healing
From where I lay, I can see only the rough, flat nap of the businesslike carpet and legs rising up out of tennis shoes I would not have noticed except for the change in perspective. The therapy table has a triangular cutout for my face; they have cushioned it with a sky blue towel. I can feel the glossy-smooth vinyl upholstery against the backs of my hands and an angry throb in my forehead, right at the hairline border. My physical therapist can apply pressure to the joints and muscles in my neck with her fingers and reproduce dozens of sensations that have heretofore gone unexplained.
“How’s that?” She asks, and I lay still, considering.
“Intense, but productive,” I say shortly, closing my eyes to other information, commanding myself to relax. No stranger to productive pain, I know the difference.
Admittedly, after a season of tests and unfruitful regimens, I had been skeptical that physical therapy could make much difference for me. Despite all that I know of the complexity of the human condition—the integral way God created us, the interdependence of systems, the bond between body and soul, I felt incredulous about the idea that tight, overused muscles and inflexible joints could make such a mess of me. I minimized the possibility of referred pain, even knowing that our expressed emotional displays almost always betray hidden wounds.
“Have you fixed your desk setup?” She asks, and I shake my head, moving only slightly beneath her fingers. Days ago, after looking at a picture of me working, she told me to raise my chair and lift my computer, if necessary, so that my elbows make right angles while I type. I had forgotten; I get home and whirl into busyness.
It’s like this; I show up and she asks me to do small, daily things that lead to big changes. By now, I know my understanding falls short; I underestimate. I’m Naaman, deceived by the plain simplicity of every day obedience.
She clicks her tongue, just a small, disapproving sound, but continues her work. “I’m gonna bug you about that,” she says, “because I think that’s contributing. And you can come here a few times a week, and I can coax things into flexibility, but if you still spend hours working with that posture, we’re gonna lose that battle.”
She says this and I smile into that sky blue towel, because I love the way God has made it so that the truth is the truth in every context. Though after several visits I have already begun to improve, it will take a while for my body to heal, and healing will require both the therapist’s help in the clinic and my own intentionality toward change. I can’t keep living every day in exactly the same way and expect better outcomes. I show up and my therapist rights things with her hands, teaches me exercises, tells me what I can do to improve, but if I’m determined to be too busy for the things that will fully heal me, I’ll always wrestle with the same recurring pain. And maybe one day, feeling in my soul what I cannot escape, I’ll even blame her, say she didn’t really help me, when the real truth is that I haven’t followed her instructions.
“Do you truly want to get well?” Jesus once asked this of a man begging for healing (John 5:6), a man stuck just a bead of motivation away from wellness for years. Sometimes we show up, spiritually broken and despairing, asking God to touch us with his healing hands but unmotivated to do what He teaches we must do every day to heal and grow. We hold on to our excuses and wrestle with the same pain for years. We blame God, when the truth is we haven’t really obeyed him. Transformation doesn’t happen in one hour a week.
My therapist lifts her hands and steps back. Feeling this, I sit up, swinging my legs around and over the edge of the table. “You’re right,” I say, squeezing that slick blue vinyl with my fingers, still smiling, considering the truth in what she’s said. “I’ll do it first thing, because…I do really want to get well.” And finally, I’m thinking, I actually believe it’s possible.
