Suffering Bears Gifts: 5 Lessons in One-legged Days
“If your path had been smooth, you would have depended upon your own surefootedness; but God roughened the path, so you have to take hold of His hand.”
—T. DeWitt Talmage, The Pathway of Life
On the last day of our spring break, our family tried pickleball. My son and I lost the first game. The second game was neck-in-neck, or maybe we were up two on my husband and nephew, when I lunged back to keep the volley.
It was as if someone had whacked a bat just about my right heel. The POP in my ankle was audible across the court.
Bang! Snap! Game, set, match.
But I couldn’t walk off.
Five days later, the surgeon stitched the frayed ends back together and then anchored my Achilles tendon to the heel bone. I was discharged with crutches and cast and warned to bear no weight on that foot for two weeks.
That was nine days ago.
I’ve had time this week to reflect as I recline with my leg propped three-pillows high.
His Goodness Is Not on Hold While I’m on Crutches
Learning anything, I learned when I was learning Greek, is the process of becoming sensitive to what we were previously insensitive and dull.
Suffering makes us sensitive. It sharpens our vision for blessing and makes our hearts tender to grace.
“The reason many Christians find so little comfort in their trials,” author Tim Challies writes, ”is that they do not accept them as coming from God and therefore do not expect to receive any blessing from them.”
Then he shared this gem: “Suffering always comes bearing a gift.”
God is good. Surely goodness and mercy follow his children all of the days of our lives. The promises of Psalm 23 are not on hold while I hobble and heal. Suffering always comes bearing a gift. Always.
The 5 (Blessed) Lessons
1. Hope (and joy) rise when we have sensitive eyes to see God’s grace.
My injury is sensitizing me to a flow of grace to which I was impervious before. As blows tenderize meat, wounds tenderize our hearts. Suffering opens our eyes to see his good gifts. That my injury came on the last, not the first, day of vacation; that my crutches moved us to the front of the TSA line; that my husband and I had aisle seats and I could put my foot on his lap on the flight home are not lost on me. My throbbing heel opened my heart’s eyes.
“Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:18).
2. Suffering always comes bearing a gift.
God sends mercy to match troubles, every single day. There was egg bake, pot roast and enchiladas, yellow tulips, red roses, and red and yellow tulips. There was sunshine streaming through the bathroom window this morning, and three purple hyacinths bursting when I crutched outside tonight. Two of my son’s friends prepared a basket with my favorite things. These more than matched the discomfort in my ankle and the disappointment of a canceled speaking engagement.
“The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23)
3. We take good gifts for granted all the time (and that is okay).
Even before I’d hobbled off the pickleball court, I had a guilty pang. “I should have been thanking God for strong ankles.” I started listing as many body parts as I could, before another pang distracted me. But in the days since, I see that we mortals are not wired to attend to every gift God has lavished on us in given moment. We simply cannot. (Maybe it’s the inverse of why we feel one pain over others when multiple pains hit?) Instead, I am to honor the Giver by enjoying his gifts, and realizing he is the Giver.
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father,” (James 1:17a).
4. When one body part is injured, the others get (stressed and) stronger.
My forearms are sore from bearing my weight on crutches. My strong left knee has never before ached, but was very happy to be in bed last night. So also with the family and church body. My husband and sons are picking up slack: taking out trash, sweeping, fetching groceries, and hauling pillows from bed to recliner and back. Kind friends with full lives take time to drive out meals. There is a stress to hard work, but there also comes strength.
“If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it,” (1 Corinthians 12:26-27).
5. Injuries are a great revealer of what’s inside.
If I lived for fitness, I’d be wrecked. If I thought God owed me, I’d be bitter., and if I felt a need to control my environment, I’d be lost. My ruptured Achilles is shaping me, though my withering right leg is the least sculpted it’s been. But my reactions to my slowness and inability are not being formed now. They are being exposed now. What’s inside spills out. I hauled my mug in the custom beverage holder on my knee-scooter. The coffee was calm in the mug on the counter. It only overflowed when I jostled it.
“For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks,” (Matthew 12:34b).
Taught By God
There have been more lessons: that it is possible to sit loose while you sit tight, and that the Teacher was right: “Man does not know his time. Like fish that are taken in an evil net, and like birds that are caught in a snare, so the children of man are snared at an evil time, when it suddenly falls upon them.”
But I thank God that while I sit tight with my foot up, he is at work, gently sensitizing me. Suffering always comes bearing a gift.
God teaches us in our suffering. The learning itself is his blessing.
The psalmist knew,
“It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees” (Psalm 119:71).
I am learning.
This Achilles tear, this twanging of my weak spot, has been a good place for me to be.
