Perseverance

My Rehab was not all fun and games. It was hard, very hard and painful.

I had to relearn to talk, stand, feed myself, pretty much everything we all take for granted. This made me very angry at life and God. It's OK to be mad at Him. He gave us that emotion, as long as we still love and obey Him (like a child parent relationship, He is after all our Father-God).

He loves us no matter what.

I went into a deep depression, enough to ask the doctor if he would give me sleeping pills all the time. I thought I could just sleep through all the bad stuff and wake up on the tail end of all this "crap". It didn't happen!

Examples of my tough times in Rehab;

They would put me on a standing table twice a day. What that means is I'm strapped to a table from head to toe, then they would push a button to tip the table. I was standing straight up for 30 minutes and they would leave the room. Not sure I trusted them to come back on time and with the excruciating pain, it was hard to concentrate on anything, except for how mad I was this was happening to me.

Being in a wheelchair was bad enough, but the nurses would not push me to where I was going (to teach me independence). I would get so angry at them that more than a few times I would sit obstinately in the hall for long periods of time.

My sister, Karen had come to see me, which didn't happen as often as I would have liked. Due to how far away she lived (an hour and a half), also she had 4 children and a husband to take care of. Anyway that day, there was this really strict nurse on duty. It was 1:30 pm when she walked in talking extremely loud and said, "At fourteen hundred hours you have to be ready for your whirlpool bath. So I need your guest to step out, so you'll be ready at fourteen hundred hours." My sister asked if we could have a few more minutes. The nurse replied, "No! She has hydrotherapy at fourteen hundred hours and she can't be late ' fourteen hundred hours." I looked at her pleadingly. She said, "I'm sorry, but I didn't make the rules. They told me to have you ready at fourteen hundred hours, and you'll be ready at fourteen hundred hours." Needless to say my sister said a quick goodbye and left. I was livid, and from that moment on that nurse's new name became fourteen hundred hours.

With God I persevered.

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Philippians 4:13

I am blessed

Merrym Dawn Mathis Bruce