My body had been in pain for the better part of a month.
Every morning and evening as I was walking, I had to slow down because I was having an ache that extended from my hip to my foot. I couldn’t explain it. At first, I thought it was my shoes and that I didn’t have enough support. So, I wore different shoes, and even sneakers. But the pain was still there. Every day on my walk (I walk a total of about 3 mikes each day), I had this pain, but it would go away when I wasn’t walking.
I started to think back as to what was different.
I was still walking as I had done for many years. Check.
My bag wasn’t too heavy. Check.
I was wearing proper support on my feet. Check.
I had stopped exercising consistently about 2 months before. Hmmm. But I walk every day I rationalized. So that couldn’t be it, right?
At the same time, I needed to do some health modules related to work, and one of the first ones that showed up were causes of back pain. YES. That’s what I would do first. At the same time, I also realized that my body was tired from lack of use, or the use that it had gotten to over the previous 2 1/2 years, so I started with some light stretching. Woah.. would you believe that lack of exercise can cause your back to hurt that can extend to your legs and feet?
You see, my body had gotten weak from lack of exercise. It also doesn’t help that in that time, I had gained weight, so I was feeling the effects of multiple issues, that I didn’t even know were possible.
Then it dawned on me that that’s similar to what happens when we become spiritually weak. We may do our routine of spending time with God for an extended amount of time, then one day, we spend less because it’s too cold and we don’t want to wake up a bit earlier (as it was my case with exercising). Then before we know it, months have passed. We feel the difference, and we know that something is wrong, but we can’t quite pin point what the source of our feeling is. We may search for many things to try to ease our pains and to attempt to satisfy us, but the only true satisfaction will come from our relationship with God.
Dear Heavenly Father, please remind us that everything you’ve given us needs to be taken care of: our bodies, our relationship with you. Help us to pay attention to when we are no longer doing the positive things that we used to do that strengthened our relationship with you and help us to quickly start working to get back to where we were. We know that you are always there, so if we’ve drifted, help us to come back to the source of our strength, you.