Learning to Walk

Last week as I was cleaning up and reorganizing a storage room, I found a walking device I thought would help Wanjiku with walking.  I can strap her arms in and there’s hip support and breaks on the wheels to keep her from slipping backwards.  One of the arm supports was broken, but my dad “MacGyvered” it with some wire and tape and made it work.  I was so excited to use it with Wanjiku, but she would not have it.  She screamed bloody murder and could still drop to her knees, keeping her from walking.  So we got leg braces to physically force her to stand—this just made her bellow even louder.  She is used to doing what she wants when she wants, and she DID NOT want to use the walker.  I didn’t want to cave into her crying fit, but there’s a fine line with her because she also has a seizure disorder, and excessive crying can cause her to convulse.  Due to her wailing, there were many people in the hallway I was working in, and everyone was trying to help.  Eventually we gave up trying to make her walk and told her in Swahili and English that as soon as she stopped crying we would release her.  After about 10 minutes of screaming and us just kneeling there, she began to quiet.  As soon as she stopped crying, we took her out of the walker, and waited for her to stop yowling again to take the leg braces off.  When I took her back to the other kids and set her on the floor, she heaved a big sigh (as in, “I won!”).

In my excitement and ignorance, I tried to push her too far too quickly.  Looking back, I had essentially trapped Wanjiku in unknown devices, and there was no way to convince her that this was for her benefit.

So today, another day older and wiser, I put the leg braces on Wanjiku and set her in a stool without a seat (which she has been in many times before), and had her just stand for five minutes.  She still didn’t like it, but she didn’t panic—the stool was not new, she was in a familiar environment, she had use of her arms, so only the leg braces were new.  Today I did the same thing and added a minute to the time—she hardly fussed at all.  I will continue this exercise daily, increasing her standing time by one minute each day, and once we reach about 15-20 minutes, I’ll try the walker again.

This ordeal has caused me to stop and think about two key matters:

1)       How often do I try and rush God’s plans for me?  When excitement and ignorance meet, I take off with an idea without thinking it through; my mom jokes that this is a “Kiser Trait”, but I think it’s humans in general.  As a teacher, I’ve tried to teach a complex idea without breaking it down into graspable pieces—instead of saving time, I have to go back and reteach the lesson so my students can get it.  With ideas about my future, I continue to jump the gun and plan long-term what God means for just now.
2)      How do I respond to an inundation of unknown stimuli?  Exactly the same as Wanjiku.  I feel trapped and terrified and want out NOW!  This was definitely the case with my time in Mexico.  But God wouldn’t let me out until I stopped crying for no reason.  Like Wanjiku, I was just throwing a fit, not because I was being tortured or in pain, but because I couldn’t do what I wanted to do.  God had to break my will and show me that He was in control and worthy of trust.  To some extent I’m going through a similar experience here in Kenya, but this time it’s more like I’m being stood up with leg braces in a chair and I’m just whining.  Here’s to hoping I’ll continue to progress positively…

I wonder if Wanjiku has any idea of how much she’s teaching me?  With her help, I may learn to walk too.