Howdy,
In the middle of the times when the consistency effort is needed we don’t usually want to admit this, but it is truly amazing the price we pay for failing to take the small steps necessary for real results.
The price we pay for not taking action on the things we need to do. For not prioritizing and making it happen. For not listening, believing. Not making a change. Or the effort, with consistency.
This is true in lots of areas, spiritual obedience, exercise, creation of artistic content, developing disciple, reaching goals, etc., etc., including… rehab — pt, physical therapy.
Here’s a familiar story for me.
I haven’t done well with my rehabilitation exercises routine for my back, and now my back is really bothering me, the last two days particularly, with today being the worst. I’m on that line of a wrong move putting me into severe, acute pain and out of commission, and I’m getting plenty of jolts throughout the day as reminders not to move anything further in a certain way. Plenty of people, unfortunately, know exactly what I’m talking about.
I’m icing and stretching and laying and standing and walking with short steps and bending my knees and leaning a shoulder against the wall and grimacing and stretching and icing … Plenty of people, unfortunately, know exactly what I’m talking about.
But now, at this precarious and compromised moment, I’m too weak to exercise, to rehab, to get stronger. To get better. Too injured and unrecovered, too weak, today to take the steps necessary for fortifying myself against days like this.
I simply have to survive a while.
I’m composing the draft of this wonderful post (in a text to myself on my phone) deposited flat on my back.
It’s terrible that I’m back in this position. To a point, put myself back in this position. (There’s a congenital factor — and sometimes things just stink in this fallen world, degenerated and disintegrating in sin. That’s just the way it is, history lived out under a curse, which, truly, seems pretty obvious. You don’t notice it as much when your back’s not hurting. But still there are lots of other signs. Let’s just say it’s good that God is a redemptive God.)
Then next challenge, the decision of which way to rotate, which side to turn onto, tucking my legs, knees together, slowly and attempting to go from back on floor to hands and knees without my lower back grabbing me and shocking me into a painful game of freeze and hapless retreat. If making it to hands and knees (a victory worth celebrating), can spend some time readying for next stage: up on feet. Plenty of people, unfortunately, know exactly what I’m talking about.
Hunched over and bent sidewise at the waist but up on feet.
Hands probably on a chair or counter but up on feet.
Then start the slow bend, unfolding, upward toward the current state of standing straight. The best I can do, for now anyway.
Because I haven’t done the core work to be stronger.
It’s busy, but I haven’t prioritized my physical therapy, and honestly I don’t quite know how I will accomplish it (twice a day with three kids), yet if I don’t I’ll continue to pay the price for not consistently taking at least the small steps necessary to gain the fruit of important results.
—Billy
Reading. Writing. Living.
Word Count: 69,962 / On Pace: 69,850 / Year’s Goal: 200,000
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