July 17, 2024 I didn’t want to do it. As I planned and prepared to have my second hip replacement, it became apparent that the best option was to spend the first few days of my recovery at my parents’ house. While I love my parents and adore spending time with them, I didn’t want to do that. While my brain recognizes needing help is part of the human condition, my natural tendency is to try to be stubbornly independent. I despised even the idea of needing help, and I didn’t want to impose upon my parents, who seem to be as busy or busier in retirement than they were when they both worked full-time jobs. And I think most people prefer to be in their own home, their comfort zone, when dealing with something uncomfortable. I’m no exception. As silly as it sounds, I was as anxious about having to stay with my parents as I was about the actual surgery. I truly thought any arrangement that had me at my house would be better than any arrangement that had me staying elsewhere. When I’m convinced I know what’s best for me, I’m pretty sure God laughs. Staying with my parents through my recovery was exactly what I needed. While both of my parents were great, my mom was especially awesome. She’s a nurse, and she provided the kind of gentle, loving care that only nurse mom can provide, and she constantly encouraged me to get up and get moving. Beyond that, my parents’ house is much larger than my house. From where my bed was set up in a room my parents added to my childhood home, it felt like eleventy billion steps to get to any other room of the house. With God’s grace and my mom’s help, and after taking those eleventy billion steps a whole bunch of times, I’ve been recovering from this hip replacement significantly faster than I recovered from the last one, and I bounced back from the last one pretty quickly. I’ve been more positive and upbeat after this one, as well. While I wanted to be at my house and was convinced that would be the best thing for me, God knew better, and he made sure I ended up where he wanted me and where I would recover best – with my parents. It was just one more reminder that I still need to work on trusting God and trusting the love of God as expressed through the helping hands of others. Even when I don’t want to do it. |
|||||
|
|||||||||
