Part One: Everyday Struggles

Hey guys, hope everything has been going good. So this is my second post, and it's going to be part of a little three post series. The series is going to be all about struggles that everyday people face in life, but specifically from a Christian person's point of view. The first one is going to be from my point of view, the second post will be from the point of view from an adult, and the third from students in high school.

So this first post is going to be from me, and if you know me, you most likely know that I had Tommy John surgery. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's elbow reconstructive surgery that is mostly common with baseball players, and mainly pitchers, which I am. I talked about it in the first post, so most of y'all know how if affected me.

Here is a pretty good visual representation of how I felt sitting on the bench during rehab vs. actually being a part of the second championship. Obviously, as you can tell, it was not easy for me, but the wait was well worth it. I'm going to talk about what exactly got me through the longest year and a half of my life.

Without the help of family and friends, I would have never been able to get through this as easily as I did. Obviously it wasn't very easy at first, as the picture shows, but after time it started to get easier. I had the constant push from my friends, especially the baseball players who didn't mind showing off their rings. I wanted to get back out there and be better than ever so I could have a ring for myself. 

Obviously my friends and family were a big part of it because I was constantly around them. But the one thing that helped my recovery more than anything was without a doubt my faith. My favorite verse, John 16:33, was the biggest push that I had the whole time. I went through the whole recovery process knowing that God had a plan for me, and to just be patient, because good would come of it. This was a huge worldly struggle, but I had no worries because as the verse says, Jesus has overcome the world, and I had nothing to worry about. Although I could have been freaking out, worrying if I was ever going to recover properly, I knew that I just had to keep my faith and God would carry me through the struggle. If I didn't have the faith that I did at the time, there is no way I would have gotten through the process and kept my sanity. Some people reading this may not think the surgery sounds like as big a deal as I am making it. For those of you who are thinking that, let me put it this way. Think of the one thing you love to do most in the world, then imagine someone taking it away for an entire year. Almost at the end of that year, imagine that one thing that you had taken away becomes very successful and you get to watch happen exactly what you've been dreaming about for your entire life happen right before your eyes. It's like you buy a lottery ticket everyday of your life, but you go to buy one and someone tells you that you can't buy one that day. Then the person right behind you buys one and wins the jackpot right in front of your face, that's pretty much what the whole experience felt like. Because of my faith though, I was able to be happy for all of my friends and knew that God would carry me and put me out on the baseball field again and give me a chance to win another championship. 

The biggest lesson I learned through the whole thing was to not take anything for granted, because you never know when something is going to end, or even just put on pause for a while. 

Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope that you join me next time to read about the struggles that are happening in the lives of adults.