Broken

I've had a broken body ever since I can remember.  I had asthma and allergies as a very young child so there were lots of emergency room visits, doctor's offices and medicines.  This was in the era before inhalers and nebulizers so an asthma attack that couldn't be controlled was an automatic trip to the ER.  I'll bet if I was a kid now, my asthma would be very controlled and not that serious.  I can only imagine my parents fear every time the wheezing would start.

I never realized how often I was sick until we went to a doctor when I was a junior in high school.  I was extremely fatigued and had frequent headaches.  I had mono as a freshman and ever since then, I had trouble fighting off infections.   The doctor wanted a detailed medical history and my parents went through every hospitalization.  Even though that was twenty years ago, I clearly remember them both recounting the history.

Then, without consciously knowing, I broke my body even more.  I joined the swim team and trained hard from 3rd grade until freshman year in college.  I became a camp counselor in college and exhausted myself for 5 summers straight.  I ate sugar and processed foods to keep up the pace.  I even smoked for a few years. Yuck!  As an adult, I took a stressful job that ate me alive with work.  I kept working this crazy job after I had a child.  I finished my master's degree and ran the Chicago Marathon.

As I look back on it now, I see God's hand in all of this.  He let me have a broken body and he let me break it even more because through all of it, he healed my spirit.  It's still healing, but the amount of peace I feel right now is one I've never known.  He put people, blogs, practitioners and books in my path that have healed my spirit through my broken body.  It's hard to point to just one of these as pivotal in the healing.  But, they have each in their own way taught me how to 'be.'  And learning how to 'be' was something I always knew I needed to learn but, how do you go about learning how to do something so complex?  I am finally seeing the fruit of years of prayer and study.  He has helped me become less lazy, less gluttonous, less judgmental, and less anxious. There is a long road ahead and much more work to do.  But, His burden is light and I finally feel that lightness like I never have before.

I pray that now this spiritual healing will help me fix the damage I've done to the body He gave me.  And if He does heal my body, I pray that I will always remember His lessons in humility so that I may use my body wisely to do His will.