Morning Routine

My dad is a morning person; my mom is the furthest thing from it. I take after my mother.

I've never liked mornings, and they are all the more difficult for me now. Each morning my first medication alarm goes off to tell me to take the muscle relaxant an hour before I get out of bed and take more medications. The first alarm doesn't require a lot of conscious thought, but when the second alarm goes off, I have to remember that my feet don't move on their own, that my hip and leg muscles have stiffened up again through the night, and I have to fight to get them to move to even roll over and get out of bed.

Each morning, my disability fights through the grogginess to remind me that I'm physically different now than I was before, and just transferring from my bed to my wheelchair takes incredible effort. Each morning, I have the choice to fight the disability or just lay in my bed like a vegetable and die. So far, I've chosen the former each morning, but it's not an easy choice. It's tough to make my left hip remember how to bend and lift my leg; it's tough to force my heels to touch the floor as I put my shoes on. 

Some of these tasks are getting easier, but I can't emphasize enough how difficult this routine still is. Even if I were a morning person, it's a brutal battle each day to get ready and look presentable for society. I'm not satisfied with turning into a vegetable, so I'll keep fighting, but I'm so grateful for the continued prayers that this fight will get easier. Right now, I'm working with my therapists to learn to sit and stand using the correct muscles as well as to use those same muscles correctly when I bend at the hip to lift my leg when taking a step. It's a simple motion for most of you that has become incredibly complex for me as these muscles are so atrophied from lack of use. 

This is the muscle I struggle with the most each morning as I lift my left leg. Every single day I work to strengthen this muscle, and every single morning I feel like I'm back to square one. It's a monotonous routine, but I won't give up. I won't give up because if I did, I would miss out on seeing my students, on interacting with these incredible teenagers at BFA, and on teaching something I'm so passionate about. I'm blessed beyond reason to get to teach what I love to students I love, and it makes every morning worth it. Praise God I have this wonderful job, but please join with me in prayer that I don't have to fight my body so much to get to work each morning.