Your Life is not for You

Originally published on the blog, Great-ish Expectations, which no longer exists-

One year ago today, at around this time (presuming you read this post around the time that I publish it- midday, September 8, 2012), I went under the knife (or saw or drill or orange peeler- whatever they used to cut my knee open).  Shortly before this moment I was watching Cars on a small, portable DVD player situated on my chest (which I didn’t get to finish by the way) waiting for a surgery that was scheduled to take place hours before but was delayed due to my surgeon being asked last-minute to help out on an emergency surgery elsewhere.  Next thing I know I’m being strapped to an operating room table in a freezing room while being asked to breathe through a cup attached to a hose emitting a strange smell.  This is the scariest moment of my life because I do not know what the outcome will be.  This moment is the accumulation of years’ worth of frustration, pain, anger, sorrow, bitterness, regret and estrangement.  But it is also the foundation of something new and unexpected:  healing through injury; joy through dread; peace through turmoil; gain through loss; identity through revelation, and purpose through identity.  How can a surgery be the crux of all this?  Well…

Origins

I remember the exact moment when I hurt my knee.  I take that back.  What I mean to say is that I have the memory of it still firmly in place in my mind (I cannot tell you what day it was or even the season).  Right now I am playing it in my mind as I type:  it’s a sunny day and I’m in 5th grade.  We’re playing kickball in PE.  I remember the hot embarrassment of kicking the ball horribly during a critical play (the only reason to pick me on a team was because I specialized in sending kick balls to the other side of the field.  Outside of that I was pretty useless and I knew it) and just trying my best to get to first base as quickly as I could.  And then I remember the audible “pop” in my knee.  I didn’t collapse.  I didn’t scream.  I winced (more from shock than from pain) and ran the rest of the way to first base.  From that moment on I walked with a limp.

It’s hard to say why I never had my knee looked at until I was in my mid-twenties.  I remember telling my parents that my knee hurt and I remember them telling me not to be “…so dramatic.” (please know that I didn’t mean that reference in any way to be a bash or slam or jab against my parents:  kids are drama queens and much of the time it’s hard to distinguish the truth from the crap).  At some point in my young life, dealing with and managing the pain became a point of pride and proving my mettle (another unfortunate remark made to me as a child (usually stated off-handedly when I would let out some complaint about the pain in my knee) was that I had a low pain tolerance.  This statement always hurt me and drove an anger into my heart that insisted that I had to prove this person wrong).

Over the years the muscles in my left leg shrunk, causing the ligaments to tighten, putting an incredible amount of pressure within the joint comprising my knee, which, consequentially, worsened the pain and the effects of the injury:  my limp grew worse and fluid would build up within the knee cavity whenever I ran or walked a long way or stood for a long period of time (I could even predict bad weather based on the pain in my knee).  It just became a part of who I was.  It became indelibly linked to my identity (and along with it all the resentment and embarrassment and anger and frustration associated with it).  How could I get rid of it?  It would be a denial of who I was.  What I saw myself as.  What I saw myself “overcoming” and proving my worth with.  I was proud of my debility.

The Wrestling Match

April 2011.  I’m on my way home after work.  I remember that typical feeling of grogginess I experience as I try to wake myself up so that I can rouse myself out of my seat on the bus and make the final walk home.  I step off the bus and know immediately that something is very wrong:  there is a bubble in front of my knee cap that is preventing me from straightening my left leg (making walking very difficult, if not impossible).  I play with my knee a little bit and find that this bubble is mobile and I maneuver it into a spot in my knee where it will interfere less with my ability to walk the couple of blocks between me and the house.  Right now I’m pretending that this is just some delusion created by a weary mind to take its focus off of a long day at work.  I’m ignoring the obvious; the thing I’ve feared most my life:  my knee was falling apart.  I manage to get home and march to my room.  I pray out of fear and desperation.  I just want things to be the way they were.  I don’t want things to get worse.  I stand up after saying “Amen” and immediately feel lightning inside my knee.  This is a pain I have never experienced before:  a sort of crunching electricity.  I sit down and manage to work the bubble from the place where it had shifted behind my knee to a spot where I could feel it less and work my way to the utility closet where I am able to find an old ace bandage that I immediately wrap around my knee to keep the bubble from shifting back to that spot.

