When My Legs Stopped Working

The internet says you’re supposed to have a message to share, a lesson learned, or a moral to the story. I don’t have those right now so I will just tell you what happened.

On a Wednesday I jumped up to save my daughter from falling, and my legs abruptly stopped working.

One minute I was her mother, capable and in control, and the next I was lying on the floor, my legs  in spasms of pain and unable to move. Thankfully she tumbled backwards into her crib, startled but not hurt. Meanwhile I lay there and whispered for someone to help me, because I knew even if I screamed to my empty house no one could hear.

Eventually my children came home and I was able to regain some movement. The following several days held pain, tiny shuffling steps, more pain, and doctor’s visits.

The doctors told me I was dehydrated. My body was so parched that when I jumped to help her my muscles cramped and then tore. I had been so busy watering everyone and everything else that I hadn’t noticed I was draining dry. Or maybe I had noticed. I had been stretched thin out of love and necessity while my husband is deployed – doing all the things, driving to all the places, and saying “I’m doing good” with a smile whenever anyone asked how I was. Because I didn’t have words to tell them that it felt like the ground might just fall out from under me, and anyways that’s not a polite thing to say in passing.

So I tried to be happy.

Almost sixteen years ago I graduated college and married my sweetheart, fifteen years ago I quit my job and embarked on the uncertain whirlwind that would be military life, fourteen years ago I became a mother. And then each year, each child, each loss, each challenge stretched me just a bit more until I felt so thin I was afraid I couldn’t see myself anymore.

So when summer came and carpools, homeschool, and sport practices stopped, I decided to be me again. I decided to enjoy being alone like I had as a little girl playing in the backyard.

I bought huge bags of soil and flowers from the clearance rack at Lowes. When the baby woke every morning at 5:30am we went outside and dug, weeded, built, painted and planted. I ran until my post-baby body enjoyed it again. I read, wrote, and rolled on the floor with my daughter. We took long walks; with each step I listened to God and waited for echoes of me.

I began to hear myself again.

And then my legs stopped working and after two days of wincing through the pain I ended up in the hospital, my body sick with complications from torn muscles. I ended up in the hospital very much alone, IV’s dripping into my body as doctor after doctor came to see why my right leg had gotten better and my left leg had stopped moving at all. They said a lot of scary things and lots of tests were done, but eventually the doctors with kind eyes sent me home telling me to wait for my leg to work again.

I went home to find I wasn’t alone – people ran to my house to care for my kids, they brought meals and groceries and came over just to sit in the backyard and keep me company. I was broken and people were so very beautiful.

Then two weeks later I awoke to find that I was beginning to be able to move my leg again. That meant to me it was time for a game-plan. I could stop worrying and could instead schedule PT to become strong and capable again. But no sooner did I get my hopes up and shuffle around the backyard with my daughter than my leg was deadweight again. After phone calls, appointments, referrals and frustration my doctor informed me I am still broken, injured, sick, and if I do not rest and let myself be watered this will not get better. So there are no PT appointments on the horizon yet, and my days have shrunk to the couch.

I should be ok with this, and I am grateful that in the grand scheme of things this is not that serious.

But I had been happy and hearing myself again, and maybe if you have travelled far from your youth and have a lot depending on you – maybe you know that is no small thing.

So I went to my counselor and tried to tell him all of this with sighs and tears and general whining and confusion. I asked him what to do when I wake up and sit on the couch all day and even the written word that I love so much isn’t working because the muse does not seem to like to sit still with me.

He said to listen to God in the stillness. I did not like this answer.

Because I do. I listen while I am planting rosebushes, and I listen while I am playing with my daughter, and I listen while I am walking at sundown. And then I write down what I hear, and sometimes I share it.

But my counselor said to listen to God not just in the quiet – in the literal still-ness while I feel broken, incapable, embarassed, overwhelmed, in pain, frustrated, disappointed, and very very tired.

So I did, and God simply said “I love you.”