Recovery
"we stutter and we stammer 'til You say us
a symphony of chaos 'til You play us
phrases on the pages of the unknown until You read us into poetry and prose."
-Nicole Nordeman, "Healed"
I'm up to lifting 30 pounds this week (though I have a little pain in my low back on the other side from the surgery) so I'm almost entirely back to normal. After all this I can confidently say that I'm pretty bad at being "the least of these". I'm sure no one out there is surprised that I'm bad at humility.
There was a point in the hospital when I just broke: it was after both surgeries and they needed to put in a PICC line because my IVs kept closing up. The cultures had come back and shown I had an infection and was gonna need a 10 day course of IV antibiotics. After everything else, it just seemed so much, but I grabbed what strength I had left inside after freaking out for a few minutes and said ok. Then the IV team came in to put in my PICC line...
and after three attempts couldn't get it in.
So they scheduled me to go down to radiology and have it put in with a scope. It's nothing, they said. They just need to see which branch to take in the vein. They'd need to wait for a team to come out from the OR and then they'd come get me.
The OR? That was it. I was empty, hollow. No reserves left. I spent it all on the idea of having to have the PICC line in the first place. I was too young for this; I was stronger than this. It seems stupid to admit now, but it felt like the end. I would *always* be in the hospital sick from now on, and I started crying. Screaming really. "I need something to go right," I remember crying to my mom.
How many people feel that way and have nothing? I had so much (I still do) but God showed me, in that moment, just how little it all meant. We are frail and broken.
a symphony of chaos 'til You play us
phrases on the pages of the unknown until You read us into poetry and prose."
-Nicole Nordeman, "Healed"
I'm up to lifting 30 pounds this week (though I have a little pain in my low back on the other side from the surgery) so I'm almost entirely back to normal. After all this I can confidently say that I'm pretty bad at being "the least of these". I'm sure no one out there is surprised that I'm bad at humility.
There was a point in the hospital when I just broke: it was after both surgeries and they needed to put in a PICC line because my IVs kept closing up. The cultures had come back and shown I had an infection and was gonna need a 10 day course of IV antibiotics. After everything else, it just seemed so much, but I grabbed what strength I had left inside after freaking out for a few minutes and said ok. Then the IV team came in to put in my PICC line...
and after three attempts couldn't get it in.
So they scheduled me to go down to radiology and have it put in with a scope. It's nothing, they said. They just need to see which branch to take in the vein. They'd need to wait for a team to come out from the OR and then they'd come get me.
The OR? That was it. I was empty, hollow. No reserves left. I spent it all on the idea of having to have the PICC line in the first place. I was too young for this; I was stronger than this. It seems stupid to admit now, but it felt like the end. I would *always* be in the hospital sick from now on, and I started crying. Screaming really. "I need something to go right," I remember crying to my mom.
How many people feel that way and have nothing? I had so much (I still do) but God showed me, in that moment, just how little it all meant. We are frail and broken.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.Both for good and ill, though, those memories are already slipping away. Oh Jesus, help me remember and trust in You, not in myself.
-2 Corinthians 4:7