A few months prior to this moment I had become fed up with the direction of my life.  Many of my friends were moving on with their lives and getting real jobs and getting married and even having kids.  I felt as though I hadn’t gone very far after college.  True I had a job (and miraculously before I had a job I survived 8 months of unemployment), but it was not what I wanted to do and it didn’t pay as well as I would have liked it to.  I was angry.  I felt as though my skills and abilities could best be used elsewhere and I definitely wasn’t happy about how slowly my bank account was recovering from being depleted back a couple years ago (for a long time I had no choice but to live from paycheck to paycheck and was just at that point able to start saving some of my income).  I felt that opportunity was being withheld from me.  I felt like my life was coming to a stop at 25 (I’m a stupid man).  I decided that a change was in order.  Since I did not have the skills or experience necessary to even be considered for an interview for those jobs that I wanted, and since I couldn’t afford to just go back to school to learn another skill or to even buy a car to leave (not without getting into horrendous debt that I would never be able to get out of), I decided that the only feasible option was to join the military, gain the acquired skills there, and then maybe come back and take my pick of the jobs I wanted (or maybe I would just become a professional soldier- anything seemed better than the mundane life that I wound up with).

I blamed God for my situation in life, of course.  I remember thinking how cruel it was for Him to give me a capacity and heart to serve and not the means by which to do it, leaving me in a state of limbo that was inescapable and by no means stress-free.   I figured since He wasn’t doing anything to bail me out of the seeming meaninglessness my life had become, then He was giving me the permission to figure it out on my own (I figured that this was yet another one of life’s tests that He would wind up providing for if I went through with it (which, ironically enough, was right, just not from the viewpoint I was looking at it from)).  I figured at this point I had taken the reins of my life from Him, but in reality I’ve always been trying to yank them from His hands.  I never really trusted Him.  What made this situation unique, however, was that I formalized my complaint to Him and sent Him the action plan that I was going to carry out no matter what (short of Him stopping me somehow).  I didn’t know when, but I figured that soon I would carry out my plan for success, even if it meant that I just threw down the gauntlet in front of the Creator and Planner of existence (and whatever else there may be in and around it).

During that period of time I was studying the book of James in the New Testament.  James appealed to me because he had a lot to say on living well and wisdom (ironic that James points out that both of these things stem out of obedience to God, but more on that later) and I was trying to learn more about both.  Around the time I made the decision to join the military (maybe two or three weeks after the fact), I came upon this passage in my studies,

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”  As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.  Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins. (James 4:13-17)

You know the expression “God smack”? (not just the name of a band).  I felt the enormity of my pride at that moment.  I realized how much I had puffed myself up in front of God to make Him feel small so that I could feel more comfortable bullying Him into what I wanted Him to do for me.  I realized the pathetic-ness of my efforts and apologized to Him for being stubborn and insubordinate and asked that He give me greater vision to see what He sees and to not judge my life on the world’s standards, but His.  I told Him I would invest more into my current employer (since that is where He had placed me) and work on being a blessing to my church and friends (no matter how limited I felt) and hold off for a year on joining the military so as to gain a greater insight into His plan.

My twenties have been defined by my “change in shape”, so to speak.  Over the past few years (maybe I can even call it “quite a few years” at this point) I have gotten into exercising more and eating better (the things you do when you want to feel better about yourself).  If I was progressing anywhere in my life, it was in my body.  This fact was one of the leading reasons I felt that I could join the military and fit in rather easily:  I’m quite disciplined and I knew I could do better physically than most of the other recruits.  Even if I had to endure the rigors of drill sergeants and officers treating me like an idiot, I knew I could endure it if the payout was worth it.  In the movie The Matrix, Morpheus says rather bitterly upon reflecting on the state of affairs the human race was in, “Fate, it seems, is not without its irony.”.  All the exercising I did, everything I did to get stronger and faster, everything I did to improve myself, to make up for what I was lacking, to overcome my weaknesses, to take the attention away from my beloved/hated knee, everything I did to say, “Yes, my knee tries to keep me from achieving, but I have mastered its pitiful attempts to keep me down.  I have proved my worth through my mettle.”-  all these things contributed to what happened on that day in mid-April when the bubble started drifting around my knee cavity.

