I’ve had pain in my right hip for almost two years now. It started several months into the lockdown when everyone, including us, found themselves walking wherever they could, just to get out of the house and to get some exercise. With my background as a licensed physical therapist assistant, I suspected that it was more than a case of simple tendonitis, but I hoped that it was not. I spent months trying to figure it out – strengthening, stretching, and trying to find what motion might be causing the tenderness, then trying to avoid it, but to no avail. I’d sit down for any length of time, then I’d go to stand up and my hip would feel stiff and painful. 

When things finally started to open up in our world, I made myself go to the doctor. However, as my symptoms were not consistent with an issue of the bones in the hip socket, they quickly diagnosed it as a simple case of tendonitis and sent me for some sessions of physical therapy. After months more of pain and stiffness I asked my doctor yet again for an MRI scan, to see what was wrong with my hip. The results came back and finally showed that somehow I had torn several soft tissue structures surrounding my hip. Unfortunately, it’s not a quick fix, and the only cause anyone can think of is that perhaps it’s tied in with the car accident injuries I sustained in 2011. It was a major car accident where someone ran through a red light, t-boning my minivan and tearing out the engine block, but barely missing my feet, praise God. The accident caused damage to my spine, and over time that damage lead to arthritis and degeneration, which lead to a different walking pattern, which may have been the cause of the wear and tear on the hip.

So now I have two choices 1) surgery which can not fix everything or 2) physical therapy which can be a painful process for months on end, until the other surrounding muscles become stronger and can help to support the hip. This is all so frustrating, and with my life as a mom of an almost 18-year-old daughter with Autism, I really just don’t need this! But it’s happening and there’s nothing I can do to change that fact. I’m just so thankful that I finally have a diagnosis, so that I can at least do something about it. I’m so thankful that the MRI scan had allowed my doctor to see inside to the source of the pain, so that we can now work toward healing the injury to whatever extent that is possible.

What a beautiful picture of what God does with us. He is the great physician. He looks inside of us and sees the cause of each and every hurt, and after diagnosing it, He works to heal the source of the injury and pain. Our pain can have many different origins in life, and as parents of children, teens, and adults with special needs our pain sometimes seems to know no bounds. However, I want to encourage you today that God is with us in the midst of our pain. He does not sit idly by as we go through the anguish we may go through in this life. Just as a good physician would do, He seeks to find the source of our pain, to bind up our wounds, and to heal the broken hearted. (Psalm 147:3, Psalms 34:18) God is the great physician, full of compassion and love, and we can trust Him to see us through whatever it is that we are going through.

“The Lord is close to the broken hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.”

Psalms 34:18

“He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

Psalms 147:3