Lessons From a (Miserable) Summer on Crutches

“It’s going to be a nightmare for you.” That’s what my therapist said in June when she learned I was about to undergo surgery on my knee. She wasn’t concerned about the physical pain involved. It was the six weeks of mandated immobility that concerned her and the effect all that couch sitting would have on my mental health. She’s an Enneagram devotee and has me down as a 2. I’m skeptical, but I appreciated the sympathy: “You’re a helper and a doer. Stopping all that for an extended period is going to be really hard on you.”

She was right, dammit. It’s been a terrible summer.

But she was also right about what she said next. “I suspect the experience is going to be spiritually very instructive.” A wise lady, my therapist. A little too wise sometimes.

I’m back on both feet this week after two full months on crutches; and so, on the eve of literally setting fire to the knee brace I’ve lugged around all season, I figured it was worth recording a few of the prophesied lessons before they fade. I realize it may all sound a little babyish. People go through much worse things. But this is what I went through and what I’m taking away from it so far:

Bonus lesson: Rascals are fun!

1. Knees are not God’s best work. The dunes along the banks of Lake Michigan, those are a masterpiece. The patella and the meniscus and the tibia, not so much. In fact, I am now an expert on the orthopedic history of my entire town and can say with confidence that knees are one of our Lord’s most half-baked designs. They fail with such alarming frequency that you almost wonder if there’s something intentional going on. Could the weakness of the joint be a plot to undercut our self-sufficiency and move us to, well, our knees? I kid, but only slightly.

2. As much as I love consuming culture, I no longer harbor any fantasy about sitting on a beach somewhere and reading books and streaming movies as a cure-all to what ails my soul. I did that and it was nice for a while, before it got torturous. Not even the sublimity of Middlemarch, which I swallowed near-whole during my first three weeks laid up, could buoy my spirits in a lasting way. Big ideas and jaw-dropping works of art are wonderful, but a person needs more. At least I do, not to get depressed. I need the outdoors, and I need play, and I need purposeful work, and I need friends, and most of all I need to be of service to others. Life gets very thin very fast without those things. I’ve never had more sympathy and awe for what the wheelchair-bound have to manage.

3. There is a world of difference between talking about passivity and experiencing it. I’ve spent almost two decades expounding on the beauty of grace. This idea that, as far as God is concerned, you and I bring nothing to the table, that Jesus does it all, willingly, sacrificially, and unexpectedly. It sounds nice coming out of the mouth of a pathological achiever, but perhaps a bit rich, too. To be put in a situation where I couldn’t contribute meaningfully to the welfare of my family/world and was instead forced to receive — to practice what I preach — was incredibly uncomfortable. The irony that I had just put out a book on the subject was not lost on me. I could almost hear God laughing at times. A real, er, knee-slapper.

4. Fortunately, God was doing more than just laughing. As I tried to convey in my first sermon back (about the “running the race” passage from Hebrews – !), the surgery sidelined me in pretty much every respect. Yet it turns out the sidelines are a great place to spectate. An ideal spot to see God do for me what I was physically unable to do for myself. I watched as friends called to check on me, to bring me presents and food, take me to movies. I watched parishioners at our church reach out and volunteer to ferry me to physical therapy. I watched my own kids enjoy domestic tasks I’d been too controlling to entrust them with previously. In other words, God put my compulsive “helping” on pause, and what I witnessed was not the wheels-falling-off that my faithless, catastrophizing brain likes to project. No, I witnessed nontransactional care and love and provision. Not an idea about grace but its embodiment.

5. The summer was thankfully more than just an assault on middle-aged pride. Despite being out of commission, God was gracious enough to wink in my direction by making me *look* productive, whether in the form of a big essay dropping (written months beforehand), a steady stream of podcasts (ditto), book reviews and out-of-the-blue emails, even a cosmic nod in a Hollywood movie. Our upcoming fall conference in Charlottesville (11/14–15) came together beautifully with minimal effort from yours truly. It’s one thing to talk about providence; another thing to observe it in real time. Doing nothing was good for my career.

Don’t get me wrong: I won’t be signing up for another surgery any time soon. I resisted every single one of the lessons above, even when I recognized what was happening and realized the potential good on offer. In fact, if there’s a sixth message to be heard, it has to do with the involuntary nature of the gifts God gives. I would’ve rejected all of them if I could. Ask my (miraculously patient) wife: self-pity, not gratitude, was my chief emotional response to the ordeal. None of this was wanted, planned, or engineered; perhaps spiritual growth never is. I wonder if this is part of what Jürgen Moltmann meant when he wrote, “To know God is to endure God.”

The recovery is far from over. But today, as I write this, I am feeling grateful. I didn’t think I would. I’m grateful to be able to walk again without pain, sure. But more than that, I am grateful that God happens to a person and that God happened to me this summer.

Now where are those matches?