Life is hard sometimes. And unpredictable. Things can happen that are so surprising or tragic that they shock you to your core. They shake your foundation and flip your world upside down. Or they halt your life so quickly that you barely have time to process your new reality before you have to survive it every day. I can recall multiple times in my life when I was knocked down, and in all honesty, right now is one of them.
While my current situation is definitely not the hardest I’ve been knocked down before, it is still challenging. I recently fell while roller skating and hurt my right ankle. I’d never had an ankle injury before, so I drove home on it in tears thinking that ankle sprains were incredibly painful. I came to find out that I fractured and tore a ligament that both needed to be surgically repaired. Unbeknownst to me, ankle surgeries are very painful to recover from. I discovered this when, even on heavy pain and nerve blocker medications, I experienced the most pain I’ve ever felt in my life. Excruciating is a good word to describe it as I ugly cried, hyperventilated, and pleaded for God to have mercy on me when it was at its worst. I also had an adverse reaction to one of the pain medications because it was too strong for my body, an allergic reaction to my cast that made my skin itch profusely, my first panic attack in years, and very little sleep for about two weeks. All this on top of coordinating with my doctor, figuring out what to do about work, using every ounce of brain power I had to keep up with my homework for my master’s program and upcoming internship, grieving the special moments with my church and friends that I had to miss, and moving back into my parent’s house while being entirely dependent on them for my care, has been overwhelming.
Being knocked down every once in a while in life is inevitable. Being knocked out, though, is a choice. We choose to either let what knocked us down keep us down or to get back up and keep moving toward what matters to us. You can acknowledge the struggles and choose joy at the same time. By joy, I don’t mean toxic positivity. It’s unreasonable to pretend to be happy when we are hurting. It means feeling our feelings while simultaneously having faith that things can and will get better. Faith is a choice, and we can’t have hope without faith. When trials come, we either choose to believe that God is fighting for us or that He isn’t. Having faith becomes particularly challenging, though, when we don’t understand why something tragic happened or why we must go through what we’re going through. In my experience, these are the circumstances where our faith grows the most if we trust God despite the why’s not making sense.
A misconception people often have after being knocked down is that they need to get back to being the person they were before their experience. Frankly, it’s just not possible. Everything we go through impacts us in one way or another, creating change somewhere within us. We can’t be who we were before because our former version of ourselves can’t carry the experience we just endured. Plus, longing to be who we were before we endured that pain invalidates our experience. When we invalidate our experiences, they don’t go away; we remain stuck in them. Even if we don’t realize it, our bodies and brains do. To honor the gravity of our experiences and ultimately heal from them, we need to acknowledge them in their entirety. We also learn from everything we go through. The good and bad parts teach us something about ourselves and how we respond to pain. We grow whether we feel proud of how well we handled the situation or realize we could benefit from growing emotionally, spiritually, or otherwise. And that’s the reality of life, right? If we are paying attention and respond with a growth mentality, the things we go through carry lessons we can learn from.
I covered the bad parts of my ankle injury earlier, but now I want to share some of the good parts to show that, even in situations where good shouldn’t be there, it always is somehow. The first thing is that my family provided for me when I couldn’t provide for myself. My parents came through when I needed them, and I couldn’t have gotten through the worst of it without them. I’m very grateful for all the sacrifices they’ve made for me. I am also proud of myself for keeping up with my responsibilities in school and everything else. I am proud of myself for surviving the pain and choosing to have faith despite not understanding why I had to go through this. My faith is indeed growing through it. I am proud of myself for letting myself cry and feel my feelings when needed, which is growth for me. I am proud of myself for the grace I’ve given myself through this, which has been a process for me to be able to do. I have been blessed by the support I’ve received from my coworkers, friends, and church community through gift baskets, texts, and visits that have made me feel loved. Lastly, I am grateful for the comfort that Jesus gave me that I felt even when my pain was excruciating. And especially the strength He gave me when I had none.
While I’m still in recovery from my surgery and my trial isn’t over yet, I have hope in knowing that I will be able to walk again soon. I also have hope knowing that I can heal from the hard parts with the Holy Spirit and therapy and learn what God needs me to understand from this experience to fulfill His plans for me. For anyone feeling knocked down by life, know that hope is available to you if you choose to believe in it. You are capable of learning how to live in your new reality. And when you lack the strength to push forward, His strength is made perfect in your weakness. Even when you’re alone, you’re not alone because Jesus is always with you. He hears your every plea for help, cry of desperation, and desire for a better tomorrow.
I’ll finish with 2 Corinthians 12:9-10, which is one of the verses I rely on the most: “And He said to me, ’My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”