I Do Not Like Mondays

All it takes is a moment. We tend to take life and health for granted, like every day will dawn and unfold as we expect it will, but that’s just a fragile assumption.

In an instant, you can find yourself fully humbled. Of course, you’ve heard such warnings before, but we get so set in our routines that we forget how true those words are.

What has moved me to write this? Well, I just got a dose of harsh reality myself. About a week and a half ago, I was touring the grounds of a summer camp program my daughter is enrolled in. It wasn’t a huge amount of walking or anything, and I thought nothing of it.

Just before the tour, the skies had let loose a deluge of rain, and I figured the camp grounds would be pretty muddy. I wore some flip flops in case it’d be a wet walk, and I’ll note that those provide no orthopedic support.

The next morning, I hopped out of bed and was shocked as I nearly fell to the floor. A very sharp pain in my right hip was absolutely screaming at me. I’ve never felt anything quite like that there before — I just could put no weight whatsoever on my right leg.

Every step I tried to take had me wincing in pain. My wife happened to be away on a business trip, and I was home looking after our daughter. It was all I could do to hobble outside that morning and see my daughter off on the school bus.

It hurt not only physically, but even in self-esteem and that old tendency to view oneself as indestructible. I mean, suddenly, I could barely stand, and each step was excruciatingly painful. I was incapacitated.

And even then, after the unexpected had hit me hard, things got compounded further. My wife got home from her business trip, and early the very next morning slipped on the dewy grass out in the backyard and managed to break her leg! She’d nonchalantly gone outside to tend to her garden, leaving her phone in the kitchen.

So there she was, dragging herself across the lawn, eventually reaching and banging on the house for someone to come help as my daughter and I were still inside. And when we got out there to assist, I found myself able to do very little, since I could scarcely move or even stand myself.

It was like a one-two knock-out punch in the boxing ring. We ended up driving to a local CVS pharmacy to purchase a cane for me to walk with, and taking my wife to the emergency room to get help. There at the hospital, x-rays confirmed she’d broken her fibula, and the hospital sent her home with a cast/ splint and on crutches.

All said and done, kind of a rough weekend.

Thankfully, thankfully, my mysterious hip injury, whatever it was, abruptly went away just as it had appeared. I woke up two mornings later and walking felt much easier, and I found I could get around again. The day after that, I was closer to uninhibited mobility, and things have continued to improve.

My wife, meanwhile, followed up with a specialist and had to get surgery for her leg, with some hardware screwed in to stabilize her broken leg bone. She’ll be in recovery for some weeks going forward. As for me, I’m in solid shape getting around and am just kind of watching that right leg to be sure the injury doesn’t rear its head again somehow.

All of this takes my mind back decades ago when I was studying in Norwich, England at university. I remember walking one day through town with a friend and we came across a severely handicapped man, and my friend told me pointedly, “But for the grace of God, go you.”

In other words, that person with all those problems could easily be you yourself, but for God’s grace and blessings in your life. So count them! And live each day to the fullest extent you can.

If you look at your own life and take your circumstances and health for granted, as many of us often do, catch and correct yourself. You never know what tomorrow will, or will not, bring.