Every Christian community must know that not only do the weak need the strong, but that the strong cannot exist without the weak. The elimination of the weak is the death of the community.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Life Together," p. 94.

If you were to ask my Mom and Dad how I am doing physically, they would say I am doing good. But they would also tell you that I don’t walk super smoothly yet and there’s still a hitch in my gait. They would be correct! During therapy, I asked the Andrea, my physical therapist (PT), what causes that. You may find her explanation helpful. I did.

One thing that contributes to my unsightly style is my brain is still not totally rewired. It is not telling my legs and feet exactly what to do. Or, if it is, something is getting scrambled in translation. Also, whatever signals do get sent are slower than they used to be. Part of what Andrea is trying to do is retrain my brain by getting me to do exercises correctly so that the proper signals get sent accurately and quickly whenever I tell myself to “walk!”

Another thing that contributes is my nerve sensors being off. Whenever Andrea moves my foot forward or backward, I can feel that okay and gauge what is happening. However, when my foot is moved to the left or right or side-to-side, I have no neurological perception of that until the range of movement is pretty extreme. Because my muscles were so atrophied due to the long stay in the hospital, it took quite a while to get enough strength back to ambulate at all. Because I was so weak, my knees would collapse inward and my glutes would not activate. (Large motor function travels downward from the glutes [butt] to the quads [thighs] to the knees to the feet.) Because my glutes weren’t firing, my feet would really kick out and almost look spastic when I tried to walk. It was functional but certainly not pretty!

I’m getting enough stronger now that I actually have a fair bit of control over my large muscle movement. That is mostly a strength and conditioning function. However, I still have the brain and nerve issues to deal with. One of the most significant things I’m dealing with is the fact that when my foot is extended, I can not sense where it is in space. That means I subconsciously overcompensate a lot of my movements. For example, I kick my feet outward when I stride so they will clear the other leg while I’m walking. (It’s not quite as ugly as it sounds. But if you watch when I walk, I don’t look super elegant or graceful.)

If you care much about this sort of thing, there are some videos I posted on my Dad’s Youtube account.


These are a couple of the clips from one of the therapy sessions last week. You can see a few things from the videos:

• I still have a lot of trouble with balance. I’m still not allowed to ride a bicycle, and I still have a hard time walking downward on steps without using support. (Going up is not as much of a problem.) Trying to stand on one leg is almost impossible. I am very wobbly and can’t do it very long.


• I still have a problem sensing where my body parts in space. We’re working on resensitizing nerve endings; part of that is through balance exercises. My balance is better than it used to be but it’s still pretty bad. For example: I’m getting better at putting one foot in front of the other without looking (heel to toe) but still it’s a lot harder for me than it would be for any of you.

I am doing SO MUCH better though. Thank the Lord I can walk! And I’m also optimistic that with a lot of work and diligence, I can gain a lot more functionality back. If you didn’t know I was in the Accident and saw me walking, you might not think there’s much wrong… just that I’m not super agile. But if you hung out with me every day you would realize I still have a long way to go, I still move pretty slowly, and I look half drunk sometimes! God has been faithful though, so faithful! And my family and therapists have been super patient with me!

Thank you all for your continued prayers and notes to me. It’s a daily struggle but it is true that “as your days, so shall your strength be.” His grace is sufficient!

Lauren

We’ve just recently started singing this song at our church. The theme is the perfect wisdom of God, especially God’s wisdom in the most difficult situations of life. It has quickly become one of my favorites. The song begins by recounting many of the attributes of God in relation to His creation, and how His creation displays His wisdom. He then talks about the revealed wisdom of God's word, then the mysterious wisdom of God in choosing to interject the cross into human (and divine) history.

The last verse talks about God's perfect wisdom in the exercise of His sovereignty over suffering. I love the last four lines of the song though: “Each strand of sorrow has a place/Within this tapestry of grace/So through the trials I choose to say,/‘Your perfect will in Your perfect way!’”

This song continually reminds me of all that I’ve been through this past year. Every day brings a little more insight into some of His kind intentions through my pain. But even though most of His reasons are unknown to me, even through all of it His will and His ways are completely perfect because of His infinite and perfect wisdom.

You will love this song.




 

When I hear this song I think of Romans 8 and Psalm 19, because he talks about creation groaning (which Romans 8 talks about), and he also talks about how all of creation has a song (which Psalm 19 talks about). The lyrics to that part say, “I hear creations song/ It sings, Oooooh Lord/ We sing, Oooooh Lord/ You are light and you are love/ You are flesh and you are blood.” This part just reminds me of Psalm 19 which says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.  Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.” That’s what I think of when I think of creation's song. I like to think that if we could hear it singing audibly, Josh Garrels words (plus some) would be accurate.