A Hard Reset

I went to get pedicures with my friend from work a few days back. I noticed a scar on her ankle and she had told me about a terrible car wreck she had been in years prior. She ended up needed surgery to repair the damage she sustained to her lower leg.

As we sat there at the nail salon I hung on to her words as she described the experience of being in the hospital. Because of the impact her ankle was completely disfigured and her bone was protruding. The doctors in the trauma bay of the Emergency Department had to reset her bone back to where it was meant to be. Even though she was on pain killers, she said the pain was horrendous as the doctors used force to attempt to reset her ankle several times before it ended up back in the correct position. 

But what was interesting to me was that immediately after her accident her body had gone into shock. Though her bone was protruding through her skin she was oblivious to the damage her body had sustained. The pain hadn’t set in until the radical process of resetting her ankle had started.

I am sitting here writing this exactly one year after my engagement to a man who God had never intended for me to marry. What was stuck with me about my coworkers story was how similar it was to the spiritual repositioning I had to undergo after my engagement ended in heartbreak. 

When I was with my fiancé I was oblivious to the fact that I was not living within God’s plan for my life. Much like my coworker unaware of the horrible disfigurement of her ankle, I was unaware of the horrible inconsistencies between my own plan for my future and God’s. 

Though unaligned, my coworkers body lied to her, telling her that she was okay.  The shock shielded her mind from the reality of what was really occurring. When my plans and God’s were unaligned, Satan lied to me and told me that I was okay. He was keeping me from hearing what it was that God was trying to tell me.

When the Lord had to realign my life, that’s when the pain really hit. Much like the doctors in the ER, Jesus needed to correct what was disfigured. The process was gruesome and the pain was insufferable, but it was exactly what I needed to be healthy once again. 

As I sit here and write, one year out, I think back on the what I thought my life would look like today. And how radically different my life really is. I have grown. I have changed. I have leaned into things God has asked of me and surprised myself in many ways. I have experienced a deep, intimate relationship with the Lord in an entirely new way. 

Praise be to God for the way he exposes our wounds in an effort to heal us from them. I am eternally grateful that I follow a God who is gracious enough to protect me, and faithful enough to create a plan for my life that is more abundant than the life I would have imagined for myself.