When We Are Helpless

Are you anything like me? If you are, you like things to go smoothly. You like making plans and being able to see everything work out according to those plans. It is good thing for you to have peaceful and productive days. Right? Maybe so. And maybe not. Sometimes it is a good thing for us to be reminded of just how fragile and how needy we are. Only when we realize we are helpless are we able to see the wonder of God's power. Only at those times are we truly aware of the love and grace of our Creator and our genuine need for Him. God allowed such an opportunity in my life just this week. I am thankful for it.

 

We were up at the lake working on our camp when Wayne became very ill and was hospitalized for six days. He was released from the hospital and he spent a few days with me at Mom's, recuperating. Finally on Tuesday of this week we were going HOME!

 

So my plan: pack up things at the camp, clean out our dorm fridge, get Wayne settled into the back seat of the van with his leg elevated, drive the two hours home, and get him up the stairs into our raised ranch and give him the best TLC that I could possibly give. How hard is that, right?

 

Things were going well. The car was almost packed, and I had an aged cantaloupe to throw into the woods for our feathered and furred neighbors to enjoy. Standing at the edge of the woods, I pitched the cantaloupe down a little slope and headed back to finish packing the car. Hurrying along, I made a foolish decision to step over a builder's tool instead of walking around it. In two seconds I was on the ground with a nasty-looking leg -- the one that was needed for the brake and accelerator.

 

Without going into a lot of detail, let me just say that I have suffered from a condition that makes me  the poster child for the ads, "Help! I've fallen and I can't get up."  I pulled the cell phone from my skirt pocket and then realized that my 91-year-old mother with a Hover Round to ride up the hill and my recovering husband with a walker and inability to do much with his left leg could not TOGETHER help me. I had an open wound and was crumpled on top of a 70-foot deep deposit of sand and gravel. I could imagine all those particles settling into the wound. There was nothing I could use to pull myself up (which I CAN do with difficulty). I was in an impossible situation. It was 90-plus degrees out and I do not do very well with hot temperatures. I thought momentarily of the snake that had perished on that sand the day before. Now what? Call 911?

 

The Bible says that GOD " is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us. . ." I opted out of 911 and am not sure how I prayed, but it was quick and from a heart that KNEW that I needed to trust in Him alone. I was truly helpless.

 

I would love to have seen my face. Most likely my mouth was wide open and my eyes were bugging out as I got UP "unassisted" for the first time in more than a decade. One more time I was confronted with the truth from Luke 1 that says "nothing will be impossible with God."  And I was also confronted with another truth expressed in an old song: "Without Him I could do nothing. . . like a ship without a sail."

 

(The rest is a long story, but we are healing!)