FOUR YEARS AND A DAY

As I’m writing this, it’s been four years and a day since my life-changing stroke.  I woke up today with pain in my left leg, my paralyzed leg.  I don’t allow myself to read too much into these things.  I don’t allow a thought like, “Maybe the leg is waking up.”  I don’t go there, not after four years and a day.  

My hope this morning was hard to find.  Every morning I must dig deep and convince myself to get up and face the day.  I feel like a coach at halftime motivating a team that’s losing badly, to get out there and give it their best.  This morning I wasn’t having it.  I was angry.  That’s hard to admit.  I’ve felt that if I have anything less than superhuman faith, it’s not good enough.  But four years and a day of brokenness are hard to ignore and look past and trust God is good through.  

I was trapped this morning.  Laying in bed, I couldn’t muster a prayer.  I couldn’t ask Sarah for help.  I laid there stuck.  I’m not able to move even if I wanted to.  I was awake, it was probably 2 AM.  I couldn’t sleep and I was angry.  This has become familiar.  It’s like a fork in the road.  I could choose a positive thought direction and have a wholesome morning.  I didn’t do that.  I took a bad turn and found myself visiting every bad hurtful thing done to me.  It was like opening Pandora’s Box.  I couldn’t stop myself.  I had the strangest thought:  They don’t write Christian songs for angry Christians.  Where’s the song that says, “If God is good and right why has this happened to me?”  Of course, they don’t write songs like that.  It doesn’t even rhyme.  

Over these past four years, I’ve had many angry prayer sessions.  I throw a lot of verses at God.  After a lifetime of memorizing scripture, I’ve got a lot stored up and I apologetically throw them in His face.  I grew up a church kid.  I was raised that you never question God, and you definitely can’t be angry with Him.  I was hesitant to return to blog writing after my stroke because I was afraid they’d all be angry like this.  I never want my hurt to affect someone else’s faith journey.  I don’t want my questions to cause others to question God.  But I think it’s important to know that walking with God isn’t always easy.  And if I feel this way, I wonder if other people do too.