It’s been 13 years since I experienced three significant physical ailments. I was a teenager, having moved out of my parents’ house and into my first apartment. I lived in rebellion against authority. The first three months away from my home, I contracted mono, chipped a bone in my ankle, and experienced intense pain in both knees when jumping.
Of course, at the time I didn’t make the connection. It was just one thing after another, and the events meant nothing to me other than an inconvenience. Within the following year, I was told by a chiropractor that my back stabilizer muscles weren’t receiving a strong electrical signal from my brain and thus all the muscles in my back were very weak and underdeveloped.
How did I never know that each physical ailment was a sign of my internal emotional and spiritual disfigurement? But I could not see.
Several years later, I was driving a bus full of kids to the daycare center. I felt the strain of weak back muscles as I sat in the driver’s seat, and wondered when I would ever have the determination and strength of will to exercise faithfully and strengthen my back muscles.
I am 30 years old, and finally taking my first serious strides to strengthen my back. I’m not claiming total victory over that issue just yet. That would be foolish. I’ve made that mistake too many times – talking about something I’ve just begun as though it were finished. But I have begun.
The exercises are simple. I’m sitting on an exercise ball while watching television and bouncing lightly for 15 minutes. Sounds ridiculously easy, right? It IS simple, but not easy. My back is obviously VERY weak.
I could ramble on forever. The point is that I have many physical problems I want resolved. And rather than assume that these are just a sign of my body degenerating as I age, I believe that they are the results of choices and lifestyles and are a sign of my internal condition. I believe that God will restore most, if not all, of my physical ailments over time. I believe he will do that because he will honor the alignment of my entire being with his will.
I am strengthening my back for the first time in my life. It is a sign that I am slowly learning how to sit and stand firm. It is a sign that God isn’t through with me yet. The restoration of my back will be a sign of my life’s restoration. Things are coming into alignment.