What doesn't kill you...IN HIS WORDS

The direction of my husband's thoughts is ever intriguing. Adrian shares his first post in a couple months. Does it make you ponder? Just be sure to read to the end.

IN HIS WORDS...

“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” That is a catchy line in a song that was popular back...whenever, that seems to be still be hanging around. I don’t have a problem with the song or the artist who sang it or all the money they made from the song. What I do have a problem with is the fact that people actually think it’s true. 

If you want some real excitement in your life give an amputee or someone with recent spinal damage a Taser and then tell them that line. See if they exuberantly agree with you and share their story of how they are now a much stronger person or just shoot you. Personally, I might shoot you and I am neither of those. What doesn’t kill you can still leave you bruised, scarred, and maimed both physically and psychologically. Adria and I both have five inch scars as proof. 

Just because a person learns to pick up and move on with life and adjust to what life has become does not mean that they are stronger because they survived what they went through. Most often it means that we are now weaker than ever and need more support in every way just to get through the day, even if it doesn’t show.

The other saying I have grown to despise in the last five years although I am very guilty of ignorantly using it myself prior to then is “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle”.  

If you know someone going through a tough time do yourself and them a favor and don’t say it. Give them a hug instead, there never seems to be enough of those, or give them a Snickers bar, or flowers, or just a card.  

The problem with that saying is that it is based on the premise of living life in your own strength, hence the “more than you can handle” part. Now my goal with this post is not to start a religious debate it is merely to say that my experience over the past five years has been that I have slowly been taken from living in my own strength to living in God's strength and that on a literal daily basis. Five years ago anything I wanted to do, I did. Then the seizures started and after the first one I was determined to come back the same but as they kept coming, it slowly began to sink it that things were not ever going to be the same because I wasn’t the same.  I still fought after each seizure but each time I had less and less of me left until I was completely broken and there was nothing left of me to carry on with. Yes, I was given more than more I than could handle. There was no strength left to recover and nothing of me left to recover.

So I left. I put a few clothes in a bag and went to a hotel that night with the intent of getting on a plane the next day to somewhere, anywhere. I believed that because I was a shattered empty shell having grand mal seizures that my family would be better and safer without me. My brain was fried and foggy from the meds and having seizures, but fortunately God doesn’t speak to our brains, He speaks to our hearts and our spirits. That night while sitting in the hotel room God finally showed up and filled me with the strength and reason to carry on that still carries me today. Why did He wait so long? I don’t know, maybe it’s because as long as there is still some of our individuality in the way He can’t get in. Whatever the reason, I am glad He came when He did.

Obviously I went home the next day and the girls never knew I was gone and another road to recovery began. I wish I could say that it was an easy recovery because of my new found strength but such was not the case. An accurate saying is “in God all things are possible” not easy but at least now it was possible. I wish I could say that I never had another seizure again but I did. But now I knew to not fight it and not fight to recover but instead trust in the strength I now have through Christ who strengthens me to recover.

It has been more than a year since my last seizure, but I am not “recovered”. I will never be recovered, I will never be the same. I know that I don’t have the strength to do what needs done but I do know where to find the strength to do what needs done, and I need it on a daily basis. I have lost the identity I had but my kids and wife love me as I am and that’s good enough for me.

If you find yourself in a battle stop and ask yourself why you are fighting and what you are fighting for. If you are fighting in your own strength for your own reasons you may be fighting a losing battle. I can guarantee you that God has something much better in store for you than what you are fighting to save. For everything we have lost, God has replaced it with something much better that we didn’t even know we wanted.