My name is Emily Walton, and I am a senior on the Bob Jones University women's track and field team.

If you know me at all you know that I LOVE to be involved with anything that I can. Tearing my ACL last spring felt like a wrench in everything that I wanted to do.

I remember looking at God and feeling like I was missing some piece of His plan that was taking me away from things I wanted to do for his glory. My track season was over, I stepped down from counseling at a camp, and my physical therapy kept me in Greenville over the summer instead of going home.

At each turn I waited for God to give me some divine "aha moment" where I realized this was the lesson, and this is what I was supposed to change about myself through this setback so that I could move on.

Unfortunately, it never came.

But instead at each turn, God pulled me away from myself by working in ways I could not even imagine. Time after time and blessing after blessing, God worked in my life to provide what I could not in my own strength.

Insurance provided a maximum 20 appointments that were supposed to last me the entire nine-month rehab. But God provided a physical therapist and athletic trainer who would work with me, continue writing my program, and fitness testing off the clock.

I lost an entire season to compete in track. But God provided me with opportunities to cheer for every single one of my teammates in their individual events, and a spring season sport so that I could compete in my senior season.

I didn't work at camp or go home this summer. But God provided a car for me to get great jobs that paid for this entire semester and most of next semester for my school bill.

My sister moved across the ocean three days after my surgery. But God provided me with a team that felt like family, friends that woke me up at the crack of dawn to work out, and friends that pointed me back towards God after listening again and again and again to me talking about my knee.

God is infinitely more kind than I can ever imagine or expect. Every time I wanted to feel sorry for myself or power through the trials, God dragged my gaze away from myself and put his goodness and faithfulness on full display!

"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me." 2 Corinthians 12:9 
 

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