“Let me get that for you,” my father-in-law said as he reached to adjust the hospital bed for Daniel. We all wanted him to be as comfortable as possible while he was Walter Reed.
I’ll never forget Daniel’s response.
“No,” he said, looking at each of us hovering over him. “Actually, you all need to leave. I have training to do.” He was just determined to figure out how to do these things on his own, including operating his mechanical bed.
Another time, a nurse asked him, “What would you prefer, your head to be up or down, or your feet…?”
And he said, “What is the optimal position for healing?” In other words, don’t ask me what I want, tell me what is going to get me better and out of here. He was very determined that he was not going to be enabled. He was going to be Daniel.
We laugh at these stories in our family because it was such a relief to see his trademark “can-do” attitude shining through again. The insurgents could take his leg, but not his faith, his personality, his dry wit. He was going to continue.
That’s not to say there weren’t hard days. There weren’t lots of them in terms of being totally discouraged. There were a lot of painful days. I can only think of one day where the hope was truly needing to be replenished. For him, many of the days just felt like the movie, Groundhog Day the same thing over and over again.
But, as Daniel has said: “I had a personal mission. I wanted to get on with my life, and I didn’t feel like I had time to sit around moping. I don’t ever wake up in the middle of the night and think, ‘Wow I’m really glad that happened to me,’ but I’m not feeling sorry for myself either. It’s just what God’s plan is for our family.”
Lord, whatever task is ahead of me, give me the strength and determination to do it well.
“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13b, 14)