The harder you work, the faster you’ll improve. When you’re told to run one mile after practice, run two. And after that, and not because anyone told you to, run up and down all the stairs in the basketball coliseum. Every one of them.
I think I was born with that mindset when it comes to sports. My mom says I was a very late walker, but I crawled like a pro, and once I finally started walking, I played every sport a girl could play in my day, eventually becoming quite obsessed with tennis. That obsession lasted until my late 30s when my worn-out knees screamed, “Enough!”
What I’m learning, all these years later, is that you can take the girl out of sports, but you can’t take sports out of the girl. And that’s not always a good thing—not when you’re trying to recover from knee replacement surgery, as I am.
I’ve wanted to go at this recovery like Rocky Balboa (although I’ll never, ever drink raw eggs), but my body is having none of that, and it’s making me crazy. Every time I push a little and enjoy a teeny rush of satisfaction from a tiny bit of quasi athletic exertion, I overdraft my pain-point account and set myself up for hours or days of misery.
It’s completely counterintuitive for me to gently exercise and patiently wait for my body to heal itself. I’m wired to DO something to Speed. This. Up.
A friend pointed me to an international online forum specializing in joint replacement issues and the prevailing philosophy of the moderators, most of whom are retired medical professionals who seem very British, feisty, and reminiscent of the senior nuns and nurses on “Call the Midwife,” is that one must listen to one’s body and “let your knee be the boss.”
The problem is, I was trained not to listen to my body. I was trained to push it and make it listen to me. And that became such a part of my psyche that all this namby-pamby waiting around for my knee to cooperate is exasperating.
In case you’re wondering, I’ve obeyed the Biblical command to “call for the elders” of my church to pray for me. That’s a clear instruction in Scripture, by the way, for those who are sick or suffering (James 5:14). One should cover all one’s bases.
And I am getting better, just at a turtle’s pace. A very old, decrepit turtle. When I look back over all these post-surgery months, I see improvement, but it’s not the kind of improvement I can see day to day, or even week to week.
I’ve never been crazy enough to ask God for more patience because that would require circumstances or people that try my patience, and who wants that? But apparently God decided I needed a big unrequested lesson in patience, anyway, and that’s what I’m getting.
Can you relate? What character trait is God currently working on in your life? Because I bet there is one. In Hebrews 12, we’re told that God disciplines us, like the perfect father He is, for our good, and while it is never pleasant, eventually “it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.”
I never specifically said, “pass the fruit of righteousness, please,” but I have repeatedly told God that I want, with all my heart, to faithfully follow Jesus, which is essentially signing up to let Him sand all my many rough edges.
I wanted a new knee that could carry me painlessly around a golf course, but God knew I needed something else—a more patient, righteous heart like the heart of His Son. Theologians call that sanctification; right now, I call it just plain hard.