The insurgent attack January 10, 2005, and the ensuing recovery period began a new chapter in the life of our family. All in all, I was an inpatient for four months, then spent another six months as an outpatient, learning to walk again with a prosthetic.
If you saw me today, you wouldn’t see that I had lost a leg. You wouldn’t see me running any marathons, but you’d see me cooking dinner while Wendy runs errands, or studying for my doctorate program at the University of Georgia as I prepare to return to West Point as a professor. You’d see Wendy and me juggling twins, born in June 2008 (on our ninth anniversary), or caring for Anna Grace, now six years old. This is our new normal day.
We have seen God work directly in our lives in ways that many people haven’t had the opportunity to. This whole story is for a purpose, and the lesson is that life isn’t about us, as individuals. God has a plan which will take place one way or another, and our lives are about trying to match our actions to his will. He will do whatever it takes to get us where he wants us to be. Self-pity has no part in the plan, nor does selfishness or arrogance; all those things are the result of not understanding where we fit in the plan.
Wendy had a sense from very early on in this story that God was going to use this experience to grow our faith. She thought certainly, that it would grow her faith, mine, and our family’s but God didn’t stop there. For example, Patton had set up a web site to post updates on my condition and allow others to leave comments. By visiting that site, other people were being brought back into a desire to pray and to reconnect with God. God used the situation to witness to people across the world who we didn’t even know. Seeing God work in such a direct and dramatic way has taught us that, essentially, our lives are to bring glory to God, not to ourselves.
Lord, use my life to bring you glory.
“Everyone who is called by my name… I created for my glory.” (Isaiah 43:7)