One-Armed Bandit

I'm typing this with one hand now. It's not as easy as one might imagine. Takes at least twice as long. In fact, typing isn't the only challenge for me in recent days. My roommate calls me the "One-armed Bandit." Every day is a new challenge- a new opportunity to practice my problem solving skills. Today's challenge: shave your right armpit with your right hand. Done. :) It's amazing how one day can change the way you live life.

These challenges have risen up due to an accident I had this past Saturday at a youth event with which I was helping- a silly, quite needless accident really. I had other plans that day. I was going to help a friend prepare for a costume party she was having at her house later, but they didn't have enough leaders going on the outing. My friend and I decided we could go along in the morning and leave early. It was a broomball game- played like ice hockey only with brooms and tennis shoes. It all happened quite fast- a very uncomplicated accident really. I ran out onto the ice in my brand new running shoes, and I played for about 30 seconds before I got a little too ambitious. My feet slipped from underneath me and I fell with all my weight on my left elbow- snapping it.

My friend drove me to the hospital and our day's plans began dissolving as we spent the day getting an x-ray and consulting a doctor. The x-ray showed a fracture- a clean break from the outside of the elbow to the ball of the joint. I started preparing myself for 6 weeks in a cast or sling when the doctor announced that it required surgery. I'm not gonna lie. It threw me for a loop. A cast I could imagine, but a surgery? In an Egyptian hospital, away from all my family, really? He explained that if we just put it in a cast it would heal unevenly and cause rubbing and scraping in the joints later in life. A plate/pin would be required to hold it in place.

We scheduled the surgery for 11pm and went back to prepare for a thrown-together party and to sort out my insurance. I couldn't eat or drink anything because of the upcoming procedure, and I was starting to get nervous.

My boss drove me to the hospital at 11pm, and they told me they'd moved the surgery to 9am the next morning due to emergency operation patients that had come. I would have to stay in the hospital overnight. My boss couldn't stay with me, but she promised she'd send someone to be with me through the surgery in the morning.. As she left that night and I found myself alone in an empty, bleak hospital room in a foreign country with nurses and staff who didn't speak my language, I finally cried out my nervous, locked-away emotions from the day and found peace again in knowing His presence. A friend texted me that night with this verse.

Joshua 1:9~ "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”

I knew this was the Lord beginning to answer my prayer that I've been praying now on a daily basis: to identify with Jesus in His suffering, so that I might become more like Him. And I had a choice now whether or not I would trust Him now in the middle of that suffering. He promised me that night that He would go with me- even into the operating room.

He did go with me. I went to sleep in His presence, and I woke up in His presence. And He has allowed me to see good in the situation. Re-learning to live life with just one good arm hasn't been easy, but I can honestly say it is good for me to practice "suffering" in His name. My prayer in the hospital that night before surgery was that God will somehow use this one-armed bandit to glorify His name and to magnify it in my day-to-day life.