavery, to be rewarded. The promise was there. The conditions fulfilled, but things didn’t pan out in a predictable, glorious fashion. Things didn’t go they way they ought.
As we continue our study of First Samuel and the lives of Saul and David, we gather much encouragement about our God and His sense of justice. We all face situations that fall far short of our expectations. Perhaps we’ve felt cheated or even hated. Maybe we’ve been betrayed by a close friend or family member. How do we deal with that? How do we live righteously when we feel surrounded and pursued by our enemies? Or sacrificed by those who are supposed to love and protect us?
This is where our Big Word discussion went last night. Read the rest of this entry
Leaping Faith
My husband teases me for keeping a red pen near when I read novels. Yes, sometimes that crimson friend is for marking missed errors that will be compiled into an email to the editor. More often, however, that pen is for noting things of significance. Good fiction can cut right to the heart more efficiently and in a more memorable way than most nonfiction. Those are the lines that I mark. Those are the paragraphs I want to remember.
I recently read a novel by Tessa Afshar. A sweet friend recommended it to me. I’m so glad she did.
Pearl in the Sand (Moody Publishers, September 2010), a fictionalized account of Rahab from the Bible, is filled with multi-faceted characters and profound truths about God and faith. There are many parts I found absolutely fascinating, sections that challenged me to look deeper into the Scriptural account. Other chapters urged me to evaluate my faith and commitment to God. It is one such scene that I want to share with you today. Read the rest of this entry
Like this:
Not Yet Four Weeks Later
Thursday marks four weeks since Zach got his cast off. (If you missed this whole summer saga, go back and read this and this.)
(The sound is a little annoying. I’m sorry about that. The neighbors’ pool filter is acting funny since Irene.)
The orthopedist gets almost giddy when he talks about how amazing kids are, how the heal so quickly. He tells me that it would take an adult three or four months to progress as far as Zach has in just three weeks.
Yes, kids are amazing. Knowing this, witnessing the miracles every day, how can anyone for a moment forget how amazing our Creator is? How can anyone deny that He exists? How can I stop praising Him for all He has done for me?
I can’t.
EVER.
We’ve been so busy with PT appointments and getting ready for a new school year that I’ve not blogged lately. Some of you have questions. Here are a few details.
We continue to go to physical therapy three times a week, an hour each time. Zach does still have a limp, but we’re working on that.
He does stairs! If he holds my hand and the railing, he does them just like a normal six-year-old. If he’s by himself, he usually does the “bear crawl” up and a “bum scoot” down.
As for walking, he does have a walker which he uses whenever we go out or when he gets tired. Around the house, though, he walks all on his own, either limping or using the walls and furniture for support. We haven’t touched the wheelchair for at least two weeks now.
Now, tell me: How good is God?
The new leg of our adventure
I am still processing the events of yesterday, so my thoughts here may seem stilted or a bit jumbled. It is what it is, folks.
On Tuesday I posted on many things including my disillusionment with doctors and this whole cast business. I told you how we likely would not get the cast off until the middle of August. Believing that, we prepped ourselves for yesterday’s appointment by stifling hope and planning to seek additional opinions if necessary. But things didn’t happen as we expected.
After Zach had his x-rays, we corralled both kids into the tiny examination room and simultaneously steeled ourselves for the doctor’s assessment. Instead of his usual demeanor, the doc entered the room with a smile and proclaimed “It’s the day we’ve been waiting for!”
We weren’t ready; we weren’t prepared, but we were willing.
What happened next involved a lot of screaming and crying from both kids. That saw is LOUD. And then more screaming and crying. After being bound for nearly ten weeks, Z was quite uncomfortable with his new liberty. The crying lasted until we got home and then throughout the bath and getting dressed.
The same questions repeatedly rise.
Is he walking? No. In fact, he hasn’t even put weight on it yet. He’s very nervous about bending the newly healed leg, but when he’s not thinking about it, he does move it around. His train table served as a beautiful motivator. He has confirmed that the break location doesn’t hurt at all. It’s just his knee and muscles that hurt. They’re stiff and sorely out of practice.
Is it totally off or does he have a smaller cast? It’s totally off. We don’t have a splint or anything other than a prescription for a pediatric walker, should he need it.
