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My husband tells me that I forget that I am not 20! Perhaps so, at least until this year! I am over 50, but I feel like I should be about 30—well, I did until I fell rollerblading.
I love roller skating. I’m not the best, but I do pretty well when we take the kids to the roller rink several times a year for birthday parties or outings. My older kids insist that rollerblading is easier, so I borrow their rollerblades for a few rounds each time we go skating, and I still disagree with their assessment.
My daughter Maya loves rollerblading. She lives no longer lives at home, and we don’t spend as much time together as I’d like, so when she asked me to ride with her to a couple of appointments with a stop at the park in between, I gladly said yesterday. I joined her and brought along rollerblades (my idea) since I know how much she loves rollerblading.
We chose a place at the park that was on a sloped sidewalk and away from a big group of children. I figured I needed to skate in the parking lot to get acclimated before trying the sidewalk. Maya had already skated down my chosen warm-up zone, so she warned me that the flat-looking area was more sloped than it appeared.
I started well enough, but quickly gained more speed than intended, tried to turn around, and lost my footing. Both feet went out from under me, and I landed HARD on my rear end. Maya said she heard the “Oooh”s from nearby construction workers and turned in time to see me hit the ground.
Although I felt like an explosion went off at the place of impact, a trip to the urgent care sports medicine clinic showed nothing broken. Still, the nurse practitioner said I could expect three full months to heal.
I’ll spare you the details, but after several weeks of painful movement, I gradually felt better. But now, more than six months later, I’m still hurting—not constantly as before, but enough to know I am not completely healed as expected.
First, I overestimated my abilities and underestimated the slope. I am a decent skater—in an enclosed rink, on a flat surface. Skating at the park is not for me!
Second, I want healing on my own timeline, or at least in the medically expected timeframe! But healing does not always come in a nice linear progression, gradually better and stronger each day. Some days are better than others. Some days, standing too much, or sitting too long, or some random unknown factor causes more pain.
Isn’t this much like our spiritual lives? We tend to overestimate our abilities and underestimate our temptations, our challenges, or our enemy. Then, when we lose our footing and fall, we want our broken hearts to heal unrealistically fast.
We chide ourselves for not being more discerning, stronger against temptation, quicker to ask for help, less naive, less needy, or more emotionally stable. We want to “just get over it,” and move on past whatever “it” is.
We know God could heal us instantly, but His healing is rarely a neat, straight line or in an expected timeframe either. Our challenge is to keep our eyes on Jesus and trust fully in his purposeful plan for both the heartache and the healing.
Then, as we approach the next stretch of ground, we’ll strive to heed the advice of those who have gone before us, hold tightly to our Good Shepherd’s hand, and trust His ability to hold us through whatever comes, even if its is another fall.
We also tend to underestimate our Savior’s ability to work all things for His glory and our good. (Romans 8:28) Just before my fall, Maya and I were talking about some heartaches and how our minds still dwell on the past much more often than we would like. God has worked incredible healing in both of us, but those deep wounds still ache.
Strangely, focus on the physical pain of my fall actually helped take my mind off my mental and emotional pain of the past. Like the lingering pain in my body, the heartache still surfaces, but the frequency and intensity is less and less. God used my physical pain to continue healing my heart!
Remember, dear child of God, His strength is perfect in our weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9) Let’s not overestimate our abilities or underestimate His.
