Faith is a Bird that Feels the Light and Sings when Dawn is Still Dark
Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. 31 All bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice.
Ephesians 3:30-31
I was tempted the day after my checkup with my surgeon. After the trauma of the day before when my
surgeon had found out that I had been given bad instructions about not putting
weight on my heel, all of which culminated in me not being able to move my
ankle and then having a serious discussion about amputation, I received a text
message from my doctor’s group with the picture of the individual who had given
me the wrong instructions asking for me to write a review about the job that
was done on the internet.
Not putting weight on my heel was why I couldn’t move my
ankle. I had forced myself to not move
my ankle because I had been instructed not to.
When the pain would come it took tremendous will-power to not move my
ankle even though I wanted to move it.
And as I would discover later it was when I started moving my ankle that
my pain significantly decreased. So,
when I realized that those instructions likely caused me more pain than I
should have experienced and that they had potentially stunted my healing I was
tempted to be frustrated and to dwell on that.
There are basically two choices that you can make in
situations where you feel powerless. One
is to look for someone or something to blame and the other is to put your trust
in God. Some don’t realize that this is
a choice and think that we can do both.
We can vent our anger at whoever we perceive to be the cause or some
contributor to our trouble and we can trust God for our healing. And who knows maybe if I had told everyone
about this mistake and had gotten on the website and written a vitriolic and
negative review that God still would have healed me, but I didn’t want to find
out. Ephesians 3:30-31 talks about how
bitterness and anger can grieve the Holy Spirit, so I had it resolved in my
mind to not take any chances. I forgave the
person who had given me the wrong instructions and I even went further and
wrote a positive review of the work that was being done. I wasn’t lying in what I wrote – I was
actually truthful. I said that I had
been in a horrible accident, and they are doing everything they can to help me
recover and that I really appreciated it, but when I wrote it at the time I was
going against the place in my flesh that wanted to get some kind of revenge so
when I wrote it I felt like I was telling a lie because the desire for some
kind of payback distorted my overall view of the situation. Once that temptation had lifted, I thought
about what I had written and realized it to be an accurate portrayal of the
situation. Doctors are amazing and I’m
so thankful for them, but doctors are people and people make mistakes. God often uses doctors to bring healing to
people but at the end of the day I didn’t put my trust in my doctors for my
healing, I had put my trust in the Lord.
So, when the doctors made a mistake, I forgave them and fixed my eyes
back on Jesus choosing not to talk about it with anybody until long after.
~
My third surgery was on August 17th. In a strange coincidence, it also happened to
be my son’s first day of kindergarten. Our
son is our oldest child, so this was our first ever send-off to
kindergarten. I’ve watched movies about
this event and even talked with many people about how it can be an emotional
time for parents, but it was just a completely different thing for me and my
wife. I was still in discomfort and pain
(though it had significantly decreased since I had started moving my ankle) and
everything was still up in the air about what was going to happen to my
foot. I saw many parents walking with their
kids and hugging them and saying things like “you’ll do great” and we said
things like this to my son but the looming shadow of the uncertainty of my
future and whether I would be able to do certain things cast itself over the
entire time.
The shadow of uncertainty of health and being in a situation
that could go in a way that would have been bad for my future was something
that I had never experienced before. It’s
what made putting my trust in God such a profound offering. By the strength that comes from Holy Spirit I
was able to stare down that darkness and speak light and hope into my future. And as dark as it was then, the memories of
this time are some of my greatest treasures.
Its honestly why I’m going into so much detail for this story. I don’t want to forget a single thing that
happened.
~
This entire time was really hard on my kids. I am a very active father and have done my
best to interact with my kids as much as I can.
The first half hour to 45 minutes when I get home from work is spent
usually chasing them around, dancing to music, playing games with them and so
on. It’s not easy to do and can be
tiring but it’s incredibly rewarding. It
is honestly the biggest thing that I’m thankful for with my healing – I can
still play with my kids.
But when I was first hurt, they didn’t understand. My son especially would look forward to when
I would come home and would run from me as I chased him around the house. When I was confined to a bed he was confused
and kept trying to get me to come out and play with him. I kept telling him that “Daddy is hurt, and
he can’t play” but he didn’t have a grid for what that meant. The hospital had given me a makeshift shoe to
put on my cast and he would bring this to me and say “Its ok – here is your shoe”. I can hardly think about this without it
affecting me emotionally - this absolutely broke my heart. After this happened a couple of times, I
asked him to come close to me and I hugged him in my bed, and I told him that
“God is helping daddy.” My church asked
me to give a short 3-minute testimony in November of my healing and I talked
about this moment because it sums up what I was fighting for in faith and what
my healing means to me.
Right after we dropped him off for school we headed to the office for the surgery. I talked with my wife about the trouble that the Apostle Paul went through in Acts 27 and 28 and how Paul had trusted God every step of the way though he faced death from possible starvation, from almost being killed by his jailers and by being bitten by a snake – all on the same journey. I found my situation to have some similarities with Paul because I had been bitten by a snake 3 weeks before I had been in the accident and was so moved by Paul’s trust in the Lord. It would have been easy to be discouraged when after finally finding land after having been lost at sea for weeks to then be faced with being executed along with all the other prisoners because the jailers were afraid of them escaping. And then after all of that imagine being bit by a poisonous snake once you finally get to shore?
The three traumas and trials that Paul faced seemed to
parallel my trials (though in Paul’s case a more dangerous version) and I felt
that Paul’s shipwreck was a symbolic picture of my situation. In Acts 27:20 it says that the storm that had
overtaken the ship was so bad that they didn’t see the sun or the stars for
days and that this lasted for so long that “all hope of being saved was
abandoned.” It then follows that the
apostle Paul stood up in front of all these hopeless fellow travelers and
declared that he had seen an angel and that God had told him that they would
survive.
I wrote the following texts to my text message groups about
this right before I was taken in for surgery:
This theme of having faith in the midst of dark times kept
coming up during my recovery. Once I was
given the go-ahead by the doctor to do some walking in public, I brought my son
to a St. Vincent Depaul (which is a thrift store that sells things that have
been donated to it). As we were walking
through the store, I came across a wall decoration that was deeply moving. It said in gold letters:
FAITH IS A BIRD THAT FEELS THE LIGHT AND SINGS WHEN DAWN IS
STILL DARK
I was so taken aback by this that I bought it and I have
placed it on my work desk as a memorial for what I went through. You can see this in this book's cover picture.
The Apostle Paul spoke about the light when all the crew had
known was darkness and hopelessness. He was on the same boat as them and knew
about the darkness too, but he could feel the light even before it was day
because he was leaning into God and had heard the song that God was singing. Faith is a bird that feels the light and
sings when dawn is still dark.
The third surgery went well, I returned home that day, was
moving my ankle and was set to have the freshly wrapped cast taken off my foot
in 2 days. Things were looking up, but I
still had a long road ahead of me.
Comments
Post a Comment