Sept. 15, 2024, column from the Amarillo Globe-News

Fixing injury starts on inside - including spiritually

By Mike Haynes

                My memory is hazy, but I do remember some things from Oct. 27, 1967. I was a high school junior playing for my hometown McLean Tigers. I was a guard on offense and I think the same on defense. Out on the field at Silverton, I didn’t notice how cold it was. But I sure did after I hurt my knee.

                It was on a punt. It could have been the one that my teammate, Earnest Smith, ran back 75 yards for the game’s first touchdown, but I’m not sure. All I remember is being in the open, probably looking for somebody to block, when a Silverton Owl hit the side of my right leg. I went down, and the next thing I knew, I was sitting on the sideline on an equipment box or something else close to the ground. And when you’re inactive on a freezing night, you’re shivering.

                By the way, Earnest also was hurt that night; he broke his collarbone.

                In the locker room changing clothes after our 20-8 victory, my legs were bare. Coach Fred Hedgecoke looked at my right knee and asked, “Is your other knee that big?” The right one definitely was swollen.

After limping around for a few weeks I tried to play basketball, but the knee collapsed in practice when I came down from a layup. So I had surgery to remove cartilage. These days they call that meniscus surgery, and it usually is simpler, arthroscopic surgery rather than the more invasive operation that I had.

Today, athletes return to competition after that kind of injury, but back then, it ended my football career. My senior season, I was in the press box writing about the games for The McLean News.

                My knee did well for a couple of years. I just had two small scars outside, and the inside damage wasn’t bothering me much. Then I strained it on a ski slope, and for decades I hobbled on my bad knee.

                Dr. Charles Sadler had done a good job removing that damaged cartilage, but the inner workings of the knee weren’t the same. Through the decades, the “bone-on-bone” joint got worse. When Kathy and I took a trip to New England in 2023 and I was lagging behind our tour group, plus having trouble going up and down the steps of the tour bus, I decided it finally was time to go to the doctor.

                The X-ray showed my thigh bone wasn’t lined up with the shin bone; it was off center. Dr. Reagan Crossnoe told me the condition of my knee was “horrible.” So on Feb. 23, 2024, Dr. Crossnoe replaced that right knee with metal and plastic – 56 years, three months and 28 days after that Silverton Owl had delivered a blow to it. This time, the joint wasn’t just improved; I had a new knee.

                For 5½ decades I had managed to get around, sometimes better than others. But the state of the knee on the inside just wasn’t going to let me maneuver anywhere close to normal.

                Jesus told the scribes and Pharisees they were “like whitewashed tombs which on the outside appear beautiful, but inside they are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. So you too, outwardly appear righteous to people, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.” (Matthew 23:27-28, NAS)

                Other than a slight limp, I didn’t let my bad knee affect what I did. I tried to fake a successful gait. But the mechanism inside didn’t allow a clean movement, and it got worse over time. When I was confronted with a staircase during the past few years, I immediately drifted to the handrail on the right (if there was one) to brace my right knee as I went up or down. And I was more steady if I put one foot, then the other, on each step. It definitely delayed my progress.

                I couldn’t get around like I wanted because of the jumbled up arrangement of the bones and the lack of cartilage. The surgeon needed to clean out the old and give me something new.

                “Create in me a clean heart, God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10, NAS) Like my knee, just trying to fix our behavior from outside might not be the best answer to our problems as we navigate through life. God wants us to have a completely new attitude, an entirely fresh point of view. Only he can provide that as we let Jesus save us from our sinful lives.

                “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5:17, RSV)

                Our friend Tommy posted this comment from Oswald Chambers on Facebook:

The columnist had no trouble climbing these stairs
in a tower at Caernarfon Castle in Wales in July
2024. (Photo by Kathy Haynes)

“The expression of Christian character is not good doing, but God-likeness. If the Spirit of God has transformed you within, you will exhibit divine characteristics in your life, not good human characteristics. God’s life in us expresses itself as God’s life, not as human life trying to be godly.”

When I asked Dr. Crossnoe what kind of improvement I could expect in negotiating stairs with a knee replacement, he replied, “Dramatic.” Faced with a steep, wide staircase on a trip to the British Isles four months after the surgery, I walked straight up and down the middle with my hands free, just one foot on each step. In a tall English castle tower, I was confident on winding, stone steps.

                Many of us have suffered injuries that didn’t happen on a football field. They are emotional or mental pains that hinder our life journeys. If we would let God give us new, faithful hearts like a doctor replaces a knee, our spiritual walks would be much more smooth and confident.