Summer 2014: Part 1

     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 of the surgery, because replacing the ACL and meniscus at the same time is “experimental.”

     No surgery meant no healing. No healing meant no stability. No stability meant no normal exercise. No normal exercise meant no normal, healthy life. This, in my head, was not an option! They can’t just say no, when it’s something I obviously need.

     Dr. Piasecki (my incredible doctor) spent over an hour out of his crazy busy schedule to call and talk to the insurance company. No matter what he said, they still said no. There would be no surgery on June 6. Dr. Piasecki realized that their policies regarding knee surgeries were twenty years old and incredibly outdated. He rewrote the insurance company’s policies, but it could take months to get my surgery approved. There was even a small chance that it would not be approved, and we would have to do several smaller surgeries to fix my knee.

     I had moved home, quit my job, cleaned out my schedule for two months, my hospital bag was packed and now this. No surgery. Five and a half years had come down to one surgery that wasn’t even going to happen anymore. I was broken, helpless, and hopeless. There was nothing, absolutely nothing I could do to change it. I was angry at God. Why did this happen? Why can’t something so simple and yet so necessary happen? Why would God knowingly keep me in pain and instability? I had no answers.


      Through the tears, I realized something. God has a plan. He always has one, whether I like it or not. At this point, I really didn’t care what His plan was. If it did not include my knee finally being fixed, I didn’t want any part in it. As I wallowed, I realized that the only way to move on from this was to explore and accept whatever He chose to do with my now empty summer. I was not happy with God’s decision, but I had to trust in it and Him. The one thing I did know was this: God never FAILS.

~Rachel

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