Skip to main content

Healing

Today marks the one-week anniversary of my trail tumble during which I torn my my shoulder and the peroneal longus tendon/muscle and put me out of commission. Taking away running and swimming is a painful thing, especially when these two things account for the biggest chunk of my time aside from sleeping and working. Other than feeling like a depleted balloon for the next two days after the fall, I wondered if God was trying to get my attention and teach me something. Like a loving parent, sometimes He does withhold something we care deeply for our sake. Maybe I've (once again) put too much emphasis of my life in physical training rather than spiritual?

As I pray for my own healing, I thought about Jesus' miracles in the New Testament. My favorite healing story is found in Luke 5. Jesus was preaching in a fully packed house while a group of friends tried to deliver their paralytic friend to Jesus. "Finding no way to bring him in, because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down with his bed through the tiles..." That's probably not something one would do unless s/he is absolutely certain that it is going to work and Jesus really has to power to heal. When Jesus saw their faith, He said to him, "Man, your sins are forgiven you" (Luke 5:19). Sin? Puzzling, right? Jesus unpacked it by explaining so "...you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" (Luke 5:24). The man rose up immediately, picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God.
Whether my mishap is directly related to my personal sins, I think there's always a lesson to be learned since God is sovereign in all things. The time-out I had from not being able to run in the last couple days gave me room to evaluate and re-align my life. Borrowing from Jeremy Lin who quoted from John Piper's book Don't Waste Your Life, what I need to strive for is to "display His supreme excellence in all the spheres of life," and be careful not to replace the Creator with creation (running, swimming, work, or what have you).

Earlier today, I was back at the pool and were able to do some freestyle (though not entirely pain free). It was nice to feel my arm pulling through the water once again and with full appreciation that it is no small miracle.

"Pick up your bed and sin no more."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WV Trilogy - Part 2

(If you haven't read Part 1, it's here .) (Sat) Oct 13 -  Sunrise at Spruce Knob 6 a.m. start in the dark. My legs surprised me by being happier than yesterday. My heart is in better place as well. The first 6.7 mile goes up to Spruce Knob, the highest point in West Virginia. Part of this section was on fire road and I welcomed the faster miles. Steady progress was made in the first 20 miles or so until the long, long descent into Aid Station 3. As I have decided yesterday, I'd start the race, go from aid station to aid station, and re-evaluate my condition at each. I left Aid station 2 feeling good but then the long descent once again put doubts in my mind. Running reduced to little steps on jello-legs. Compression socks helped to contain the injury and pain, but the strength to support the pounding was still lacking. Soon, my knees started to hurt as well. At aid station 3, they told me I had 2:45 to make it to the next aid station before the cut-off. At the pace I...
7 comments
more >>

Blue Ridge Marathon

Bill Rodgers After reading so many people's blog on their experience of America's toughest road marathon, the Blue Ridge Marathon, I'm starting to lose my own chain of thought/memory. Bottom line is I had a lot of fun and surprised myself with a sub-4 finish. My estimate was around five hours, or maybe even 5:30 if condition was tough like last year's monsoon. Here's my account of it: Three and a half hour drive from Charlotte straight to packet pickup at Roanoke's Taubman Museum of Art, a modern and iconic building in contrast with the rest of the historical railroad downtown. It was Friday evening and the streets were lively. People were on the patio and on the street with live music playing. I strolled around a little but not too much since I wanted to save my legs. My hotel was only about a mile away. I contemplated on just walking there from the hotel, but ended up driving half a mile or so to park at the Civic Center. Half a mile could be a haul af...
2 comments
more >>

Leatherwood 50k

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing (James 1:2-4 ESV). Leatherwood HQ (Photo credit: Stephanie Moore) I’ve always known that running requires not only physical fitness, but also mental power. What I did not realize till this weekend was mental power did not just mean “toughing it out” or “sucking it up” during the race, but it also meant changing our attitude before and during a difficult race. Last year while running the Leatherwood 10-miler, I was very glad that I wasn’t running the 50k/mile; but this year, I was going to be that person running the 50k. The weather forecast leading up to the race didn’t look good and it had gotten progressively worse. Knowing the slightest rain would turn the horse trails into mud pits, I was not looking forward to it. Just a...
2 comments
more >>