Know that nothing could have stopped my knee from eventually breaking (short of perhaps never ever walking).  However, the level of exercise I was doing and the amount of stress I was putting on an already weary joint speeded up the process (to think- this may have happened sooner if I had been a more active teenager…but that’s another story completely).  That last step off the bus was merely the final straw, the last degree of pressure needed at just that exact angle and trajectory to produce what was inevitably going to take place.

Back on that day in mid-April I sat on the chair in my room with the fraying Ace bandage around my knee feeling both terror and rage.  I felt betrayed.  “I apologized to You!”  I said, “I said I would be obedient and stay!  And this is how You treat me?!”.  Out of the midst of this maelstrom of emotion a section of scripture came to me.  I opened my Bible and flipped to Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians,

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.  Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me.  But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.  That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)

This series of verses would become more important to me over the course of this ordeal, but in that moment it did bring a semblance of peace (even if I did not quite understand it just then).  More importantly, it brought me to another story,

That night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two maidservants and his eleven sons and crossed the ford of the Jabbok.   After he had sent them across the stream, he sent over all his possessions.  So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man.  Then the man said, “Let me go, for it is daybreak.” But Jacob replied, “I will not let you go unless you bless me.”….Then he blessed him there.  So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.”  The sun rose above him as he passed Peniel, and he was limping because of his hip. (Genesis 32:22-26, 29b-31)

I often wonder at this:  God created a man to wrestle with.  Someone who He could demonstrate and prove and display His power and glory through by breaking him (and yet keeping him intact).  Fundamentally the only thing He changed about Jacob was that He humbled him.  But that re-oriented Jacob and aligned his life to God’s plan (or rather, made him actively pursue it in the actions of his life).  The limp was a reminder of God’s blessing to Him.  The pain would be God’s continued, throbbing reminder of His blessing to him.

I am of the same stock of Jacob.  I am one with whom God had to wrestle with in order to re-orient me back to Himself.  God reached down and touched me and I broke under the pressure.  I would think deeper upon this later, but during that moment of pain and frustration that story was as sweet to me as any gesture ever done for me:  I was not broken in vain.  My life was not over.  I was blessed and my broken knee was God’s reminder to me that He had blessed me.

The Challenge of Broken Bones

I realize this is already long (and yes, I anticipate it being a lot longer (a lot happens in a year)), so I believe that I’m being realistic in thinking that most who started reading this probably stopped about 15 minutes ago and that I might just be writing this for myself (which would be fine- this is quite therapeutic and life-orienting).  If you’re one of the few who have endured, than God bless you (don’t forget to eat something and please use the bathroom if you have to).

There was a lot of waiting after my knee gave out.  I had to wait till the end of the month to see a sports medicine specialist who told me there were no ripped or torn muscles or ligaments, but severe muscular atrophy.  I had to wait yet another month to see the surgeon.

Before this I thought I was already a patient guy.  God pointed out to me that I was only patient when life was “all as it should be”, but not when the pressure was increased.  Not when it would be extraordinary to be patient.  God gave me no choice but to learn patience under these circumstances.  And I hated it.  Unfortunately (well…I guess, in the long run, fortunately), He would continue increasing the pressure so as to increase my patience even further.

The surgeon called my condition Osteochondritus Dissicans (OCD for short, but really, I can’t tell people I was having surgery to fix my OCD!).  It is a relatively rare disorder in which a segment of one or more of the bones comprising a joint (the head of my left femur in my case) has the blood flow cut off from it, causing the cartilage in that area to die and thus causing the bone beneath to rub against the other bone in the joint, causing…discomfort (hence my preference to favor the right leg, thus causing the limp and promoting the muscular atrophy).  Given enough time, the exposed bone breaks off and becomes a free-floating body within the knee cavity (mystery of the mobile bubble revealed!).  While there are many hypotheses as to why this happens, its actual reason for occurring still remains a mystery.  All that’s really known about it is that it is most commonly considered a sports-related injury (common among basketball players and race horses).  It is thought in some circles to be a genetic abnormality, though it’s getting more and more common (by common I mean less and less obscurely rare).

The other thing the surgeon told me was that there was not one proven method of fixing OCD.  He gave me five different surgery options to research and think about (each more cutting edge and less-tested than the last!) and his card.  I won’t go into detail about each of the different surgery options, but only mention it to give you some insight into what my state of mind was like as I took the next couple of weeks to look into each of the options (my dad helped out with this as well).  Each had its own pros and cons.  Some were obviously just patch jobs that fell apart 5 years after the procedure and didn’t work that well to begin with.  Some were extremely new and had no long-term follow up results.

The overall risk was that with this sort of procedure, you could only perform two or three surgeries.  If all of them failed, than your knee would be permanently wasted, and if you ever wanted to walk again you had to get a complete knee replacement (see how the pressure was being turned up?).  Needless to say, I was a bit of a wreck.

In the midst of waiting and sifting through different surgery options, I helped out in co-leading a Bible study for the Tallahassee alumni with some friends.  We were doing a chapter-by-chapter review of the book of Hebrews.  Hebrews is not only beautifully written, but also quite persuasive in its argument for Christ’s role in the universe and in our lives.  It is a tremendous book of hope in tumultuous times:  the author is writing to Christians who are considering abandoning their faith so as to avoid persecution.  They just want to live, but were being kicked out of their homes and being stripped of their belongings and being shunned by former friends because of their belief in Jesus.  The writer points out that persecution and pain and trials are key to the Christian faith in that they bring us into fellowship with Christ and bring true perspective about the nature of life and how we should live it and for what (see Hebrews 13:12-15 for one of many references to this in that book).  While I was not being persecuted for my faith, I can certainly say that my faith was being persecuted by my cynicism and lack of faith in God’s goodness and care for me given the circumstances.  I came to see that this was a trial by fire,

But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.

(Job 23:10)

Speaking of encouragement (kind of a joke…kinda), I reflected in the book of Job many times during this period as well (indeed, even during recovery).  Much of my bitterness over this situation stemmed from a paranoia that God was intentionally preventing me from doing that which He placed a passion in me to do.  I worked hard and treated people well and generally want to do good:  shouldn’t I be given the tools I need to carry out the functions of a good person? (I wanted to be a servant of the public for crying out loud!)  I felt as if something were a bit off- like God’s personnel file on me was misplaced into the “punish” file cabinet rather than the “bless” file cabinet (can you tell that I work in a bureaucracy?  How sad that that is how I saw God’s administration of the universe).  I wanted to post a complaint or challenge my supervisor’s review of my work or something, but no matter how much I yelled or groaned, it didn’t change the state of my knee.  It didn’t change where I was in life.  It didn’t change my complete and utter helplessness in this situation.  I suppose it is only natural in times like these for people to break out the book of Job to try to figure out what the heck is going on.

Job was a good guy (one could argue that he was a better guy than myself.  One would be more or less correct in that statement as well).  Even a cursory glimpse of the first few chapters of Job reveals a lifestyle that is not only one that exemplifies holy living, but one that is submissive to the will of God (even in horrifying situations).  However, Job is not just the first few chapters.  It is made up of 42 chapters, most of which is belly-aching and arguing.  In most of the book, Job is doing what we do when we’re faced with difficulty:  he complains as he analyzes his life in a self-defensive manner, trying to figure out what the heck brought all his pains and humiliations about.  I love and am so appreciative of God’s placement of this book in the Bible:  it’s so odd!  So full of a man’s complaining!  So…relatable.  God knew that we would need an example to look to when we faced the challenges of this world.  The Bible is full of extraordinary people who perform extraordinary things.  This is fantastic!   However, these individuals are, in most cases, un-relatable.  When I don’t have enough money I don’t care that Solomon had too much.  When I’m not in control over anything in my life I don’t care about Joshua’s conquest of Canaan.  When the power’s out I don’t wanna hear about Elijah calling down fire from heaven.  Job, however, is just an ordinary fellow:  all he was doing was trying to live a good life.  That, I believe , covers most of us.  Sure, he was wealthy, but you can tell that it was a wealth achieved through hard work:  something we can, if not relate to, respect and hope to achieve with our own hard work (how am I sure of that?  In the beginning of the book, when all of his fortune is stripped away from him, do you laugh and say, “That’s what you get, Job!”, or do you feel a sting of sympathy for an ordinary guy who just lost everything?).  Job is us.

