I threw out my back last week. I want to tell you a little bit about it not so much to gain sympathy as to make a point. Here goes:
I was moving boxes and unpacking things when I felt the pain and anguish that I knew was my lower back going into spasm. I hit the floor and could not get up. Literally. I lay on the floor for about an hour before I could call for some help (I had to crawl about 12 feet to get to my phone). The help was simply to get me some pillows and the TV remote because I knew that getting up was not possible. Joanie called and I let her know what had happened. She is teaching at a school about an hour commute from here. So, I was stuck just laying on the floor. I stayed there until Sunday afternoon. After getting several treatments from a chiropractor who made house calls (how about that one!), I was able to get up and at least walk around. Now it is Tuesday and I am still hobbling, though I did manage to make it to her office for an adjustment. I am still sleeping on the floor and getting help from neighbors and others who are sympathetic to my situation. Eventually, I am sure I will be able to get back to normal but it will take some time. Joanie has been going to work every day so I have to fend for myself as best I can and get around as best as possible. So, here is my point:
Everyone should have to experience throwing out his or her back. I hope you will have such an experience – and that you will experience it very soon. No, I am not a sadist that desires for you to “fell my pain” or one who seeks revenge through another’s suffering. But I do believe that everyone should experience what I have gone through over these few days. Why? Well, I remember watching an episode of M.A.S.H where Hawkeye is blinded by an explosion. The temporary situation gave Hawkeye an incredible series of experiences that he would never have known had he not been blind. By the end of the episode, his sight returns and he is a changed man by virtue of what he has come to know. It is in that sense that I wish you a lower lumbar failure in your future.
We are so self-reliant as a race. In past years, being an agrarian culture, people knew what it was like to be dependant rather than independent. This fostered a real sense of community, comradely, and interdependence. Lying on the floor for days meant I could do nothing to really help myself. I could not get up for anything. Anything! What a wife I have! I have come to realize the importance of interdependence in our society. For the first time in my adult life, I am not pastoring a church. I am living in an apartment complex with other students and their families. I know almost no one and nothing about the Pasadena area. And yet, I have been able to get around, find out what is necessary, where to go, and received untold amounts of help from my new neighbors. One of them saw me today attempting to go out to the van to go to the chiropractor’s office and she ended up not only helping into the van but driving her car to the chiropractors office and helping me get out of the van and into the office (my chiropractor has to be the only chiropractor in the universe who’s office is on the second floor with no elevator! I am learning anew what Hawkeye learned on M.A.S.H. – that we our never self-reliant creatures but we are always in need of others and dependant upon the help of strangers.
In that sense I have come to understand the parable Jesus tells about the Good Samaritan. I understand the story now from the vantage point of the man who was beaten, helpless and left for dead. Without the help of others he was totally helpless. Unable to move from where he had been left to die; unable to pay for assistance since he had been robbed (I am currently without insurance until it kicks in from Joanie’s job); unable to call for help from those he knows since he is traveling and in a strange place apart from his family and circle of friends. I also understand the depth of gratitude he must feel toward the Samaritan man who helped him. When your are helpless and cannot get up, you are grateful for anyone and everyone who will lend you even the slightest care let alone pick you up and pay for your medical needs and recovery process.
So, I wish you one lower back strain. Not the pain but the pleasure. I wish you the joy of becoming interdependent and realizing what a great gift there is in leaning on others. I wish you a few days on the floor, not to get out of your job or school, but to give you some time to reflect on the goodness of God as he works through the concern and caring of others. And finally, I wish you that feeling of helplessness that you knew as a child that caused you to be dependant on your parents and that you will realize that God desires you to feel those same feelings toward Him – being dependant is what God calls “faith” in the Bible. And, we all need to have faith.
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