The story has been told many times in many ways by many great storytellers, and we all know it well. A little railroad engine meant for pulling cars on and off the switches agrees to take on a monumental task, one far too great for its capabilities. But this little engine is determined to complete its job, and so it puffs and it puffs, and it reminds itself over and over again: I think I can. I think I can.
Years ago, when I was reading this story to my daughter – and even more years ago, when my mother was reading it to me – I never realized that one day, I would be that little train, working so hard to accomplish a task that often seemed impossible. If you’re following along with my blog, you may recall that I sprained my left knee back in January and was hobbling around painfully for months and months.
Well, here we are in September, and this weekend, I took off my knee braces for the first time in eight months. I felt much like I must have felt as a small child when, legend has it, I grew out of my pants. When my mom asked me what happened, I exclaimed with glee, “God helped me flee from my littleness!”
Except this time, God helped me flee from my knee braces! Or more accurately, He walked with me through the pain and hard work of restoration. Back in February, the general practitioner agreed with my conclusion that I must have sprained my left knee. However, months later, when I still was unable to walk without hobbling, I went to a knee specialist.
As soon as the specialist saw me, he remarked that my left thigh was smaller than my right one. He kept repeating that he noticed it across from the room, which made me feel like a bit of a circus sideshow.
Sure, we gals want to be noticed from across the room, but we’d prefer it be for our bubbly personality or our contagious laughter, not a shriveled thigh. And it gets even more embarrassing. He actually got out a tape measure and measured my thighs. Seriously. After my not being able to exercise for seven months. But I was beyond it, really. I wanted nothing more than to be able to walk again.
So the short version of what happened is this: something caused my left quadriceps femoris (the large muscle group that includes the four prevailing muscles on the front of the thigh) to shut down. Consequently, during all of that time I was resting my left leg, thinking I was helping it to get better, the quads were atrophying.
The reason I could not walk straight and without pain in my left leg is that my quad muscles had atrophied and were not strong enough to do much at all, so they would give, pushing down on my kneecap, forcing it to move off to the side. Which, in turn, caused me to wobble and feel like I was about to fall over.
My knee itself was okay. The specialist sentenced me to physical therapy, twice a week for six weeks. I remember laughing with the trainer and one of the assistants on that first day during his evaluation of my leg because he asked me to flex my left quads, and I simply couldn’t do it. I was trying with all of my might. The trainer was looking expectantly at my left quads. The assistant trainer was looking expectantly at my left quads. I was looking expectantly at my left quads.
And yet, no matter how hard I tried, I simply could not make them move. Not even a little bit. Which made us laugh because it was just such a pitiful sight. I thereafter referred to my left quads as my gimpy fin like the clown fish, Nemo, from Disney’s Finding Nemo. He had a fin that was smaller than the other, and he still had adventures.
And so began my physical therapy adventures with the little quads that really couldn’t at first. As someone who loved playing basketball growing up and running as an adult, I was not a stranger to working out or to exercise. But I had never experienced the frustration of striving to work out a muscle group that had atrophied, a muscle group that was not even communicating with my brain.
As the trainer explained it, something happened to my knee back in early January that caused my knee to become filled with fluid (he said it doesn’t take much to get fluid on one’s knee), and when my brain realized I was injured, it shut down communication with my quads in order to protect my knee. (Isn’t it fascinating how the body protects other parts of itself?)
Each physical therapy session was shocking. Literally. My quads were hooked up to wires, and I was shocked in hopes of reviving the brain’s communication with my quads. It was not at all pleasant, but I did get used to it, as much as one can get used to being electrocuted in very small doses.
The good news is that it did work, along with grueling exercises targeted at working that muscle group back up. Not only did I work hard during physical therapy, but I did these exercises at home every day as well. At first, I felt such an overwhelming sense of sadness, that this had become my life – to wake up to having to struggle to make muscles that had gone to sleep months ago work again. To try to do exercises that my quads proved time and again that they simply could not do.
Exercising is fabulous when all of your muscles work, but when they don’t, it is beyond discouraging. The first time I could actually perform quad grips, and the first time I could do leg raises and my brain could command my quads to move and they did, it was exhilarating. I was so pumped that I called out to anyone who would listen: “Come look! My quads actually moved!” It was as if something that was dead had been brought back to life.
I have learned many lessons this past year, but one of the biggest ones this injury and physical therapy have taught me is compassion. I have been so touched by some of the trainers and their compassion for all of us who hobble into the clinic, broken in some way. My tired heart has been buoyed by kind remarks, such as, “This will get easier the more you do it. I promise. I see how much you are improving.”
I’ve also appreciated their advice when I am not doing an exercise correctly, when I need to stand up straighter or flex my toes this way or that. A couple times, my trainer actually called to me across the room when he was working on someone else but noticed that I was doing an exercise incorrectly. And I was so grateful for his help. I couldn’t believe it didn’t embarrass me because as an introvert, I hate to be corrected in public. But this was different. I needed that correction in that moment so I could get better, so I didn’t mind it at all.
One of the trainers taped my kneecap for me so it wouldn’t slide to the side when I walked, in order to train it to stay in place. And it was remarkable how much that helped! Another one listened to me enough to hear that my good knee was sore from taking on so much extra work, and he proceeded to stretch even my good leg out for me and ice it down.
The hardest thing for me to relearn was walking down steps. Our quads are most vulnerable when bent and poised at the top of a step, so when one has weak quads, going down steps is quite a challenge. On one particularly difficult exercise, I was just finding my quads to be very uncooperative. I had already been working them out for an hour and a half, and they were just done. They had run completely out of fuel.
But as I stood at the top of the makeshift stairs and looked out at others in their assigned spots, doing the routines planned out for them by their trainers, I wasn’t ashamed for struggling on this exercise because I knew they, too, struggled. It would have been easy for us to watch each other and think to ourselves, “I could do that better than she/he is doing it.” And we could have because we had different injuries. I could have easily run through all the exercises of the woman with a shoulder injury.
Why? Because my shoulder is fine. Likewise, her left quads are in excellent working condition; therefore, she could have performed my exercises easily. We then had a choice, she and I. We could judge one another as weak for our own personal struggles, or we could choose to exercise compassion.
Because at the end of the day, we are both hurt. We have both been through pain and frustration. We are both struggling to regain what we have lost. And we both really need compassion from others when we are at our weakest.
I remember one of the first times I felt comfortable in therapy was when a woman with a similar injury to mine but further along in her recovery saw me trying to do squats and called out, “I know you feel silly. I have to do those too, and I’ve been here for weeks, and that is still the one exercise I never feel like I’m doing right.”
I love how often in Scripture we are told that Jesus had compassion. Just a few examples in Matthew:
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (9:36).
When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick (14:14).
Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way” (15:32).
Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes. Immediately they received their sight and followed him (20:34).
And it just follows that we, too, if we desire to be like Jesus, should also be full of compassion. I love 2 Corinthians 1:3-4:
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
I still have a couple sessions of physical therapy to go. I’m not yet rocking out at the gym, listening to my favorite music on my AirPods and feeling those oh-so-lovely endorphins course through me. Although my quads have come a long way, they have not yet arrived.
But as I look back, I see compassion: God’s compassion, the compassion of family and friends, the compassion of doctors and trainers and even strangers. And what I want to remember about this time is the power of compassion – a kind word spoken at just the right time, a gentle touch, even loving correction. Our God is full of compassion, and I want to be overflowing with compassion too. Our broken world needs it.
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