A New Way to View Walking (Part Two)

This is a memory in which I do not have the whole picture…only the images of what impacted my heart remain.

I must have been alone in our dorm room that early evening of my sophomore year at CCU. I was watching a program on the TV, which actually turned out to be a movie based on true events (unknown to me at the time.) I remember a woman encouraging a boy to persevere through life’s challenges and his learning disability.   Most importantly to keep his faith in God. Next he was in college and becomes a doctor…a pediatric Nuero Surgeon. It was the story of Dr. Ben Carson, M.D.; the movie titled Gifted Hands.

Of course, I still didn’t  know  this as I am finishing watching, but remember crying during the scene where he raises his hands in prayer before entering the operating room to perform his first surgery on Siamese twins.

After the movie ended, I went for a walk. I don’t think I intended to go far—maybe just clear my mind, because it was so full of emotion about Dr. Carson’s story. Leaving the dorm, I took a right that kept me headed toward the soccer field. When I neared the end of the field, I remember stopping dead in my tracks. I can’t tell you what I was thinking or discussing with God before that because I don’t remember, but this I do: standing right there, I told God that if I ever needed a wheelchair, I would be okay with it.

I don’t understand why we discussed this at that time…it had nothing to do with the movie. Greater still, that I would tell Him during the prime of physical best, or why it reappeared to memory seven years later…as I now enter the stage of physical worst.

I never told anyone about that   conversation until a few weeks ago when Mom came in to say goodnight. In tears, I said that I think He wants to know if I still mean it…asking, “Do you still trust me?”

I am not in a wheelchair yet, but have sat in some for full days a few times due to doctor appointments or shopping trips. I never feel so much freedom than when I get  home to my walker. And if I trust the human hands to guide me, how much more to trust my all to the Hands that gave me life—and it is only by His Grace that I still walk, because every part of my being says the opposite. I’m overwhelmed with thankfulness and in this new season of growth, I know that God is teaching me and preparing me to fully trust Him for the day when I sit full time in a wheelchair. And when that happens, I want to once again say with my whole heart that I am okay with it.

“Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for Him. For a people shall dwell in Zion, in Jerusalem; you shall weep no more. He will surely be gracious to you at the sound of your cry. As soon as He hears it, He answers you. And thought the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide Himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it.”

Isaiah 30:18-21