TATTOO on the HEART

Knee problems…

// April 28th, 2010 // EVERYDAY LIFE, OUT LOUD THOUGHTS

Yesterday I went to my first physical therapy appointment for my knee.  Honestly, there was very little actual therapy, just a ton of questions.

The first question: “Where does it hurt?”

And it’s amazing that after all this pain and the high degree of communicative ability that I have (at least that I’d like to think I have) that I struggled for several minutes to describe the pain and exactly where it was located in my knee.

Second question: “So it hurts when you walk?”

And I’m like, “not really.”

“When you run?”

“No.”

And at that point I’m thinking the physical therapist thinks I really don’t have a knee problem.   I actually felt a little alarmed internally because I didn’t think she was going to treat me.

I mean, my knee really did hurt, not when I walk…most of the time.  It hurts when I jump.  It hurts when I make a sudden move or climb the stairs…but not every time.  But when it hurts my leg totally goes limp.

“Is it getting worse?”

I don’t think so.  I don’t know.  It could be.

And after a long list of more questions, the physical therapist skeptically began her examination of my knee.  I walked, stepped, and resisted applied pressure and winced as visibly as I could because I actually wanted to get this thing taken care of.

Finally she looked at my quads and said, “How long have you been having this problem?”

Like 2 years.

“So why didn’t you get physical therapy?”

Because I’m a guy and I hate going to the doctor and I figure things will just work their way out.

“Yeah, I can tell you’ve been dealing with this for a while…your right leg is smaller than the other.  In fact, there’s a big difference.”  And she actually measures both of my quads to prove to me how much of a difference really existed.

And it dawned on me stupid it was for me to wait so long.  How I’ve stayed out of pain by walking and using that leg less and refraining from activities that I used to enjoy.  I’ve managed my pain, but I really haven’t gotten better.  I live around the pain.  I nervously walk up and down stairs.

It’s become normal.  I just didn’t realize how normal it’s become.

What happened yesterday sorta mirrors what’s been going on in my conversation with Jesus over the last year or so. I realize now that my times of bad attitude, my defensiveness, my guilt, my shame, my lack of trust, my greedy grasping, etc. – these things are all ways that I’ve compensated for pain and brokenness. I realize those things rear their head so that I don’t have to experience the pain that I’ve never dealt with.

Some of that pain is from religion, from relationship with people, circumstances, and often (and most times) it stems from a wrong belief about God.

Reactly wrongly to people, circumstances, and God feels like something that’s happening in the moment. Someone crosses us or something happens and we react in a way that maybe we wish we didn’t. But we believe ourselves to be fair people who would at least be reacting objectively.

Truth is, we’re broken people. We may feel at times like we’re more whole than we really are – and that’s just because we’ve compensated so long that we can’t even see the limp that we walk with while others may even be able to see it a mile away.

Some of the junk we really thought would just work it’s way out. But that’s not what happens. Not talking to people or not thinking about a situation or a hurt doesn’t mean that we’ve been healed. And that’s where God wants to bring us – to wholeness.

Right now, I’m staring at the beginning of some physical therapy that can strengthen and bring healing to my knee. I’m kinda not looking forward to it. But this problem has been 2 years in the making and it’s not going to resolve from one doctor’s visit.

I’m so reminded of the story of Jesus with the man at the pool of Bethesda (John 15:1-15).  He’d been an invalid for 38 years, and Jesus asked him a really startling question: “Do you want to get well?”

What Jesus asked was a really huge question on a lot of levels for this guy. For brevity I won’t go into the endless number of things that would have changed including the fact that he would have to actually get a job and support himself.

The initial encounter with Jesus was really the easy part. Yeah, Jesus could heal him physically. And that sounds so over the top, who couldn’t be happy and better off with that?

But I think Jesus was seeing ahead. This was going to change everything. This guy was going to have to be reintroduced to life, and honestly I think it was going to be pretty tough. I think he was going to have to go through a healing process of brokenness with himself, with brokenness with family who allowed him to be on the streets, with people who walked past him every day and thought he was trash…he was even going to have to sort through bitterness that he possibly held against God for 38 years of his life.

Jesus was more than willing to touch his physical body and heal it. But Jesus’ desire for his life was much greater than that guy could have ever known. Jesus wanted him to be whole.

And for us that’s His same desire.

It’s not okay to be sick.

It’s not normal.

It’s not acceptable.

We can’t live in a place of compensating for brokenness. We can’t enable environment that accepts people to continually walk around in their woundedness.