pain

I have had several stress fractures in my foot.

The first time it happened was shortly after my mom died.

One way that I deal with stress is to exercise, and when I’m really stressed I exercise more and more.
After my mom died, I did a lot of vigorous exercise, and in doing that I ended up getting a stress fracture in my foot.

I knew something was wrong. Every time I put any pressure on it,  it hurt.
But I ignored the pain.

Everywhere I would walk, I was limping.
People would stop me and ask me what was wrong over and over again, and I would simply say, “I’m fine.”

I wasn’t fine.

It was very clear to everyone I was not fine. My foot was killing me.

And it kept getting worse.

And you know what the vain part of me was stubborn about?
Wearing a medical boot
I didn’t want to wear the boot. It would limit what I could do, it would make me walk funny, and everyone would still be stopping to ask me what was wrong with my foot…
Dumb, I know.

I guess I have always ignored pain in some way or another.
~Not just talking about my foot here~
To me, pain has always seemed like a negative.
It could only be bad and harmful.
Since pain is bad, I should not be feeling pain.
Right?

And then someone once told me pain is an indicator that something is wrong.

Simple concept. But I had never thought of it that way before.

Pain simply lets us know some part of us needs to be healed.

I feel that if it is this way with a lot of aspects on our in our life.
Not just the physical.
And once we  acknowledge that the pain exist, we can begin to heal.  Once we see the broken mess that is there, we can run to the Healer of our souls, and He can make us whole again.

Sometimes getting to the point we are willing to admit we are broken is a hard process.
It wasn’t until I stop and decided it was time to wear that stupid medical boot and let my foot recover that I was truly able to heal.
(That was not until after, in my extreme stubbornness, I walked all over Las Vegas on that broken foot. But that’s a story for another day…)