How does it look? Skinny, sore, and kinda gross. You know all the dead skin that naturally exfoliates during baths and while you sleep? Imagine that piling up over ten weeks with nowhere to go. It’s kinda nasty, and now it’s floating in my tub, flaking off my son and leaving a soft, thick layer on all our sheets. In addition, the lack of sunshine has left him looking a touch gray in color.
When do you start physical therapy? Hopefully next week. We’re still waiting for a confirmed appointment.
What now? Well, this is definitely not the end of our adventure, just a new phase of it. Our job now is to get his courage and confidence up while his muscles regain their strength and memory. School starts in less than five weeks. It would be fantastic he were walking independently by then, including doing stairs. If not, though, we will need wisdom to know how what steps to take.
And that’s the story. Life is never boring, is it?
This all happened “so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead. He delivered us … and He will deliver us!”
“We have set our hope on Him that He will deliver us yet again, as you also join in helping us by prayer, so that many people may give thanks to God on our behalf for the gracious gift given to us through the help of many.” (2 Corinthians 1:9b-11)
Praise be to HIM forever and ever! Amen!
Forgetful Me
Last night a precious friend texted me an end-of-the-rope plea: “The stress is winning… Pray for me.”
My reply was a quote from Isaiah:
“Our God does not grow tired or weary;
His understanding no one can fathom.
He gives strength to the weary and
increases the power of the weak …
Those that wait upon the Lord will
rise on wings like eagles.”
This morning I am humbled and embarrassed by my perpetual forgetfulness. But, you see, it’s human nature. This passage that I quoted to my dear friend is preceded by a similar reminder:
“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth!”
Sometimes — like last week — we quickly forget all we know. Remember Elijah? He did it too! The Israelites (for whom Isaiah’s words were first intended) forgot who was caring for them, and we can do the same thing. We’ll spout truths about God’s faithfulness and bottomless well of strength, then freak out over having to wait a measly two weeks for a burden to be lifted. We’ll spend the morning praising God for the wonderful house He gave us, then fill the afternoon with curses because the previous homeowners sold us a feeble construction of crooked sticks and half-finished projects. We’ll complain about all the frenzied details that surround us, completely forgetting in Whose hand we sit.
That’s when Isaiah jumps off the pages of Scripture with these rhetorical questions.
Hello?! Is anybody home? Have you not witnessed all the great things our God has done for you??
For all of you who were worried about me last week, I’m okay. 
Just a touch thick-headed and very, very forgetful.
Like this:
When a boy breaks his leg …
When a five-year-old boy breaks his leg, his x-rays may look like this:
From the top, you can see that his femur broke into three pieces.
From the side, you can see that those pieces overlapped one another at a rather painful angle.
… his sister writes him lots of little love notes while nervously waiting in the ER.
My favorite is the one on the top far left. It simply says “Be ok. Be ok. Be ok.” She was so scared.
When a five-year-old boy breaks his leg weeks before summer break, he misses the last three weeks of school, the end of baseball season, VBS, Sunday School, swim parties and 4th of July fireworks, but his cousins may still envy him because … Read the rest of this entry
Like this:
How to be Outstanding
“Dear brothers and sisters, be firm. Do not be moved! Always be outstanding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.
… to the extent that God has blessed you.
… because a door of great opportunity stands wide open for me, but there are many opponents.
Stay alert, stand firm in the faith show courage, be strong. Everything you do should be done in love.”
Last week I finished reading 1 Corinthians. The quotes above come from 15:58, 16:2, 9, 13-14, all quoted in the NET.
Before I go any further, please understand that I’ve not quoted the verses in their entirety, not even entirely in context. (Click here to read the full chapters.) In order to fully study and understand Scripture, we MUST read it in context, both literary and cultural.
Sometimes, though, God seems to highlight sections of Scripture. He makes them brighter for individuals for specific reasons. The parts I quoted above are the portions that jumped off the page at me last week.
