Cuddle with God
Sometimes when your heart is broken and you are trying to sleep, it helps to cuddle with God in your spirit. You can sleep safely and pour out your hurt as you go to sleep knowing God cares for you. When you wake it probably will not be quite as bad, and it’s a spirit thing to pour out your hurting heart into His hands, since there is nothing you can do anyway. Turn to your Heavenly Father, the Big Guy. Just curl your spirit self up in a ball in His hands of Love. Safe. He cares. And besides you trust Him to take care of everything, since He has many times before. Lovingly. Often you don’t even know until later when you look back in amazement and realize: “Wow. God had that all along.”
August 7, 2023
I’m getting old. 70 yrs now. I’m an old firefighter and now I am fighting with arthritis and starting to think about my mortality. You will be amused to know that this is a recent revelation to me. I have always just kept doing what I love and age was just a number – until the hips and knees began to complain over much. I got a gym membership and hired a trainer. I went to a doctor. He sent me to another doctor who said my knees were worn out and bone on bone and I could get free replacements on Medicare. Yeah, I know how those work. The doctor puts you out and takes a Sawzall to your bones to remove the knees, then installs a titanium knee, which involves a sledgehammer to get the metal inserted into your bone marrow and fit over the remaining legbone. I really don’t like that idea much and I always take doctor’s advice with a grain of salt although I do enjoy and appreciate the conciliatory attention. I took a rain check.
So the gym workouts did help a bit. I went to a Physical Therapist. That helped too. I made it through two weeks on a fire last summer, by hiring a young timberfaller who did most of the hard work, with a wonderful attitude and we had a lot of fun. We picked mushrooms, bought expensive steaks, and had a cookout behind a gravel pile. The other set of fallers had a young guy and old guy also. The young fellers entertained us older fallers with their energetic antics and foul mouths. A lot of laughing and story telling included with a minimum of work that was parceled out with each taking turns. In the early mornings, when I was all stiff, I did my Physical Therapy exercises in the dark where I was not observed so that when I walked through fire camp I did not seem to be crippled. My pride was salvaged.
All was good until this spring when I started working on my pack test training where the faller walks 3 miles in 45 minutes with a 45 lb pack. It was tearing my legs up even worse. I got to where I could not sleep. My hip would start hurting when I laid down in bed and I could only withstand a hour or less until I had to get up and go sit in my recliner. Soon I would have to get up from there and try the living room fold up bed for awhile. Moving around helped lessen the pain. I never got more than and hour of sleep at a time. By morning I would be exhausted and grumpy and sleep deprived but the day was starting so my mood would slowly improve and I would be moving around more so that helped. After a week, week and a half, I was worn down and started to get desperate. Since I am a somewhat religious guy, my thoughts turned to God and, sitting in my recliner, I found a heartfelt prayer being sent straight from ,my heart to my Heavenly Father as I said to Him: “Lord, It appears I am in some serious trouble here. I could sure use some help.”
That morning I remembered a Chiropractor who had helped me with my neck a couple of years before and I knew he had added a pain specialist to his office who did some injections of stem cells or something like that. I called and got an appointment that same afternoon. I signed up for the complete procedure of injections, Physical Therapy, and Chiropractic care to be performed on the recalcitrant joints. Withing days, I was sleeping comfortably all night. I absolutely and most definitely take that as a miracle from my Heavenly Father – via the doctors help, of course. It was so wonderful to sleep. The joints took awhile to heal and I am still working on that but I can be pain free most of the time. Still hoping for the best. I am very grateful for God. My heart is all mushy and tender when I play some worship music these days.