We all fall down.

I fell this past weekend… 5 steps into my morning run I took my eyes off the path to adjust my new armband/phone thing I got for Christmas, and subsequently missed the uplifted square in the sidewalk.  The same square I look at every time I run; the same one that always prompts me to say “Gotta watch out for that one.”  I caught my toe and down I went.  I managed to stop my fall with my hands , but in doing so I scrapped the palm off one of my gloves and well the palm off my palm.  As I’ve gotten older I’ve been more cautious, less prone to taking chances.  It’s been a while since I’ve had anything like this happen and boy did it hurt.  Those of you who have had the pleasure of injuring your slightly older selves probably know what I’m talking about.  It’s not just the injury itself, it’s the after effects.  The sore muscles from guarding, the wrist from taking the brunt of the impact, the shoulder from twisting funny, the upper back… you get the idea.  It’s not just my hand that hurts, everything hurts.  The fact that the whole body is connected is never more apparent than when one part isn’t working quite right, or is outright broken. 

Scriptures tell us that Paul was no stranger to physical affliction.  I’m sure he had his own sufferings in mind when he wrote his letter to the Corinthians.  “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it”.  This is as true of the physical body as it is of the spiritual body.  We hurt when loved ones hurt.  If our community suffers we suffer along with it.  This reality was made all too real this last December.  As a nation we grieved with the families of Sandy Hook.  Just as there are many approaches to healing a physical injury, we each dealt with the tragedy of Newtown in our own way.  Some good, some admittedly, not so great.  One thing we all must agree with: just as we cannot cut off an injured body part (although we might wish we could) we can’t simply cut each other off just because that part of the body “heals” in a different way.  

I work in a physical therapy office and I see patients everyday with varying levels of injury.  Some may never make it back to where they were before their injury and others can be expected to make a full recovery.  Both groups have at least one thing in common: it’s going to take a lot of hard work from all parts of the body if anything is going to get better.  But for everyone: we want to be stronger to hopefully prevent re-injury, and if possible, maybe a little smarter.  You can bet that square of concrete will not get the best of me a second time.