Friends and neighbors
Just a quick recap from part 2: I had a serious battle in my heart, my mind, my emotions, and my body. Through the Word of God, using His Word to speak health, life, and recovery, I took a huge step forward and stopped the enemy from convincing me of a lie. If I had not stopped this and refused to accept it, i truly dont know where I would be with my lower back and my overall health. I prayed for His plan, not mine, and He sent me to a friend who was my athletic trainer at UWG when I played football there in the 90’s. (much love to my brother Seth Lester and all his help) Seth helped me through a process that would bring much pain relief and get me to the point that I could actually start rehabing.
So I am seeing actual improvement for the first time in several months. ANd this is very big improvement. Over the course of the next couple of months I am about 60-70% pain free, and back to about 30-40% performance. When i say performance I am referring to overall work day movements, workout performance, and hobby performance. I know 30-40% performance seems very low, but to me it was awesome compared to what I had been through. Even though I was way above where I was at the worst point during this whole ordeal, I was at a low performance point to where I was before the whole ordeal. This bothered me a lot, but sometimes I was okay with it. Now here is big issue, and it is one that most all of us face at some point in life whether it is in our health, our finances, our work, and or our marriage. We all can get “hit hard” in life, in any area of life. The question is not whether you are going to face adversity, rather the question is are you going to let the adversity beat you. And are you going to get back up, but still be willing to accept less than best.
So here I am facing this dilema. And of course I had thoughts of “Hey, you are doing 100o times better than you were a couple of months ago. Dont get greedy, just be happy (settle / accept) with what you have. ” Then I would have thoughts of “You know what, I dont have to settle for a lower level of performance. I can get back to doing everything I did before.” So these were the conflicting thoughts I was having. You know, just like in the cartooms when you have the person and the have a little devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other shoulder.
I am not sure the exact timing, but I do know that at some point when I was going through this, I made another huge leap. I just chose to believe, recieve, and to not accept or tolerate. I decided in my heart and put it in my mind that I was not going to accept less than what I believed God’s best was for me. I decided to believe His Word that “I could do all things through Christ” and that “all things were possible to me who chose to believe.” And there were many more scriptures that I chose to believe and use as “ammo” to build up my faith and to keep my mind renewed daily. So I used scripture, I amped up my therapy, and I started increasing my workout movements and intensity. Of course I had to battle thoughts of negativity such as: You’re gonna hurt yourself; Okay dummy, you have gone far enough. You will be wise to just accept where you are at now because you are far ahead of where you thought you would be. You know you are getting older anyway; If you keep pushing it you are just going to hurt yourself again.
Everytime I had those thoughts thank goodness I knew what to do. I did what the Word says to do: I took those thoughts captive and put them to the obedience to what Jesus says about me, what have, and what I can do. I was pushing hard with the physical part, but more importantly I had to continuously push with the thoughts and the words.
Long story short, I eventually got back to full movement and performance. And actually got to a level of performance that was way above where I was at before the injury occured. And yes this was a long process to get to that high level of performance. The main thing i want you to see is that first that had to be a realization of what was possible. Then I had to choose to not only believe it was possible but to take it as mine and not accept anything less. Then I still had to do the “physical” part, and I had to keep doing these steps over and over until I got the results I wanted. Now please understand that I am not saying anything in the midst of all this to pride myself. It was by the Glory and Grace of God that I was able to overcome this. Yes I had an important part to play, but none of it would have been possible without HIM. Also, I am not judging anyone if they choose to accept less in their lives in any area of life. I have accepted some things in life because it is not worth the effort to me. ANd that is something that each person has to decide on their own. But know that through HIM all things are possible, and I dont believe any of us have to accept less.
There is going to be a part 4 for this because I want to go recap some of the main points that brought the success. Also i am going to give you some of the actual physical components that I used to bring the full recovery and beyond.
YOUR HEALTH, YOUR LIFE, YOUR CHOICE
Godbless u kj