WHERE HAVE I BEEN?
Hi – it’s been a while. I’ve been missing because the domain provider sold my dot com domain to someone else when my brother’s auto renewal arrangements failed. My brother has now transferred everything to a dot net domain instead and is trying to get the original domain back.
Since I last wrote, which was in March 2024, things have worsened with my arthritis. I’m getting aged care services in the form of help to shower and help to take care of my house as I can’t do much myself now. I was getting meals-on-wheels which were surprisingly good but they changed and it was no longer suiting me so I stopped.
I’m waiting for health clearances before I can go on the wait-list for the surgery I need but the last one, a heart check, is scheduled to be done on the 19th of this month. If I pass that they will put me on the wait-list for surgery and I think that will mean I will be operated on within three months.
The surgery will be a hip replacement as the hip has worsened so much it has become a source of serious, constant, pain and I now need crutches when I go out and a walker at home to get around.
I’m not complaining.
God is using it all to help change me. I’m more understanding of others, have a deeper appreciation of the struggle facing clients who have been traffic, or work, accident victims, and I’m learning to have a deeper appreciation of things I once took for granted – like the ability to walk at all – pain or no pain!
It is highlighting the ways in which society simply doesn’t cater for the disabled and doesn’t really try to.
Take seating for example.
Everywhere I go chairs or seating are all a standard height. I can’t use them because they are too low. If I sit my knees will not lift me back up. If I want to sit on chairs in any restaurant, church, doctor’s office and so on, I have to use a cushion which gives me the extra couple of inches in height that I need to be able to get back up on my feet. I have to take the cushion everywhere I go if I am planning to sit anywhere when I go out.
Then there are the toilets.
You would not believe how many places don’t have appropriate disabled toilets. Some disabled toilets have no bar on the wall at all, some have a bar that is too small to be of use to me and some have a bar that is on the wrong side of the facility which makes it more difficult for me to use it. I need the bar to help me pull myself back to my feet after sitting on a toilet that is too low for my knees. It’s not uncommon for me to have to just wait until I can get home. Puts a limit on my ability to go out and stay out.
Steps can be an issue too.
I’m still looking for a new place to rent and some of the properties I go to look at have steps that are higher than the standard. If there is nothing to grab, like a railing or column, I am not able to get up the step to even go look at the place! If I was buying a place (which I can’t because banks won’t lend to someone as old as me if they don’t have enough superannuation to pay out the loan) I would have a good way of telling if the builder was good or not. There is a legal standard height for steps which is imposed to prevent falls. If a step is higher or lower than the required height people in general are likely to fall because they expect the steps to be the legal height. If a builder can’t build steps that are to code what else are they not doing right?
There’s a couple of favourite restaurants my daughter and I like to go to that we can only go to when I am having a good day as the steps at the entry are too high for me to get up without help from my daughter and I need to be feeling strong enough to endure the pain involved in just getting inside the restaurant. Getting out tends to be easier as going down steps doesn’t hurt as much.
I’ve had prayer. Lots of it. All aimed at asking God for healing but God has not seen fit to heal me via miracle and I’m OK with that. I know He can heal – he has healed me in the past – if He is not healing me now there must be a good reason for it and I trust Him. I will look to surgery for my healing and I know God has to work that healing for me too.
Jesus warned us that, as Christians, we can expect to suffer hardships. “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33 – underlining mine).
For now I claim, and will live out, 2 Corinthians 12:9 which says: And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
