“Whole Health”

Okay, these hospitalizations are sometimes good for me; not only to “restore” my breathing, but also to prove to me several things:

1) I don’t want to get old
2) I already am well on my way to being there
3) I want to go home and suck the juice out of what life remains—
4) And will do so, granted that conventional medicine hasn’t already taken too big of a bite out of my health to be able to do it.

Shaky hands, tremulous body, unsteady knees….and being challenged by an OT therapist to pick up a paper towel with one hand and crumple it up into a ball…and finding that task next to impossible to complete in under ten minutes…all of these things are for the birds. “And when I look into my near future and know that there lie in the wings for me, at least three major surgeries...(leering like the thieves I know they are--despite others having called their hip replacement surgeries a “second lease on life”)….I REALLY would rather NOT, thanks.”

And now I go back home to the question of how to live?? Where does “healthy eating” turn into disorder? How extremely and expensively must I live to do what is best for my body? How many cleanses, meatless meals, herbal brews, and yoga workouts must I endure before I will see any significant results?

I know that, as a Christian, I can’t “kick against the goads” and forestall the grinning specter of Death based on human effort, or striving… I know that God will either grant me the health to do His work, or He will grant me the work that suits my health….And the “Work” He gives is not a number of laps on a treadmill…it is a stretching and expansion of my soul…(and it really SHOULD accompany a shrinkage of my waistline at the same time…if I can just get these legs to get me up and out a LITTLE bit more…and if He should enable me to stay off of the steroids for any significant amount of time so that my weight can ever stop catching up to itself as it runs circles around me.)

But even if my waistline refuses to be mitigated; my soul needn’t be. Thanks be to the Lord Jesus Christ that our “whole health” is not something to be purchased, worked for, or even earned….It is a gift…and my soul can be entirely invigorated and healthy, even if it should find my body on a respirator. And meanwhile my soul can dance and sing “There ain’t no Grave that’s gonna hold this body down….” And Jesus may well be the only audience to my song and dance, but that’s okay; He’s lovin’ it!