I am a whiner/complainer, by nature.
You know exactly where I stand...until I couldn't actually stand.
Over the course of the last several months, mornings have become a new definition in pain as my body would buckle the minute my feet hit the floor.
Plantar fasciitis strikes life-long athletes and the chronically obese.
I knew all those marathons would eventually catch up with me.
I pray daily. For my mom. Brad's safety in travel. My daughters and their partners. My friends...students...colleagues. I pray in gratitude and in supplication. I apologize incessantly. I pray for Amber Alerts...lost dogs...wisdom and discernment for our world-wide leaders.
Rarely do I pray for myself.
It feels selfish somehow. This pain might be an opportunity to grow as a person...to develop character traits such as perseverance and drive...to encourage empathy for the discomfort of others...to offer me perspective.
But...c'mon. Ouch.
So I prayed.
And promptly broke my middle toe. The f-me toe.
Are you kidding me?
I was wearing my cute, designed-to-alleviate-the-discomfort-that-accompanies-plantar-fasciitis open-toed sandals (Thank you, Traci!) when I tripped over my mobile Smartboard. Stifling the string of profanity that would normally accompany such an event, I glanced down to see the pool of blood christening my new shoe. My 4th graders were returning from a special so I hurriedly wrapped my toes in a tissue and hobbled on with my day.
It wasn't until I got home that I realized that I'd done more damage than I'd imagined.
First, I had to wrestle my fat foot out of its now too-tight sandal.
Once I cleaned the blood off, I could see that my middle toe was swollen to the size of my big toe, the captain. Oh brother. Plantar fasciitis to the right. Broken toe to the left. I glanced up. "Sorry I said anything," I muttered as, like Ol' Mother Hubbard, I hobbled off in search of some medical tape except my medicine cabinet was bare. I finally tracked down the Jesus band-aids that we had left over from youth group. "Jesus saves," I winced as I began the process of taping my injured toe to the lieutenant. One band-aid was not enough. Nor two. Nope...I needed the trinity.
It hurt.
A lot.
So, yeah...I prayed again.
Brad declared that we would spend Sunday afternoon planting our blueberry bushes.
Which meant that we would first harvest badminton shuttlecocks from the field and raspberry patch. Fill up the bird feeders. And address the retaining wall issues that keep us (him) up at night. My husband pried a crowbar between two waist-high cement blocks and then asked if I could hold it steady while he struck the ends with a sledge hammer. Why...this sounds delightful! This doesn't feel like a triggering point for an epic argument at all. Using my puny T-Rex arms, I grasped the crowbar and immediately felt the reverberation of the sledge hammer. Scared, I adjusted my stance and decided to put my body weight to good use, bending my torso over the top of the bar and bearing down. As Brad did his best John Henry, I hung over the crowbar like a damp washcloth.
Until...I suddenly felt a flare of pain. The crowbar slipped between my ribs, punctuated by another rail strike from Mr. Man versus the machine. I gasped. Then gasped again when the gasp caused pain. Oh no. What did I do? I remained immobile as Brad completed his task. As the girl who cried wolf (a lot), I was reluctant to tell my husband as I've used hangnails and canker sores to excuse myself from manual labor in the past.
I questioned myself.
Maybe I was being dramatic. (Ya think?)
Retaining wall in place...we made it to the berries (Finally).
We (he) also decided to unpack the storage shed to extricate the fire pit table. AND lift the push mower from where it was perched on top of the riding lawn mower. My elbows were sweating and I couldn't breathe. "Brad," I hissed, as I stumbled after him down a small hill as we carried our fire pit table to its destination...my toe was throbbing, my plantar fasciitis ached, and I was going to pass out from lack of oxygen to my lungs. "Brad, I think I did a thing."
My little ordeals have done wonders to spark empathy in my classroom. Explaining my situation, my students began picking pencils up off the floor themselves after witnessing me near-tears when I would attempt to stoop down. Hugs were rendered gently, gingerly. I was helped out of chairs. Impending sneezes resulted in 18 hands lifted, Come-to-Jesus-style, as they mentally tried to help me ward off the threatening, rib-splitting spasm.
As we debated the timeless question of why, one of my honeys offered sage but brutal insight: It can always get worse. If I had to choose among (a) plantar fasciitis, (b) plantar fasciitis and a broken toe, and (c) plantar fasciitis, a broken toe, and separated ribs, I choose option A.
I don't believe that I was re-enacting a modern version of Job although I suspect that God might have been playing with me, just a bit, these last few weeks. Suck it up, girlfriend, and look around you. Your problems are minuscule compared to countless others. This was not a cosmic wrestling match between God and the devil for my soul. I'm solidly a Team Jesus type of girl. Plus, I don't play the violin.
Or, I might just be marginally over my ideal weight, clumsy, and too stupid to use a crow bar correctly.
I prefer to think that it was a spiritual lesson designed to help me grow as a person and gain some much-needed perspective.
"In gaining all this perspective," my friend, Rachel asked, "Did it ever occur to you to maybe go to the doctor?"
"For a broken toe?" I smiled, "I can heel at home just fine."
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