I often took the opening two chapters of Job for granted.  During this time, though, it dawned to me that Job has absolutely no idea of what is going on.  We are privileged with knowing the circumstances that bring about Job’s trial.  Job is not.  Imagine if the book didn’t include those parts about Satan visiting God and challenging him to test Job’s character?  We would then be in Job’s position completely (well…as completely as you can be without having to be the poor guy).  But that’s not the point of this book.  The point is to take a step back and observe life from a position outside the bounds of earthly cares and concerns (an “out of body experience” as it were).  To observe someone that you can relate to, but from a more objective vantage point than being human normally allows.

This was the impression left upon me by that insight:  there are things about life (indeed, it could be said everything about life) that are linked to bigger and grander purposes and conquests.  God made us for His glory (to bear His image).  Satan wishes to cheapen the glory given to God by accusing humanity of being sub-par bearers of His image, thereby discrediting (or attempting to discredit, anyway) God’s work (and His character, His power, His goodness, etc.).  His is an act of defiance:  to dethrone the Creator of all things by calling His creation (and therefore Himself) into question and doubt.  Satan describes his actions as, “…roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.” (Job 1:7b).  In the New Testament, Peter describes his actions as a little more sinister than just taking a casual stroll,

…Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

(1 Peter 5:8b)

In Revelations, Satan is described as, “the accuser of our brothers…who accuses them day and night before our God.” (Revelations 12:10)

Put these pictures together and you make up a being that is always hunting for any tiny flaw that could be used to question God’s flawlessness.  Unfortunately for us humans, we are flawed, giving Satan ample excuses to stay before the throne of God “day and night”.  Fortunately, God is sovereign and uses Satan’s accusations about humanity as an engine by which humans can glorify God.  This is achieved through the human’s relying on God’s strength through understanding when they are weak.  Sometimes this does not occur immediately, taking generations of individuals and events perhaps, but in the end God orchestrates everything to achieve glory out of every situation (see Ephesians 1:11).  Thus Satan’s argument that that human’s flaws reflect a flaw in God is declared mute by His absolute sovereignty.

God says, “Have you considered my servant Job?” (Job 1:8a).  I like to think that this means, “Hey, Satan, do you know of any flaws of this ‘flawless man?”.  I could imagine Satan’s mouth watering at this point (and God knew it would):  it would be the chance to show how pathetic/horrible/un-glorifying the best of God’s creatures would be if placed under difficult circumstances.  It would be the perfect opportunity to show that at the core of God’s creation is imperfection-that goodness can be as easily stripped from an individual as his belongings.  From that stance Satan could make the argument that if God had all of His power and glory and honor stripped away from Him, that at His core He would not be who He claims to be-that He would be flawed.  Before I go on with Job, I would like to quote Morpheus again, “Fate, it seems, is not without its irony.” and quote (for your consideration) Phillipians 2:5-11:

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.  Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Job ends with his submission to God’s will in his life.  It is in this act that this dirty, bankrupt, disease-ridden, friendless man gives to God a treasure worth more than all the material things of this entire universe combined:  his heart.  His will.  His purpose.  Job gives God glory here because he has oriented his heart to the purpose for which he was created:  to love God (see Matthew 22:34-38).  In the end, it isn’t Job’s actions or stance per-se that glorifies God, but the orientation and goal of his will (see Psalm 51:16-17).  God turns unworthy things into the ultimate offerings of praise and honor, therefore Satan is proved wrong over and over again to the glory of God (and to Satan’s humiliation given that he has contributed to that glory).

I’m a works-oriented person.  It’s hard not to be given that tasks and achievements or failures are really the only tangible things we can use to determine the quality or worth of a person.  We are designed to work, so this is not necessarily a bad mindset to have (see Ephesians 2:10, 2 Thessalonians 3:10, James 2:14-26 and Proverbs 14:23 for a sample of the value of work and action in defining people).  I know, at least for me, that design can slip into purpose-I reason that I am what I do, rather than I do because I am.  Batman (nothing wrong with quoting Batman!) himself said, “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.”  This is the ticket to burnout for one who has a passion that he seems to be unable to work toward.  This is doubly so when this person feels like everything is working against him to hamper him.

