My Shattered Elbow

MY SHATTERED ELBOW

I shattered my elbow on February 16, 2022, when I hit the tile floor, and my right arm smashed into the suitcase I was packing. When I tried to get up, my right arm did not cooperate. The fracture was so bad that only Dr. Humpty Dumpty could put me back together again, Lol!

Nevertheless, the screaming started, and I was alone at the time, so I held my right arm together and called my husband, Tony.

He rushed me to the ER, where they wrapped it so my arm and elbow could not separate. That was worse than giving birth to my daughter ( which was a natural birth.) The plates and screws were inserted in two days, and a soft cast was in place. Then the fun began:

Up until the week of Easter 2022, I had a hard cast on. Let’s see, that was about 2 ½ months, then the bionic arm.

My “Bionic Arm”

That lasted until June 2022.

As you can expect, I was in bed for months. Five, to be exact. During that time, I would like to give you the most painful and joyful testimony I ever had, up until now, that is.

It honestly started with “The Parable of the Sower.”

Last year my Pastor did a sermon from Mark regarding the parable about a sower of seeds. Little did I know that this would change my life and way of thinking.

I identified myself with the sower of “thorns” through the Holy Spirit.” As you can imagine, I was horrified to learn that it was describing my heart.

I was so busy those previous years as a Christian and didn’t give a thought to God. Oh, I prayed “grace” when about to eat; I read my devotional sometimes and spoke to others about Jesus; however, I didn’t give the Lord His Glory. I even put in a CD instead of listening to “Warm up to Worship,” on JoyFM.

Now pay attention:

(Jer 17:9) The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”

(Mar 4:3) “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow.”

(Mar 4:7) Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain.”

(Mar 4:18) And others are the ones sown among thorns. They are those who hear the word,

(Mar 4:19) but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things enter in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.”

Now you would think that when I discovered this, I would do more to glorify God, but nooo. I just started reading my “mornings” in the devotional and prayed a bit more.

At the end of the day, I still didn’t get it.

Consequently, when I fell a few months later, I was a captive of the Holy Spirit. He showed me the truth about my heart and started to teach me how to become a better Christian, to the glorification to God. What a lesson!

During the time I was in bed, I prayed my little heart out. However, my prayers were lacking in significant ways. I wasn’t glorifying God; I was just crying out for healing.

Where was the glorification? I was just thinking of myself and the afflictions I endured. I had no ministries, so I felt useless to the Lord and thought He would take me, but I had a hard lesson to learn.

It took a long time before I felt human again. There I was, lying in bed feeling so guilty but not really knowing why. As I prayed, the supplication and prevailing prayer were so lacking that my anti-depressants stopped working, and what I didn’t know at that point in time was that my Fibromyalgia kicked in. I have six diseases and numerous dental issues. Henceforth, I had to put off seeing any doctors except Dr. Vo, (my Humpty Dumpty) surgeon. What made matters worse was that my fracture wasn’t healing as the doctor would have liked due to my RA.

I was so depressed and alone. My husband didn’t even want to be around me, all I did was cry.

What did I do?

I focused on God. That was my turning point.

The Holy Spirit started by telling me I did not need those meds that we take for depression. So, having the experience of weaning off medications, I did just that. I was taking five different pills for my “chemical imbalance.” One by one, I left them in the dust and started feeling better. Have you ever read what the side effects of these prescriptions do to you?

However, my spiritual life needed more in order to get closer to God. During this time, I started reading a book by JI Packer called “Knowing God.” I stumbled across it while looking for something else, and it packed a punch.

This was about three months out. My prayers became more about God than me. In fact, I started praying for the whole world to gain salvation and for the Holy Spirit to show me how to glorify God. Each day I would and still read the “Mornings and Evenings.”

Still, it was not enough. I didn’t experience the “joy” I had before. Then this happened:

It was my first time driving to church, and during the entire ride, I was praying, “God are you mad at me?” It was a 20-minute ride, and that’s all I did was pray those words. I get to church with a smile plastered on my face. When halfway through the sermon, my pastor stopped and said something to this effect, “I don’t know who you are or if you did anything wrong, but God is not mad at you.”

What?! I slowly slid off the chair and landed on the floor, sobbing. This time for joy!

Subsequently, messages came to me through these devotional readings. My life was God-centered, not self-centered. Thus, I was being hit on all sides with knowledge and understanding that could only be from the Lord.

I started to keep a journal on what the Holy Spirit was teaching me, and my heart started turning to “flesh.” I know this because every time I prayed, the love was so strong that I would start sobbing. I was achieving a love that can only be termed as “in love” with God.

Maybe that sounds strange to you, but we became good friends. My husband Tony noticed all the tissues in the trash cans around the house, and my excuse was that my eyes were leaking. Lol! He isn’t a Christian yet, but I was still working on being a happy human being through all of this.

At that time new Christian friends started coming into my life. Not only that, I now have a ministry helping others who are worse off than me. Feeding the poor. Every Monday morning at the Dream Center Café a small group of us would make sure all that came in were fed. Then the fun begins. We sit down with these lost ones, and pray for them. While they ate, conversations ensued. And so did the smiles.

This is a testimony to Glorify God under the worst of conditions.

Thank you Lord for continuing to teach me what Your will is, not mine. In Jesus name I pray, amen.