Ten years. Seems impossible that it’s been so long. It was the day after Thanksgiving 10 years ago that I had my stroke. 2014. My own personal “Black Friday”. So much changed that day. I had to relearn how to walk, to talk, to shower, to step in and out of doorways and over toys. I had to learn to navigate as a completely different person and learn how to actually think all over again. I even had to re-learn how to feel joy. I had to let go of old strengths and comfortable patterns, and find all new strengths within uncomfortable places.
It was hard. Truly Black Friday.
But God was with me. The darkness is not dark to him.
There are still deficits left. Residuals. A lame leg. A slow brain. Stumbly words. Physical limits and emotional barriers. Social hurdles.
I don’t want to over-dramatize it all, or even go back and relive it or think about it a lot. Though I do have to visit it occasionally just to make sure all the emotions and pain are dealt with and cleared out all the way through. God still shows me stuck things occasionally.
It was hard. It is hard still. But Jesus has been with me.
Just as he promised to be.
Would I do it again? Nope. Not willingly.
Do I like the places I’m at now? Not always.
But I can say I wouldn’t trade it.
Even though I’d like a little more of the easy at times,
I wouldn’t trade what happened.
Jesus is closest when things are hard. Jesus is real when it gets hard. There is a communion that comes with him when things are hard that you don’t get at any other time. It’s an exquisite sweetness right in the midst of the bitter hard.
And I thank him for his Presence. I thank him for the last 10 years and for all the things I’ve learned to know about him and his word through it. Which is the point of it all. The point of every hard thing: to know him. To know him.
He has made that happen.
In spite of Black Friday.
It’s poignant. But it’s rich.
I’m humbled.
“As for me, the nearness of God is my good….”
