Throw Away Your Crutches

So I’m just back from the doctor’s surgery, unable to shake off this chest infection that I have been boring regular readers about over the last three weeks. I was initially prescribed a five day course of antibiotics but I may as well have been given peanut M&M’s for all the good they did.

The dry cough has persisted and it is still Phlegm City as far as my lungs are concerned. Sorry too much information I know. My left ear has still not popped from tbe flight back from England two weeks ago and I have a headache between my eyes that was creeping down into my nose last night. Oh and I’m permanently tired, can’t run and am consoling myself with any junk food I can lay my hands on.

Apart from that I’m fine….

The doctor has prescribed me with a different, stronger antibiotic this time as well as a nasal decongestant spray. I am to take these for a week and, if no better then, I will be sent for a chest x ray. The other instruction he gave was that I was to stop taking my antidepressant while I was on the antibiotic as the two do not go together. And running is out of the question as well at present. Even the short walk to the surgery this morning left me exhausted.

I gave up alcohol just over four years ago and became a Christian about a year later. While my faith has ebbed and flowed during that period, the two things I have ‘religiously’ stuck to have been running regularly and taking my medication on a daily basis. And now I am being told I can do neither.

Which scared me initially. A whole list of worries have stomped through my brain. What if I go crazy off my meds? How will Fionnuala and the kids put up with me? And the running? Will I lose all my hard earned fitness? Am I putting on weight again? Will I never run another marathon?

I know this is just my mind playing games with me and such ‘stinking thinking’ is self-defeating and unnecessary. But it is hard to repel such thoughts when you are feeling physically and mentally low. They can so easily overpower you like an invading army storming over the ramparts of a besieged castle. Once that happens and they open the drawbridge from within the city is doomed.

Tbe silver lining to this morning’s melancholic cloud was, as ever, God. They say an untested faith is a useless faith so here I am. Dropping my twin crutches of running and medication and stumbling forward hoping that he will catch me before I fall flat on my face. Because that’s what he does a lot where I’m concerned.

Sometimes we are over reliant on our ‘earthly crutches’ when we should be throwing them away, stepping out in faith and trusting in God. Trust is at the heart of any thriving relationship. I have found that if I consistently hand my worries and problems to God then he takes care of them. In his own time and his own way. But he does. Every time.

When this happens and we see that God has our backs 24/7 we can trust him more and more in every aspect of our lives. And as we grow and develop in our relationship with him we discover something else. We begin to trust ourselves. I’m not going to pick up that cigarette. I’m not going to click onto that website. I am going to walk away from this unhealthy relationship.

If you are clinging on to an earthly crutch today my advice to you is to throw it away. Be it alcohol, food, drugs, money, sex or whatever. Just throw it away and ask God to take the steering wheel. Believer or non-believer what’s the worst that can happen? You stumble and fall? Possibly. But if you trust in him you might just be surprised with what happens. Miracles happen every day to ordinary people. Today could be the day it happens for you.

Psalm 25:1 – ‘In you, Lord my God, I put my trust.’

Do you rely on an earthly crutch more than you should?

If you would like prayer or to talk about it with someone who knows the pain of OCD, depression and addictive behaviour then drop us a line. We are here to help.