There’s something wrong with my left hip. It started hurting all of a sudden a week ago (Wednesday, April 9th). It’s a stabbing pain in my hip joint, and it comes and goes. My doctor doesn’t think it’s sciatica, and I have to have an x-ray and a consult with an orthopedic doctor, as soon as she can set it up. I can’t walk because it hurts too much, so I’m spending most of my time sitting up in bed or sitting in the living room, watching TV. It’s frustrating, because there are so many things I need to be doing, but I can’t do them, because I can’t move around.

Something I realized this morning, however. None of this is a surprise to God. He already knew it would happen, and He already had a plan for how it would work out. My job is to be patient and wait for His plan to develop. It’s the being patient part that’s hard. But if I keep on trusting that God knows what He’s doing, the wait should be relatively easy, all things considered, as long as I can keep myself occupied and distracted.

In the process of thinking through the problems with my joints in the past week or two, I’ve come to realize that the conclusions I’ve arrived at concerning my joints would also hold true with regard to the rest of my life, vis à vis my childhood.

The abuse I endured when I was little wasn’t a surprise to God either. He knew it would happen even before I was conceived. I used to be angry about that, because as far as I was concerned He should have put me in a different family where I wouldn’t be abused, though I realize now that I didn’t have the right to demand that of Him. Plus, if I’d been a part of any other family, I wouldn’t have been me. I would have been some other person, entirely different, with different intelligence, abilities, and skills, and I might not have wanted to know God at all, something that fills me with horror. In addition, some other child would have been the object of Harry’s rage and brutality, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

I can’t imagine having no desire for God! That bothers me tremendously! I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want to have God in my life. I’m not sure why that is, though I have a feeling it’s because, even though I didn’t know it at the time, God was always there, protecting me from the worst of Harry’s abuse and atrocities. I didn’t actually get saved until February 6, 1972, when I was eighteen, but the Bible says children always have angels standing before God.

Be sure you do not hate one of these little children. I tell you, they have angels who are always looking into the face of My Father in heaven. ~ Matthew 18:10, New Life Version.

If God hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have made it past childhood. Either one of my mother’s attempts to kill me would have succeeded, or Harry would have made good on one of his threats, or one of my own suicide attempts would have worked.

The conclusion I’ve come to is that God did what He could during my childhood, because He couldn’t go against Harry’s free will, much as He would have liked to. God can’t violate anyone’s free will, because if He did we’d all be puppets, and He wanted people who would love and worship Him of our own free will.

When I say that God did what He could for me, I can hear people say, “But God can do anything! That’s true, but there are certain things He can’t do. He cannot lie, He can’t violate someone’s free will, He cannot change, and especially, He can’t change His mind. He also can’t learn anything, because He’s omniscient. In other words, He knows everything, mostly because He created everything. In addition, He can’t break His promises.

God is not a man, so he does not lie. He is not human, so he does not change his mind. Has he ever spoken and failed to act? Has he ever promised and not carried it through? ~ Numbers 23:19, NLT.

I love this verse. It’s one of my all-time favorites, and while I do have others, this one is right at the top. It checks off almost all the things I mentioned that God can’t do. I love knowing that God will never lie, and will always keep His promises to me. Given that my parents consistently lied and broke every promise they ever made to me, I find it incredibly comforting that I can trust God to do the exact opposite. Another favorite is from the Book of James,

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. ~ James 1:17, KJV.

My therapy has been going really well. I love my therapist. He’s the best one I’ve ever had, and I’ve seen a lot of therapists, some forty at last count. He’s a Christian, and he gets my love of Scripture, so we always have things to talk about, even when we aren’t dealing with my emotional problems. Plus we have a similar sense of humor, and we both love movies. I first saw him about forty years ago, and then I didn’t see him at all for many, many years. But I found him again, much to my delight, and I praise God for bringing him back into my life. He really is a joy to work with!

Update on May 6th: I saw the orthopedic doctor (actually it was his physician’s assistant). She said I have bursitis, and she gave me an injection of cortisone in my hip. It seems to be working, though the pain comes and goes. At least I have a diagnosis, and for that I’m very thankful.

As you can see, it’s taken me a very long time to write this post, but I had a lot to think about, and a lot to put together so it all made sense, which is why it’s taken me so long to get this published.