With as long as I've been blogging about learning to walk, I've probably used the title "step by step" before, but I've got a bit of new insight with this week's events.
Through the past week, I've encouraged students towards small steps of kindness to turn our school culture into one that affirms and brightens lives rather than being apathetic or going with the neutral norm. In the range of human behaviour, we can always take one step closer to positive or behaving more like Christ. After seeing some beautiful student examples through the week, I went on a prayer retreat for most of Saturday. It was a huge blessing to my soul to gather with other members of the prayer ministry team at my church and spend time before the Lord.
We used a lot of Christianese language, and I'll leave all of that behind here, but I do want to emphasise the impact of people gathering around me to pray for me with incredible faith in a God who heals. There were some special words shared about how God is and will be glorified through my story, and I can promise you I needed that encouragement. My whole goal is to help people love God and love others better, and I was refreshed by these positive role models who prayed over me. One friend mentioned how this is a stepwise process: I'm already recovering in stages, and there are more to come, but that doesn't keep us from asking for everything right now.
I mentioned last week that I was asking for prayer before a particular doctor's appointment that is a step in my life. I still believe God could miraculously heal me before Tuesday morning - and I hope you'll ask with me. I also recognise it's not a measure of my faith or yours whether or not I'm healed. I have an opportunity to invite the Holy Spirit in at this moment in my story, and I'm doing so with open handed expectation. I don't know what exciting results will happen. Certain things are out of my hands in my story, and I'm praying with great hope for the work God is doing - for a clean bill of health just like my clean record from the FBI and German government (my life is wild and fun and I happened to pay about $30 total for two separate countries to confirm I've never been arrested).
I'm still taking what steps I can with my braces while praying the braces aren't necessary much longer. This past week had a lot of physical pain and annoyances, but I also managed to go new places and walk up stairs and be a part of the wider community that I love so much. My life limited by the disability, but it is not entirely ended or cut off. I showed up on purpose in life this week, and I did my best to make the world a better place. What's the next step?