Now What?

So here we are with a torn ACL and meniscus on the "good" knee and a third upcoming knee surgery, which we know all too well will be followed by weeks of pain and physical therapy. The night we found out how bad it was, I went up to talk to Josh in his room. I went through the same pep talk I had given him before (God will make good things come from this, I trust Him with your heart, life and future, blah, blah, blah). And as I walked out of his room I wasn't sure if I was going to start crying or punch a hole in the wall.

I have to be honest...when I gave Josh the "pep talk" the first time around, it was coming from my heart and was founded on beliefs I hold strongly and put all my faith in. As I gave him the "pep talk" this time around, what I was feeling in my heart was not catching up to the knowledge in my head. I knew what I was saying was true yet everything within me was fiercely rebelling against our new reality. Athletics was his thing....now what?

Yes, Josh could have gone back to back to football after the third knee surgery, but that doesn't seem too smart at this point now does it? Besides the obvious wisdom of not playing anymore, he said he didn't think he would ever be able to play completely uninhibited again. He felt like the first injury was a fluke, but after the second one he felt like now it was an expectation. You can't play "all out" with that mindset. Besides, he knew one thing for sure....after he recovered from this third surgery, he never wanted to go through that again.

So, whereas the first injury was a bump in the road, this one was a death knell. And along those same lines, the first time around time my faith was solid but this time I was defiant and angry. It took many months for my heart to come into alignment with my head, and even then it was incremental. Some of the alignment came about through prayer, but the rest of it came about through seeing what God went on to do in Josh's life.