God is faithful even when it is H.A.R.D | Frozen Shoulder

Sometime in June, I started noticing that I was having problems manoeuvring my left shoulder. It wasn’t hurting that much; it just wouldn’t go in every direction. Then slowly but surely it started to hurt when I tried to go in every direction. I didn’t have time to try and get to a doctor as that was exactly when we had two teams come and then we went on vacation. And the system here is incredibly slow… and at that stage I thought it would just go away on its own. Oh boy, was I wrong… 

While I was on vacation it started getting worse and worse and the pain was horrible, but even in that I could see God’s faithfulness. I shared in my vacation blog about how because of the pain, I would get up in the middle of the night to take more medicine… and that was how I got to see the extraordinary sight of the full moon over the water. It was one of those moments in my life which I will never forget – and I would never have seen that if the pain hadn’t woken me up. 

I got back to Banja Luka and then it took three weeks to get the diagnosis of “frozen shoulder”. Basically the joint capsule itself is inflamed and goes stiff and hard rather than being a soft membrane that keeps everything together. 

Source: WebMD

It was called periarthritis when it was first discovered in the 19th century and apparently since then they are still struggling with how it all works and how best to treat it. But the good news is that it usually just goes away by itself – even if it takes up to a year or more at times.

I remember when I shared the diagnosis with friends: all of those who have had it before (and there were actually quite a few) sent their condolences… so that was a clue how bad it is…

I have found some tricks and run arounds, like sleeping on my back – I never ever ever ever thought I would be able to sleep on my back, but it really is the only way I can sleep at least some now. I am also taking some really good drugs (anti-inflammatories) which help a lot! 

After the diagnosis it took another 3 weeks to get in to see a specialist at the rehab hospital. And then after that exactly a month before they called me for my physical therapy, this last week. In all that time, I have been living with a painful shoulder, doing what exercises I can find online to help keep some range of motion.

The first thing that I realised I couldn't do is to play guitar… so leading worship at church hasn’t happened since August. But again God’s faithfulness is shown in that we have formed a little worship band and I am coaching others both on the piano and the guitar. I see how not being able to do things has encouraged others to HAVE to step up. 

And then in October, I was supposed to be helping to run a YWAM leadership conference in Albania. I decided in the end that it really wasn’t a good idea for me to go, and so handed over all I was doing to other people. It went well in the end, and I got to join in on the livestream, but I was of course sad that I couldn’t go and see everyone at the gathering. 

When I was telling people why I wasn't coming, I told them I was waiting to go to rehab and was on some strong drugs to keep me going. One of them quipped, "So we will tell people you couldn't come because you were hooked on drugs and had to go to rehab." :) 

My range of motion is quite limited in that left shoulder - so hairwashing for instance became harder, so I decided to get my hair cut :) It is the shortest it has been in over 30 years! My hairdresser has been trying to get me to do it short for years, but I always wanted to be able to put it up... now I can't put it up anyway, so I thought, "Why not!" I call it my frozen shoulder haircut. And I think it is pretty snazzy... 

Now, the physical therapy has started and it is every day for 3 hours for 2 weeks. (here is my blog on how physical therapy works here in this country). I can genuinely say some of it is wonderful and some of it is complete torture. But even after just 3 days I can already see some small improvement in my range of motion, so I believe it is doing me good, even despite the pain. 

I decided to write this blog today, as a way to remind myself that God is faithful even in the midst of the hard. Even in the wilderness I can see the little flowers growing through the cracks – showing His faithful presence is with me through it all. I know that through it all, He is with me, His rod and His staff are comforting me and with my shepherd by my side, I can face anything. I don’t know how much longer this condition may last, but I do know that it will not be for eternity… even if it feels like it sometimes! 

This is an addition to the series of blogposts about God’s faithfulness when things are H.A.R.D. which I wrote in February and March 2021.

Children's Week Workshop

The first week in October is called "Children's Week" and helps children remember their rights. The theme this year was "Together we can achieve anything" and we had a lot of fun with it! 

We usually do a workshop at the children's home, but because of Covid restrictions we are not allowed to take a lot of people in, so instead we organised it our place. Half of the children come from the Home and half come from our sponsorship project. 

When I was thinking about working together, I thought about the aspect of the puzzle - where you need each piece to make the whole puzzle come together. It is so important to have each unique piece making a contribution to the whole - and once we are altogether we are a beautiful picture.

So, we ended up doing activities based on puzzles and putting stuff together - so for instance we made a healthy peanut butter/honey/oat ball for our snack - each ingredient on its own is great, but together they make something even better... I loved the fact that even the snack was part of the message 🙂

I had so much fun working with our "new" (she arrived in January, so no longer quite so new) teammate, Käte, on bringing it all together. And we couldn't have done it without our wonderful volunteers.

The framed pictures say "Together we can achieve anything" and each puzzle piece was coloured in by a child, so we did it all together.  One went to the Home and one we will keep 🙂 Each child also decorated their own puzzle pieces to take home! A good reminder that together we can achieve anything, but also that they are all unique and special and make an important contribution to the whole,  just like the puzzle pieces!!