I won’t be posting on Independence Day, so I’ll do it today and then not again until next week. Have a safe, enjoyable holiday, and happy birthday, America!
The summer after I graduated high school I worked at a Christian conference center, where a bunch of teenagers worked on the organization’s summer staff. One day after work there were a bunch of us just hanging around with nothing to do. The part of the campus near the staff quarters and the dining room had a circular decorative fountain outside of it, but it needed repair and had been drained. All that was left inside it was nasty rainwater with decaying leaves in it.
We had a guy on staff, Dave, who was very nimble. He hopped from outside the fountain to the pedestal in the middle, and then hopped out the other side, making it look easy. Well shoot, I thought that was pretty cool, so I had to give it a try, too.
It turns out I wasn’t quite as nimble as Dave. I got to the middle without much trouble, but I couldn’t slow down fast enough to stay on it. Caught in that awkward spot of “should I try to stop all the way, or keep going and hop out again?”…I ended up making a leap for the exit. The problem was that since I had already tried to stop, this wasn’t a full-blown attempt to reach the other side and I didn’t have enough momentum to do it. Only the first few inches of my foot landed on the other side, and the full weight of my body came crashing down on this part of my foot, overextending my ankle beyond its normal range.
This resulted in a complex injury that was a combination of a strain, sprain, and possibly even a break (I don’t remember, but it hurt). I ended up being on crutches a lot that summer.
I had a lot of appointments with an orthopedic doctor after that. The injury was the sort where it didn’t need a hard cast, it just needed some immobilization, so he gave me an air cast that I could take on and off. In one of the earlier visits that summer he told me “once you can tolerate it, you can start putting some weight on it.” I thought that was great news, so I grit my teeth and walked out of the office after that appointment without using my crutches. I went slow and limped a lot, but in my mind the doctor wouldn’t have said that if I hadn’t been making some good progress.
I’m not sure if it was stubbornness, ego, or if I was just grossly misguided, but over the next few weeks I ditched the crutches and got comfortable being uncomfortable (and slow). I got where I needed to go, I just took a little longer to get there. The next time I went to the doctor, he seemed a little perplexed why the healing wasn’t progressing as quickly as he expected. Once he found out about my “grin and bear it” attitude, he set me straight. I went back on crutches.
It’s amazing how much better your injuries heal when you give them what they need. I remember being super excited toward the end of the healing, when I was once again off crutches. After using my bad leg more or less as a peg leg when I walked, it felt great when I could once again use muscle in that foot to propel myself forward, rather than only using it as something to balance on mid-stride while I waited for my good foot to hit the ground.
It makes me think…what else in life do we do to sabotage ourselves? By the stubborn actions we take, are we delaying the healing of some other literal or figurative injury? Are there areas in which we should be further along than we are at this point? By neglecting a practice of some sort, how have we shortchanged ourselves? This could be anything from not reading God’s word on a regular basis to harboring a grudge or bitterness to not taking the next step to heal a wounded relationship.
Now’s the time. Set aside the ego, stop pretending it’s getting better, and pick up the crutches again. Are you really gaining anything by clinging to a “grin and bear it” attitude? Take that step you know you’re supposed to take. It’s the only way the real healing begins.