Surgery! Yesterday I had arthroscopic knee surgery for a torn meniscus. I must admit, I’d never had any surgery so-to-speak, except the time I had my wisdom teeth cut out (all four over Christmas holidays during my college years), and got some stitches in my head. {Just a side note: don’t ever stand up quickly while working underneath a combine…It can be painful:).} Since this was my first major surgery with an I.V. I was pretty nervous about the whole thing, but it went so smoothly and everyone has been great. Extra kudos goes to my awesome wife, Nancy, and daughter, Hannah, for bringing me home after the surgery!
This was the wonderful ending to a crisis week. Everything was going great up until a week prior to the surgery date: picking up a set of cheap crutches, insurance details covered, clothing to wear, finish grading papers, arranging schedules since Hannah would be out of school and Joshua would be “home alone.” Then on Sunday I came down with a sinus cold. I couldn’t sleep and I was worried that they wouldn’t let me get the surgery. This was a one-time shot since my schedule would pick up right after the New Year. On Tuesday night it got so bad that I didn’t get to sleep until about 4 a.m. I was miserable, worried, and mad at God.
You would think that being mad at God would be the last thing a person of faith would do. After all, He hadn’t done anything to me personally except help. But that night I felt as though God had let me down, that he had fallen through on his promises. I had held onto the words of Scripture I read and knew that God still answered prayer, but I felt like He was so far away – and it wasn’t fair. I felt like I deserved more. And so I got mad at God and stayed that way for about a day and a half.
But isn’t that ironic; that we often get to a place in life where we feel God owes us something. Honestly, we really don’t deserve anything from God, but His never ending grace has allowed everyone of us the privileged possibility of coming before Him when in need. And sometimes we go through days and weeks and months of testing as we move along this life’s journey. When Job (a Godly husband and father in the book of Job in the Bible) suffered with boils all over his body and lost all he had he still held on to his faith in God and God honored that faith.
After I got over being so mad, I was really ashamed; ashamed that things and circumstances could get me to the point of being mad at God. But isn’t that just like life? Things happen and everyone, even Christians, have days that they have to struggle through – not understanding why their world just got turned upside down. The awesome thing is that God’s grace is greater than our short tempers and times of failure. The Psalmist said in Psalms 31 verse 22, “In my alarm I said, ‘I am cut off from your sight!’ Yet you heard my cry for mercy when I called to you for help.”
Even when we feel like we’ve been cut off from God – He still hears when we pray or talk to Him, and He still answers. He still helps the surgeries of life go better than we could have ever imagined, so even when you don't feel like it, keep holding on and live life to its fullest. That’s what God would want for you, and that’s what you can have when God is right at the center of it all.
Surgery! Yesterday I had arthroscopic knee surgery for a torn meniscus. I must admit, I’d never had any surgery so-to-speak, except the time I had my wisdom teeth cut out (all four over Christmas holidays during my college years), and got some stitches in my head. {Just a side note: don’t ever stand up quickly while working underneath a combine…It can be painful:).} Since this was my first major surgery with an I.V. I was pretty nervous about the whole thing, but it went so smoothly and everyone has been great. Extra kudos goes to my awesome wife, Nancy, and daughter, Hannah, for bringing me home after the surgery!
