blair

Writing from the warmth of my breakfast nook, enveloped in a faux fur blanket, I have the privilege of gazing in three directions at the stunning snow dumped by Winter Storm Blair. Though not the Snowpocalypse for which some doomsdayers prepped, Blair satisfied weather-hungry meteorologists when she significantly disrupted life for a large swath of the country. The pace slowed down in Kentucky, and you will not find me complaining!

I marvel at the glittering white snow blanketing the earth, paired with delicate ice accentuating even the tiniest of branches, glistening when the sunlight dances on them. Even in the bleak mid-winter, God’s majesty abounds. Tension reigns between the dangerous and the beautiful, and I stand in awe of my Creator.

Ms. Blair’s gift of 11 inches of precipitation ranks among the top snowfalls in the recorded history of Louisville, Kentucky. Readers from farther north might not appreciate this amount of snow as much as I do, but you must understand that it’s simply not commonplace here! Some winters we might be lucky to get a few dustings. Kids in Kentucky dream of at least one snow day a year, but it’s not guaranteed they will receive it. I was secretly overjoyed when our snowblower (that I have affectionately named LeBron, see caption below) blew a gasket, because it meant I would get to shovel more! That joy lasted only through the first round of shoveling, but nonetheless, I was invigorated by the manual labor in the crisp air. 

The last time I remember such a gorgeous winter wonderland in Louisville was in early March 2015, and the reason I remember it so well is because it was over my daughter’s 8th birthday, and we were temporarily living at my in-laws’ house as I recovered from hip surgery. They had an expansive sunroom where I spent most of my time as an invalid. For me, the winter had been exceptionally bleak, and that sunroom, giving a 180° picturesque view of rolling Kentucky hills, was a true Godsend as I recovered, especially when the snow came. My saint of a mother-in-law, bundled up with my three children in tow, took them out to romp and sled. Watching their joy was a balm to my soul. Though I desperately wished I could have joined them, I held onto the hope that one day again I would.

Hope is a funny thing. It’s not something we can see. That would not be hope at all (Rom. 8:24). Hope is believing in the unseen. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” (Heb. 11:1 NIV 1984). I “hoped” for full healing from the labral tear. Although my physical therapist warned me that my recovery would be much more difficult and prolonged than a total hip replacement, she assured me that maintaining as much of my own structural bone integrity as possible was crucial at my young age and that this procedure would be worth the pain. I had been warned, but as the months wore on and the recovery proceeded at a snail’s pace with complications arising, my hope began to falter and I eventually found myself in the middle of my first battle with clinical depression.

Looking back, I see the depression was a long time in coming. I had placed all my eggs in the basket of full healing. I had dealt with chronic pain for three and a half years after the birth of my third child before we discovered the cause of the pain. I felt emotionally unhinged when medical professionals essentially threw up their hands and said they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. I endured countless doctors’ appointments and physical therapy sessions and finally began to wonder if I was going crazy and it was all in my head. Enter an interventional radiologist and cutting-edge orthopedic surgeon at a time when I had all but lost hope, and my condition was finally diagnosed. It was all in God’s timing and by His grace, and I was thrilled at the prospect of a surgery that could heal me.

Even though I clearly saw God’s hand in the prior 4 ½ years of suffering, my circumstances got the best of me and devoured my hope when the recovery was not going according to [my] plan, leaving me in a pit of self-wallowing despair. This new mental battle would mark several seasons over the next decade, but thankfully I did not know that at the time! God gave me just what I needed to fight through each episode. Every time depression plagued me, I prayed that He would never allow me to fall into it again. Why He didn’t answer that prayer is still a puzzle to me, but what I do know is that He refined my soul in ways that could have never been achieved without the suffering.

I now possess a level of compassion and empathy that I would not have known without the pain. I now understand mental illness from a personal perspective rather than merely a scientific and analytical one. Perhaps now I am better equipped to do the work He has prepared for me, because I know He has prepared it for me even if I do not know exactly what all of it is! Ephesians 2:10 says, “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”

Above all, I now have a better understanding of true hope. My hope in recovery was a murky shadow compared to the hope we have in Christ. It was faulty and destined to fail because it was rooted in earthly parameters and outcomes. In contrast, hope in Jesus is grounded in eternal truth. Paul eloquently explains the intersection of faith and hope in Romans 5:1-5, “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

Our church worked through the book of Romans this past year, and during the sermon on this passage, our pastor talked about how our “perseverance muscles” are often weak and we need testing and trials to strengthen them. (Access sermon here). When I look back at the story of my hip recovery and the subsequent onslaught of depression, this metaphor resonates deeply. I thank God for the strengthening…as well as Ms. Blair’s snowfall that prompted this reflection on my true hope.

Here lies LeBron, who failed us just when we needed him most, as his namesake did to the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2010-2011 season when he abandoned them. That was the year we lived in Cleveland (notably seeing more snow than we thought humanly possible), and LeBron James was the number one piece of media fodder for the entirety of our time there. The Cavs plunged from a 61-21 season with LeBron in 2009-2010 to a 19-63 record without him the following year, and I do not think another human was scorned as much as he was for his traitorous move to the Miami Heat. Apparently, his fellow Clevelanders forgave him four years later and he was welcomed back with open arms, which we would also do if our LeBron would stop leaking oil.