If you want to keep your horse in a small area and you don’t have anywhere to tie the reins, you hobble it.

This way, by incapacitating one leg, the horse cannot run off. You do what you need to do, and the horse stands by.

I’ve been hobbled.

I had a knee replacement last year.

Everything went very well (after the failed spinal anesthesia nightmare, waking up with 10/10 pain. But I digress). I had prehabbed for months in preparation, and was a very compliant patient with my physical therapy.

I was ready to get back to normal.

Then things changed.

My last day of PT, my thigh seized up in the worst charlie horse of my life. I iced, elevated, bit a bullet – and hours later it finally released, leaving me feeling beat up and exhausted.

Life went on. Occasionally this would happen, but rarely – and never when things were crucial.

The new year brought a new job, and excitement for ministering to families again.

Then came March.

Six times in one month, the leg seized up. The hip protested. The back cramped.

I went back to my surgeon. He tested everything on my knee, and it was great. It is, in fact, in much better condition than my native knee.

He was perplexed. He had never seen my set of symptoms in his decades of practice. I cried. We hugged. He referred me to sports med.

As I sit waiting on my lumbar MRI, I’m talking to God. Why am I hobbled?

Surely there must be a reason we paused on this path, in this exact place.

I should be resting in Him, but I am not.

I’m frustrated. I’m in pain. I’m exhausted.

I want answers.

Even as I sit here, I know I may not get conclusive answers.

I need to stay with Him. I can’t go far.

I’m hobbled.

Only He knows if or when the hobble will be taken off.