I am the queen of random accidents!
Last Sunday I was walking out of our house to go meet the van taking us to church and I stepped into a four foot gutter. My right foot was all scrapped up and I sprained my ankle pretty bad. After cleaning up my foot, I found it really challenging to walk long distances. Over this week I have been trying to push through the pain, doing what I can but after this weekend I have realized that pushing too hard does not help anything. This weekend, my team went backpacking in the Penang National Park which was beautiful but quite a challenging hike. By the end of our trip, my foot was in so much pain I could barely walk. While enjoying our time at the beach, I began to realize that God might be telling me to slow down and wait, that this foot injury happened to make me realize that I can’t do everything on my own.
Push through the pain
This is a phrase which I have lived by my whole life. Whether it was a shoulder injury I got from playing waterpolo that I played through for six years or if it is exhaustion during finals week of college, pushing through was always something I have done for different reasons. For waterpolo, I pushed through because I loved the game. I love playing it, being a part of the team and striving to always do my best. Though it was painful, it didn’t matter because it the end the reward was greater than the pain endured. In school I did not always love it, but I knew once again that the sleepless night, the late night cramming and the painstaking hours in the library would result in a high reward. A College Dipolma.
So when I sprained my ankle, I took the same approach that I always take, push through the pain, but this time there was not the same reward that I had seen before. Pushing through the pain here meant painfully walking places, acting like everything was okay when it wasn’t and pushing myself to the point where I can barely do ministry because it hurts to much to walk.
As I sit hear writing this blog while I am suppose to be teaching English, I have realized that life is not about pushing through the pain. It is not about bearing down and waiting until the moment has past or trying to pretend like nothing is wrong when something is. Instead maybe I am suppose to allow others to serve me in this time. Maybe God has a lesson to teach me through this experience. This is how we are suppose to look at life. Instead of trying to bear through the pain, instead of trying to get through the hard season, we are suppose to sit and wait for the Lord to work in and through us in the current season. By pushing through and ignoring the pain, we might miss what God has for us in the pain.
So though it is against my nature and extremely hard for me to do, here I sit, waiting on the Lord to heal my foot as quickly and slowly he wants to. Though I may be bored out of my mind I know that God is going to work in and through this injury to teach me something and bring him glory. Thank you for your support and prayers! They mean a lot