I was burned out and my knee giving out on me was just another reminder of failure:  I had worked so hard at every task I had been given, and in the end all I had become was broken and nonfunctional.  I considered God’s challenge to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job?” and thought that perhaps now my name was thrown into the mix, “Have you considered my servant [Zack]?”.  Initially I thought this notion to be ridiculous (Job would probably think it ridiculous himself as well), however, what drove the idea that I was being tested, that I was being used for God’s glory, was this statement made by Satan,

Skin for skin!   All that a man has he will give for his life.  But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face. (Job 2:4-5)

“Bone”.  That brought the book of Job from an objective viewpoint in my mind to a personal one.  This was the challenge given to me.  Satan questioned my ability to glorify God.  Even went so far to say that I would curse Him for my situation.  That I would do the exact opposite of what I was created to do.  But praise be to God:  I became even more determined to praise God in this situation despite not knowing the full reasons behind it.  In fact (and this feeling would grow throughout the course of this year), I felt honored to be picked for such a challenge.  This would be my source of encouragement in times of despair prior to and after the surgery.  I could go on and on with identity and purpose and work, but instead I’ll boil it down to this:  my function in life is to glorify God in all that I do, and I won’t fail Him in that charge as long as I am in Christ (and in fact I give Him more glory when I feel the most pathetic and have to lean on Him all the more for help).

What then? Only that in every way, whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice…Yes, and I will rejoice…it is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.  For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. (Philippians 1:18, 20-21)

Paul said that in a Roman prison while the Church he had worked to establish and keep safe was under attack and being compromised by internal and external elements.  If that’s not a situation to be ashamed about than I don’t know what is.  But he is confident that God is being glorified in his life because it is not the working that earns favor from God, but rather the orientation of the heart.

For by grace you have been saved through faith.  And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.  (Ephesians 2:8-10)

Ultimately, God is in control.  He placed Paul in the prison cell.  Paul could have complained about his situation and cursed God.  Instead, he saw from a larger perspective:  the perspective that stated that his life wasn’t for him, but for God- that while he was built with passions and goals to work, ultimately, those weren’t the things that gave him meaning and purpose and life:  Christ was.  The orientation must be on Christ because works and the situations surrounding works are ultimately out of your hands and cannot fully be controlled by you and therefore cannot satisfy your need.  Your need is to be content in glorifying God simply by living the best you can with what he has given you to live with in Christ (to walk in the good works He already intended you to perform to paraphrase the above slightly).  In that mindset you can never be ashamed, but you can also never boast (how can you?  He built you to do a certain function.  If you do it…well…than you did what you were intended to do.  What’s to boast?), giving you the absolute freedom to be who God made you to be in Christ (with all your little quirks and oddities).  It was with this mindset that I chose the surgery (what?!  We’re finally talking about the surgery again?!) that, while having the longest recovery time (1 year) and would require the longest time not walking (1 month) and had no long-term studies on the success rate of the procedure (it is a cutting-edge technique), looked to be the right fit for my situation.  It would be the one that would make me the most vulnerable, and therefore make me more inclined to lean on His strength.  God gave me the peace and assurance that He would be glorified in it.  And while I did ask from time to time, “What about me?”, He was more than patient with me in inclining my heart back to Him and my true purpose in life.

The Surgery and Beyond

The procedure is called a “Mosaicplasty”.  Here’s a breakdown of the procedure:

Step 1)  Open knee up and remove floating bone fragment from the cavity, cleaning up all loose fragments and making sure the bone is good for further surgery

Step 2) Drill small, tube-like holes into the crater left by the absence of the bone fragment

Step 3) From a non-weight bearing section of the knee, remove plugs that would fit into the holes that were drilled previously into the crater.

Step 4) Insert plugs snuggly into the holes, tapping them gently into place with a hammer (I imagine tiny elves performing this task).  The plugs should extend beyond the crater, filling in the space that the removed bone fragment used to cover.

