Jn 15:16
We almost got to the end of this very busy week without incident. But at the very end of our very long Saturday, which we spent at school for the homecoming festivities, Pete was playing a game of staff vs alumni volleyball and came down hard on his knee. His good knee. Just a few days ago, he was walking around dressed like a teutonic knight at the Renaissance Faire. Now he's hobbling on crutches.
About three years ago he had surgery to replace the ACL in his right knee, and since then he's favored it, putting more weight and pressure on the left one. On Saturday night, he felt a pop in the left knee, collapsed, and hasn't put his full weight on it since. We took a trip to the urgent care center the next day and the PA there diagnosed a sprain, not a tear, of the knee ligaments, so we are hopeful that we can avoid another surgery.
Sometimes a week hits you with a curve ball and instead of spending Sunday morning in a refreshing Sunday School class, you're spending in the radiology room at Urgent Care. With crutches and advil summing up our weekend, we are not heading into this week the way we expected to.
As I sat in the waiting room, I was reading Margin, which is the book my Bible Study group is doing this quarter. The book encourages readers to put space into our lives, to be careful to live within our limits instead of beyond them. But I applied this section on the pain often caused by culture's progress to the situation in front of me this weekend:
"We once again agree that things do not own us and are not even very important. We once again assert that jobs are only jobs, that cars are only organized piles of metal, that houses will one day fall down - but that people are important beyond description. We once again assert that love stands supreme above all other forces, even to the ends of the universe and beyond."
I am remembering this week that a knee is just a joint, that paperwork is just necessary scribbles, and that though the body inevitably breaks down, the soul is being daily restored. There are trials, but they pale when viewed beside the blessings. There are frustrations, but they fade when considered in the context of all that you've been spared. There is hurt and exhaustion, but they are temporary. The more the heart sees frailty here, the greater our joy as we consider the wholeness of heaven.
Grateful this week for:
urgent care center
kindnesses of friends
the sweet face of a newborn baby
apples
coupons
students who love our son
sunshiney autumn
playgrounds
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