as the heel heals

It’s funny how injuries live on long after they’re gone, like ghosts.

They even change how we move, but then, inevitably, we bump against them and curse! ourselves for forgetting, smarting over the suggestion of a bruise arising again, as dark as a brooding storm.

Everyone knows that once you’ve bitten your tongue, it’s hard not to bite it again.

After months of plantar fasciitis pain, my afflicted heel crying out a warning every time I got up from sitting or lying and burdened my foot, on my physical therapist’s advice, I finally went to see a doctor.

By then, I had attached every ache or pain I felt somehow to this one, in much the way Riley has awkwardly associated her anxiety with sweet potatoes and attributed to long sleeves the strange and quirky responses of her nervous system under stress. We have this way of creating stories for ourselves, like meandering cracks, splintering the surfaces of everything.

I told the doctor, “I’ve noticed that whenever I stretch, my legs just feel extremely tight all down the back.”

I gestured to my calves and then, contorting my body just a little, alluded to a pre-run stretch Kevin and I do that looks a bit like shooing chickens away, which is in fact what the trainer on the video always says, sweeping his arms out in front of him as he leans over each leg, his accent cool and bright.

The doctor smiled and tossed his hand casually into the air, said, “Ah, you’re just muscular,” and went on assessing my stance as I stood, icy toes pressed against the slick, glossy floor.

I eyed him skeptically, imagining the interconnected fascial chains in my body inflamed an angry red.

In the end, having confirmed plantar fasciitis as the cause of the biting pain in my heel, the doctor pressed his thumbs into the most tender spot, sprayed it with an icy numbing spray, and gave me a shot before sending me on my way.  After an ultra-achy evening, I woke up without pain, at least not in my heel, feeling overjoyed by the relief.

But I had spent months favoring that foot, limping around the house afraid to put any weight on it.  I had learned not only to anticipate the pain but to adjust my behavior protectively. It’s a difficult thing to shed learned responses. Ask anyone who has experienced trauma and associated it (even subconsciously) with a specific place or sounds or smells how hard it is to convince the body that it’s okay when similar sensory experiences stimulate an anxiety response. Ask someone who has lost a limb how long it takes to be rid of the phantom and its aches and pains.  Injuries don’t just scar our bodies, they scar our hearts and minds, and is it any wonder then that in the adulthood of the anxious generation the word trigger has taken on a new life?

There are now trigger warnings liberally added to entertainment reviews and lists of potential triggers as long as my arm and memes everywhere about feeling triggered, all recognizing responses all along the severity scale, some of which even come as a surprise because we can’t untie the knots enough to remember exactly what has connected a stimulus to our lived experience.  All this is good, as it helps us practice compassion and awareness for one another.

And I have also become more aware of my own behavior, wondering lately about the self-protection I manage well below the surface of my consciousness, the responses I have that sometimes cut into innocent people, causing them the very pain I wish to avoid.  I’ve been asking God to let my reliance on Him chase away the ghosts as my knowledge of His perfect love casts out fear, recognizing in a fresh way how much I need the perspective of the searcher of human hearts to understand even these baffling things about myself. God knows me better, which means that He also knows other people way better than I ever could.

This morning when I get up, it isn’t until Kevin tilts his head, watching me tentatively limp my way around the bed, not until he says, “still limping,” the question hanging in his voice, turning the syllables up at the end, that I realize I’m still moving like my heel hurts even though it doesn’t. I’m still protecting against pain that’s gone, and if that’s so, I must also be protecting against other pains that have yet to heal.

Take the lie I learned as a child, that I am tolerated more than I am liked, and how I sometimes still believe that the people who love me find me annoying and burdensome, because I remember what it felt like once to discover this and feel rejected.

I pause in the doorway, assessing just a beat before deciding to press my foot flat against the floor and try walking the way I used to, and even though I know I’m okay, it feels a little uncomfortable to trust. Somewhere deep down, I still think that if I make a wrong move, something will break and all that relief will be lost.

“You know, it’s funny how you learn behavior when you’re hurting that you have to then intentionally work to unlearn as you heal,” I say to Kevin, thinking how unfortunate it is that sometimes we never do. Sometimes, it just feels easier to let the ghosts haunt us into a smaller life.

I have tried a few times over the years to convince Riley that it wasn’t actually sweet potatoes that awakened her gagging anxiety that Thanksgiving so many years ago, but even though she’s willing to agree, she’d just rather not risk it.  To this day, she still lists sweet potatoes in any form on lists of things she can’t and won’t eat, which makes me smile, because I know that except for her own mistrust of them, she’d be okay if she indulged. People with autism aren’t different in these things, they’re often just more openly vocal about them, about the rules they’ve built to protect themselves, even when it comes down to something small, like what they’ll eat.

It’s a small thing for Riley to give up sweet potatoes forever, and a small thing for me to have to remember my plantar fasciitis pain is gone (at least for now—see how I just had to say that?) so I no longer need to walk around with a limp or hesitate about getting up. But small examples shouldn’t minimize larger challenges. God routinely uses small revelations, low for a little child like me, to invite me to venture closer for greater healing and higher-than-I-can-imagine freedom.

So here I am, and hearing, I am, once again, learning to trust that He’s making all things new.