The result resembles a tile pattern.  The advantage of this procedure compared to one that would fill in in the hole with one solid piece of bone is that the plugs can more easily conform to the joint .  The obvious disadvantage is that there are gaps between the plugs, making the area less-reinforced than typical.  To counter this, my surgeon proceeded to use a new, experimental product, the “De Novo”.  These even thinner plugs (collected from adolescent donors) fit snuggly between the plugs from my own knee and act as buttresses to keep the plugs from shifting in addition to adding a little extra support to the joint in general.

I wasn’t allowed to walk around for a month afterward.  The risk was that any pressure put onto the newly-placed plugs before they fully healed and solidified into place would cause them to possibly sink into the femur, forming a crater again, and forcing me to have a new surgery that would probably involve replacing my whole knee (I mean…what else could be done at that point?).  In addition to this, quite a few essential nerves and blood vessels were severed as a result of the surgery, and trying to walk too soon afterward would be impossible since severing these caused the entire knee cavity to swell up and reduced the amount of feeling in my leg in general (I still can’t feel part of my knee-just a vague numbness).

I missed three weeks of work.  Those were spent resting, building my stamina with the walker (I took hops around the neighborhood), reading, watching Band of Brothers, learning how to get into and out of the house/bathroom/shower/dryer room/cars, learning how to cook quickly on one leg so as to avoid too much blood from flowing down through severed arteries, and learning how to do laundry with the aid of a walker (this is not an exhaustive list by any means and, unfortunately, most of these tasks were not videotaped).  Looking back I can tell you that this was the most uncomfortable time of my life:  I had a giant brace on my leg to keep my knee from bending and twisting, which forced me to sleep on my back (which meant I didn’t get very good sleep (I’m a side-sleeper)) and caused a giant rash that engulfed my entire left leg and that I could do nothing about since I was not allowed to remove the brace or the bandages beneath it.  I was lonely, I was bored…I got angry with the painkillers early on and stopped taking them a little after a week because they caused me to be delusional (I couldn’t tell the difference between a steampuck novel I was reading and the real world-I didn’t need to be odder than I already am).  I felt like I was in the way and an inconvenience to everyone around me.

But God provided despite all this.  The insurance I had through my job covered the cost of the entire surgery (and most of the medical exams that preceded it).  My job paid me for the time I was out and my supervisor only wished me the best.  My roommates and friends spent whatever time they could with me and helped me out enormously and were sources of much encouragement and support (more than I would have ever hoped for or dreamed and certainly more than I ever deserved or earned or could ever pay back).  My family did what they could and the love and support I received from them was also life-giving.  Above all, though, I was brought closer to God

Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up….Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord….(Hosea 6:1, 3a)

This was not a freak occurrence or a mistake.  In the end, despite the fact that it was uncomfortable and inconvenient and debilitating, and despite knowing that I’ll never be able to do certain things again with this body, I am grateful for the experience.  It has been the key to what I was looking for in this season of life:  purpose and meaning and relationship.  I have been stretched further than I would have allowed had I been in control and I have left much fear and resentment behind me because I simply wasn’t allowed (or able) to bear them anymore.  I know my Creator and Savior better now and appreciate Him so much the more than I did.  I have hope in a future that is limitless with realities that dwarf my greatest dreams that I would have wanted fulfilled in this life.  I am free, and I realize it more and more every day.

Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.  Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.  Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me. (John 12:25-26)

And now we come to the end.  If you have endured to the end of this, I admire your persistence and tenacity (I certainly wouldn’t have ready all this had I the choice).  This was a very profound and shifting event in my life, and, believe it or not, this post doesn’t cover all of it (but it’s pretty thorough).  I hope you pardon me for any gaps in the timeline or for veering off into the theological/philosophical instead of talking more about the surgery and recovery, but it was the thoughts and meditations that I had while debilitated and while recovering that I wanted to get down.  This is the most I’ve ever written my entire life (I had doubts about my being able to finish it).  I have been humbled by my limitations as a writer, but am grateful that this is all now written down (if for no one else than for me as a memorial).  I hope, however, that you (if you exist) were able to follow my line of thought and reason (sometimes I say things that only make sense to me) and were blessed by it in some way.