Wheelchair.

I was talking to a woman at my church last Sunday who had hip replacement surgery a few weeks ago.  She looks great, and is healing well.  We got to talking about the healing process though, and she said that she felt like she had been taking leaps and bounds, but then soon after was having to slow down and take a step back.

This is how I feel tonight.

I twisted my leg in a funny position about a week ago, and then the magical orange bump appeared in my leg a couple of days later.  You know the story.  The swelling is gone now, but the pain is still there, and it's making me nervous.  

Then, my wheelchair was returned to Walgreens today, (yes Walgreens rents wheelchairs), and I'm not sure how I feel about it.  You'd think that with me driving yesterday, and walking in a shoe for a while would bring me some sense of comfort, but they don't.  I'm feeling a little nervous about where my feet & legs are in the healing process today.  Tonight I'm asking questions like, "Is the bone stimulator going to work?  Is there a reason the tendon in my right leg hurts?  Why don't the scars look better?  Did I do something to them?  Are the weird bumps on the bottom of my left foot going to go away?"  Steps back from my optimism yesterday.

It's hard to take steps backwards, isn't it?  It is for me.  Especially because I love shortcuts and normalcuts and not thelongwayaroundcuts.  For instance: teaching.  I have been reflecting a lot lately on my student teaching/subbing experience, partly because I'm starting to think about where I'm going to work when I head back to Milwaukee.  It makes me really nervous.  It's also partly because I feel like I've had to take steps backward as far as the expectations for myself & for my jobs go, even before I fell.  That's more figurative, I guess. 

Literally speaking, I've been thinking about what it's going to mean to stand on my feet all day at work now, and to feel the results of that at the end of the day.  How am I going to sit down and get up like I did before?  Am I going to be able to crouch down to talk to kids?  Will the school I was working at even take me back, knowing that I have sustained such an extensive injury?  Then, I start worrying about my actual ability to teach.  My confidence level wasn't very high coming out of student teaching, and now I feel so out-of-practice.  Will the classroom feel foreign now?  What do I do next?  What if I'm not able to work this Spring at all?  Or Summer?  Or Fall?  What if none of my plans go like I think they will?

The returning of my silly wheelchair is what started all the questions.  I can see now that they have spun out of control.  (I really was sad to say goodbye to that thing.  It helped me so much in the last months - I have a lot of memories in it.)  I think what really scares me is that now there is no turning back.  Literally and figuratively. 

Anyway.  Enough what-ifs for the night.  God is sovereign.  He has gotten me this far, and his hands have brought me back to his gaze time and time again.  As long as my eyes are there, I will not worry.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
   neither are your ways my ways,”
            declares the LORD.
“As the heavens are higher than the earth,
   so are my ways higher than your ways
   and my thoughts than your thoughts..."

Phew. 

"You will go out in joy
   and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
   will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
   will clap their hands."

 Isaiah 55:8, 9, & 12