Walking Courageous

My mom remembers sitting in the bathtub, her big pregnant belly encircled by the warm water.  She felt me kicking and kicking and then not.  She knew something was wrong with me, her baby.  She prayed, “Lord, don’t let it be her brain.

So, when I was born, my appearance was actually a relief.  My little left baby leg was curled up over my right shoulder, the kneecap on the back of my leg with my little left foot pointing in the wrong direction.

The small-town Nebraska doctor whisked me away, leaving my mother alone.  I didn’t realize until after having my own two kids, how awful this must have been for her. 

But in that space she prayed, “Thank you God it wasn’t her brain.”

After receiving phone directions from a big city Omaha physician, my doctor grabbed my small and loose-jointed baby leg at the hip and ankle and twisted.  My little baby kneecap danced around and things shifted into place, so my leg now looked like a normal-foot-is-on-the-front-of-the-leg thing.

The new problem was that it wouldn’t bend. 

The doctors planned to splint my leg throughout my first months of life.  At each early child visit, they would bend my little knee a bit more and re-splint, and re-splint to the tune of my cries and (I can only imagine) my mother’s wincing. 

This splinting must have been awful and painful, and if I could have talked, I would have told them to stop.  But now I can walk. 

Sometimes I wonder if metaphorical splinting has been going on in cycles throughout my life.  Peace and joy come again and again, but always after a bout of the tough stuff opening up a space.

Recently, I read a post on social media from a friend: