Life: An Acquired Taste

Summer: Part 2 is coming, but I'm taking a break to talk about one of my role models.      Marcus Lattimore was an incredible running back for the University of South Carolina. He tore his left ACL and MCL in October 2011, his sophomore year. Less than a year later, he had comeback from his injuries and was even better than before. Once again, injury hit. Barely a year after injuring his left knee, Marcus was hit during a game against the University of Tennessee, tearing three of the four ligaments in his right knee. He had surgery and declared for the NFL draft that December. The San Francisco 49ers drafted him, and he has been working and rehabbing to get back to the point of playing. However, today Marcus Lattimore announced his retirementfrom the NFL . He never played a game.      No two injuries are alike. No two rehab stories are alike. No two people are alike. Human emotions, however, are alike. Watching the video of his injury still...

     It was supposed to be rather tame. The only thing on the calendar was the knee surgery that was supposed to once and for all fix my knee. Little did we know that Summer 2014 would turn out to be the busiest and most trying summer in our family’s life.      God’s plans are definitely not ours. This became extremely obvious when we found out my younger sister was pregnant and the baby was due the beginning of August. Three months later, my older sister got engaged and they set the date for the end of July. During all the planning, I was set to move to Columbia to attend USC mid-August. If reading this made you kind of tired, just imagine living it.      It began simply enough. At the end of May, I packed everything from three years in Greenville and moved back to Rock Hill to get ready for surgery. June 5, the afternoon before my surgery was scheduled, we got a phone call from the doctor. My insurance company would not approve o...

This past year has been a roller coaster of physical, mental, and emotional moments. I am not explaining all of this for your pity. I am explaining it to show how incredible our God is. It began two and a half weeks after my third ACL reconstruction surgery. For the first four months, rehab and physical therapy went amazingly well. My doctor and PT were convinced that my ACL would hold this time around. In April, I was cleared to start running and jumping again. I was ecstatic. It had been over a year since I had been able to do anything like that. However, about the same time, something in my knee began to catch and cause pain and once again I was forbidden to do anything that would that pain happen. During the next four months, it went from an occasional problem to realizing something major was happening. It reached the point where I couldn’t even ride an exercise bike (which is one of the first exercises of rehab) because of the pain it caused. After being treated for tendo...