TGIF
My back hurt…constantly…and I had a pinched nerve in my neck.
I waited for both issues to resolve themselves and, as is my habit, I waited a long time.
All men know that if you ignore discomfort long enough it will go away on it’s own.
Right?
Wrong.
I finally decided to go see my chiropractor, who is a healer with unmatched skill.
Due to my idiotic delay in visiting her, I’ve had to see her every week for the last couple of months.
It took a while to dig this hole, and it’s taking a while to climb out.
This would be unworthy of writing about except for an observation she made.
The problem started with my posture, she said…I was walking about hunched over with my shoulders directed down and in as if I were closing in on myself.
“You’re protecting your heart”…
The words sounded like they came from Sinai…
Subconsciously, the stress of walking around with an aneurysm and a bad valve was causing me to try to “protect” that organ from any more issues.
It wasn’t just the physical problems with my heart…I’d been dealing with a barrage of emotional stressors as well.
I’d closed in on myself and closed off from the dangerous world around me.
In doing so, I’d created a host of other issues.
Trying to protect myself had led to hurting myself.
The cure?
First, realize what I was doing.
Then, open up, throw those shoulders back, and see the doctor on a regular basis.
That was an easy physical prescription to fill…not so easy emotionally.
Sometimes, when we go through times of prolonged stress we close in and close off everyone…including God.
When we do so we may protect one area, but everything else will be affected…and not in a good way.
The pain simply transfers from one place to another.
To get well we have to take that risk and open up…to others and especially to God.
We have to change our posture from focusing inward to focusing outward to Him.
Sometimes, you’ll need a great chiropractor and the Great Physician working together.
It’ll take time…and you’ll have to trust Him to protect you.
He promised.
He will.
Make your own application…
“All men know that if you ignore discomfort long enough it will go away on it’s own.”
When I ask the young men I’m around how likely they are to go to the doctor, they say, on a scale of
1-100, on average, a “5.”
Gentlemen, get your butts to a doctor, the ER or a therapist or whatever it is you need or should go to!
I could’ve died if I hadn’t followed this advise a few months ago.
Praying for your health and recovery, Michael
Thank you, JTK…
We still need you around Michael!
I have my 7 day old man pill box also.
Took a heart attack for God to show me I need to be smarter at 50!
Ike
thanking God for His supply of grace… a wise chiropractor with, it appears, God-given skills
FWIW – my grandmother lived for many years with a pretty bad aneurysm… please be careful to watch your physical exertion… as David I. said, your passing would leave a rather large flock of sheep untended 🙂
Thank you, Ike…I’m not planning on going anytime soon!
I just gave in and got one of those pillboxes…
Em,
There are doctors and there are healers…some are lucky enough to find both in one person.
I’ve been blessed…
I should also note that she’s refused to charge me a dime in twenty years…thinks I helped her…once.
I always figure that I can outlast any ailment, and that’s been pretty much true in my life. I had an alarming pain 20 years ago that I was scared was something ominous. The pain is gone but I am still here. But that’s not always going to work. One day the pain will appear that is the harbinger of my death, the ailment that does me in.
I was talking to an elderly friend the other day about aches and pains. I told her every morning I wake up and check out my various components for evidence of system failure. She told me she was trying to fold up a big blanket and couldn’t manage it. She said she told herself “Nope, that don’t work no more.”
Her blanket-folder is broken, my grain-digester is broken.
Still and all, this is probably the happiest time of my life, I think.
(Trying out a new avatar…. let’s see what happens…._
.
Nope.
Maybe now….
Xenia, as i was reading the thread this morning i was thinking of all the moms i’ve known in years past… so many stories of ignoring pain to meet family demands… I think God took that need into consideration when working out the design as most of the time those pains resolved themselves as yours did 20 years ago… not always tho…
Maybe that’s where the phrase he/she is working themselves to death originated?
#11 – how did you get that cute picture of me for a gravatar? (Joking). ?
Thank you for this today.
London sighting!! ?
Great encouragement, Michael! Praise God for your chiropractor! I gave in to the pill box long ago, but I’m still curious to find out if CBD oil might work better.
Still praying for you big brother. So glad you went to your doc.
Captain kevin, CBD might be just what you need for your pains. Praying for you.
This reminds me of a little book by Henry Nouwen called “With Open Hands”. I haven’t made it past the first chapter. It’s hard to turn to God in the midst of stress and let him into our deepest self in those times. But that’s when we need Him most.
There’s a popular motto that most know and has become a bit maudlin perhaps, but it is a truth… “Footprints in the Sand?”
When we are so stressed that we cannot form a cogent sentence, God does carry His child… The book of Job is so full of insights into God’s viewpoint and i think, too, Ecclesiastes is full of insights into how it looks to the human viewpoint of a wise man – we think we see and we do, to an extent… but the big picture is seen from where God sits … I think…
Thank God for the Book – a precious gift (that can only be fully comprehended through God the Holy Spirit working in us – “line upon line, precept upon precept”)
Praying for you Michael. BTW long ago I dated a Chiropractor but broke it off because she was too much of a manipulator. 😉