26/10/2025
BROKEN HIP
By Gener Valerio
From his book, For The Time Being
Page 68 - 72, Copyright: 2012
What should really motivate a person to do more, to have more or to have less?
"It is when I stopped walking that I started running." - anonymous
When I had my hip operation after a long battle with extreme pain almost two years ago, my orthopaedic surgeon warned me that although the excruciating pain may gone in time, the healing would take much longer. Not sure how long, but definitely long. And while waiting, I cannot walk without the help of crutches. Adjustments were needed while I was trying to cope with my new condition. At least I can be mobile unlike before, but not right away. With therapy going on, I stayed most of the time lying down on bed or sitting up. Just after another month, I started longing to walk, but I simply can't. I wanted to do a lot of things, just like before, but I can't.
So I started teaching myself, little by little, to come to terms with myself and my "now different" situation. It wasn't easy. I swear. I included in my daily mantra " I have broken hip, not broken spirit." Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. And when it didn't I felt a strong gushing of water from the heavens raining on my already soaked spirit, as if it will never stop. Without warning or even a slight sign of when will it ever stop. But the grace of God is so bountiful and kind. Rain or no rain he reminds me the love he never fails to show.
"The best thing one can do when it's raining is let it rain." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The good thing is that I can still write stories and poems, go and share the Bible in far locations, visit new places I never thought I can, and even other things I have already stopped doing, and a host of things I did not think I can do easily. Now, going to see a movie and stroll in the mall are luxuries to me. But that's alright, maybe that's why VCR's and online shopping have been invented.
How come I never realized it earlier. Guilty as I may be charged, all I needed to do was to appreaciate a rare chance of being able to do the things I have otherwise overlooked. Thank God for the second chance. I started paying attention to my life and what else I can do to people whose lives I can effect and touch, despite my latent physical limitations now.
But life is tricky in general, no matter how simple you may want it to be. Temptations to surrender due to feeling of pain and the weight of a seemingly unendurable pain come more often that one would usually wish. But life goes on, so they say. And God did not design us to carry it alone. That's why He is God and He is there. But He will not pry these cares from our grasps like magic (although He can) but will give us the privilege to hand it over to Him to take charge and free us from the pains.
Now in my solitude I can't help but ask: Do we really need to get much older and weaker physically to start planning to do what we really need to do and focus our attention to?
"I don't think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains." - Anne Frank
"Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
"Being disabled should not mean being disqualified from having access to every aspect of life." - Emma Thompson
This article from the book is being shared on the occasion of Gener's Birthday. - by Gard V Calub