Zach’s care (since his accident) has completely consumed me. I’m not complaining. Please understand that. But I have been overwhelmed, overwhelmed to the point that I sometimes just go through the motions knowing that I have so much to do and I don’t keep moving I won’t get it all done. Believing — or perhaps fearing — that if I take time to process our situation or my feelings about it or the toll it is taking on us, I’ll miss something. The balls I’ve so carefully arranged into moving suspension will tumble to the ground. Read the rest of this entry
The Newest Dennis Adventure
Not all of you are on facebook, so you may be a bit in the dark about this week’s happenings around here. It’s been rather exciting in a totally “this-is-not-what-we-would-have-planned-but-God-is-still-good-and-in-charge” kind of way.
Here’s the story.
We went to Pennsylvania on Sunday to visit family. After dinner Rick and his mom took the kids to a super cool wooden playground. It was there that Zach, while running and chasing and having a wonderful time, somehow got his foot caught and flipped so that, when Rick turned toward the screaming, Z was suspended upside down over monkey bars with his leg still caught in the platform above. Read the rest of this entry
Reflections on 1 Kings 19 (Read with Me Check-in)
Too often people view the Bible as divided in purpose. They see the Old Testament as filled with boring laws and entertaining stories for kids, neither of which apply to us today. Then there’s the New Testament which, in contrast, reveals “relevant” stuff, like tools for mature and godly living.
Hear me now: The entire Bible is useful! The entire Bible is applicable! The entire Bible reveals God! And to know God is the only reason to read the Bible.
I read 1 Kings 19 this week and couldn’t believe how the words just jumped off the page at me. It was as if they were written specifically for me and the situation I currently face. I referenced part of the passage in yesterday’s post. My current struggles (which extend beyond the school decision) are irrelevant. The lessons, however, are extend beyond time and circumstances.
You remember the story. (You probably read it four months ago.)
Elijah had just challenged all the prophets of Baal and won. God came down on Elijah’s drenched altar, instantly consuming the offer. This after the false prophets had spent hours pleading their god to hear them. They had danced and yelled, prayed and cut themselves, all to no avail. Elijah’s God proved to be the one true God. YAY! So, the people bow down and EJ (I have a friend whose son, Elijah, is nicknamed EJ. I like it. ) rounds up all those evil prophets for a massacre.
He should be happy – right? Well, the wicked queen Jezebel isn’t happy. She sends EJ a message assuring him that his life is on the line. He runs away and hides in a cave. That’s where he cries out to God that all this mess is too much. He’s the only surviving prophet of God and nobody cares; he’s all alone and persecuted. (Anyone ever feel that way?) God sends an angel who tends to EJ’s needs. He guards him while he sleeps, he gives him food and then encouragement. The angel tells Elijah that God will pass by. There is a loud thunder and then an earthquake followed by a great fire. God is in none of these. As our hero cowers inside the cave he hears a gentle whisper, nothing more than a breeze. In this He finds God, who then questions him and commissions him again.
Here are a few things I drew from this one short chapter:
- God doesn’t need earth-shattering actions to make Himself known. A simple breeze or a sweet whisper can be enough to shake the earth and fill us with assurance and strength.
- When we’re overwhelmed and feel like we can’t go on, He will give us what we need to persevere — be that food, revitalization or just rest. He’ll guard over us, just like the angel He sent to guard over Elijah. He is with us, even if we can’t see Him.
- Humans are forgetful. Elijah had just been pivotal in one of the most powerful expressions of God’s power and presence. Yet here he was running and hiding in a cave simply because one woman spoke harsh words about him. Had he forgotten the power he just witnessed? Had he forgotten God?
- God always provides. Elijah was exhausted, scared, hungry and frustrated. God provided rest, protection, food and encouragement. He always gives us what we need for the moment. Sometimes not until the last moment, but that assumes our time-frame and not His. He knows what we need and will provide the strength we need until we get the next bundle of “supplies” for our journey.
- God gives second chances and we have choices. God asked Elijah twice: “What are you doing here?” I really think God was trying to gently urge Elijah back toward confident faith, the faith that would fearlessly stand up to hundreds of false prophets. Elijah answered the same both times, but we can answer differently. We can choose to recognize God, even when we can’t see Him.
So, what are you doing here? Why has God put you where you are and what are you doing while there? Are you fulfilling your purposes? Are you so distracted by your fears and circumstances that you can’t see God, even if He brushes your face with the breeze?
Here I am, God. I’m listening. I’m waiting. I’m watching.
I’m also reading. How about you? How are you doing?
