I mentioned before my love/hate relationship with Bob Bender, my knee bending machine.  I’ve also confessed to throwing Bob and Larry the crutches around my house in angst of just wanting to go back to where I was before all this mess. I also flung the big bulky knee brace about and just to put it out there, I threw a lot of the things that were there to help me, including the help of my family. I was that two-year old toddler wobbling around my home saying, “I do it by myself!”

Humility before your family is hard. As mom, you are strong, the helper, the mender, the go to gal for everything and now my family was trying to be that for me. My kids were constantly making ice for Mr. Icy.  They would pack him full of ice every morning to make it through till they got home. They brought me food delivered by loving friends. They even learned to do laundry and would bring it to me in the morning so I could fold when I finished a bending session.  This was great and I was so proud, each willing step up and fill in where I had left off ……. then Satan entered in my train of thought.

Oh the thoughts and bad self-talk he put in my brain! This was just a knee injury and if you had a peak of what was going on in my thought process, you would have thought the world was going to end. I was useless, dependent and worthless. The only thing I had going for me was what I could chuck the farthest without injuring myself or any walls.

Clearly my eldest daughter had enough of my whiny temper tantrums and my bad attitude. We have a journal that we write thoughts and notes back and forth in.  It’s a special treasure that I use with each of our kids to not only give encouragement in hard times but to tell them something I notice about them that I haven’t spoken.

One morning as she came up to kiss me goodbye, she quietly slipped the journal on the coffee table, ran to the door and left for school. Intrigued and excited at the same time as it had been a while since we had passed the journal, I reached over and grabbed it to see what precious words she had for me. As I began to read, my excitement turned to pure dread. My mommy heart broke to pieces as I read what she wrote. This is her note.

“Dear Mom, I love you bunches but what I most want to talk about is your leg. Ya…ya…ya.. I know, this is not the time or the place to talk about it but when you cry it looks like you are saying, ok Lord, I can’t stand this no more, can you do one of your miracle things? The other things is what it looks like is, Lord, why did you make me on this earth. But God says yes and sometimes no or maybe, but just remember all the pain and sorrow is the exact pain Jesus went through dying on the cross, for your sins and that He loves you very much.”

I was being a false witness of who Jesus was for me to my family and thank God my daughter was obedient to the Spirit and wrote me this note and in turn witnessed to me! I needed a wake up call to get off my pity train before it derailed me.

2 Corinthians 3:2-3 says, “The only letter of recommendation we need is you yourselves. Your lives are a letter written in our[a] hearts; everyone can read it and recognize our good work among you. 3 Clearly, you are a letter from Christ showing the result of our ministry among you. This “letter” is written not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. It is carved not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts.”

I was so busy feeding my old self that the light I received in Christ was dimming before the eyes of my family. What was new in me was being swallowed whole into my old sinful self.

I am not saying that in sorrow, grief, or pain that it is not okay to express it nor should it be kept hidden. I’m saying that when I allow something to consume me to the point I no longer have self-control, that is when my witness of Christ to others becomes faltered. God did not give me a spirit of fear but of power, love, and self-control (2 Timothy 1:7) . In my plight I showed that I was angry, I showed I had no trust let alone self-control and I showed to the eyes of my children that He did not love me. Which is quite the contrary!

After I read her note, I prayed and asked for forgiveness as well as submitted my recovery to The Lord. When my children came home, I apologized and thanked my eldest daughter for being brave and obedient to the Holy Spirit.  She kept me accountable to my Savior and King.

In all things, I am a witness regardless the situation. In all things, My witness should reveal who is written in my heart. In all things, I must remember who I serve and be thankful for the ones He places before me to keep me on track.  He alone is my portion and my cup, in Him my lot is secure (Ps 16:5).