I’m lifting a 60-pound
garage bag of scrape metal when suddenly my lower back gives out. Ouch! Lord, I
have no time to stop now and repair this “creak.” However, as I work to complete
another run to the scrap metal dump I realize that I am now “bent out of shape.” I am
leaning over like an 80 year-old walking gingerly to keep the pain at bay.
God
why do we have to suffer pain? Why this accident? Why can’t we just walk around
and do our business without fear that some toxin, some genetic disease is
lurking around our DNA to slow us down?
God
gave us the brains to use common sense, so quit complaining and seek some help.
So I turn to a friend who recommends a chiropractor he sees once a year. Now
this is not the first time that I have had this ding. Once during Holy Week, I
am preparing for Holy Thursday services getting ready to lay prostate on the
floor. However, before the service I was exercising on the rectory living room floor so that I could complete
this service. Little did the parishioners know that father was “bent out of
shape” and in alot of pain.
Now I
find myself in a strange doctor office with a pain that won’t go away. I tried
the novena medication prayer, but its not working. Dr. Mike greets me and
invites a young doctor to observe his technique. This healer is a gem. Standing
on a platform, my chin in place, the table moves face down like in the movie
the “Pit and the Pendulum.” It's painful but we slowly make our way all the way
down. A pinch here and a tuck their and our specialist diagnoses what the old
time farmers use to call a “slip disc.”
How
many times have we walked into the doctor’s office not so much worried about
the procedure, but the pronouncement that some terrible disease that we can’t
pronounce is lurking in our bones. How many patients do I see each week with
their “creaks and rattles” that need adjustment. Which at the moment our chiropractor
is performing his miracle dance. Tucking my arm in and straightening my leg in
the opposaite direction, he bears down with his weight and waits for a “click.”
Note, I said “click” not CRACK!
Sometimes,
we need an adjustment when it comes to our attutde in life. There are many
times, we are faced down on the table fearful of another medical problem. God
is present in the hands of someone He has blessed to make the proper
adjustments and help us get back top normal.
I like
what Dr. Mike said to me after the treatment. "We will have you back to normal
in a week." Better yet, when we next met for another adjustment we talked about
the new doctors coming into his profession. The most important piece of advice this
healer gave his student was treat your patients like family. Like they were your
cousins coming in for help.
That’s
how God wants us to think when we have fallen down with a ding or our lives are
bent out of shape. We must never give up hope, despite the silence. God comes
to us in ways we least expect and always hears our prayers for help to heal our
pain. God gives us the courage to persevere when the diagnose makes our life
miserable or worse never goes away.
God is walking with us this
morning when we pray: “…the people all tried to touch him, because power was
coming from him and healing them all.” (Luke 9:9).
Lord, I pray for all my Sonshine
Friends that despite all our "creaks and rattles" we are given the courage to
persevere and grateful for the healers who adjust our health
and give us hope.
