I missed my massage therapy appointment last weekend due to weather and scheduling conflicts. And I paid for it.
By early Tuesday night, I was lying motionless in bed with my eyes closed, suffering from the effects of a pinched nerve in my neck and in both elbows. Adjusting my position didn’t help, so I stopped trying.
Moments like that make my limits hard to ignore.
Later that night, I got up and went in to check on my 89-year-old mom. She had lost her TV remote control, and I had to get down on all fours to check under her bed. I felt every bit of that. I eventually found it wrapped in her covers, of course.
A few days earlier, I had a conversation with a friend, and it got real. I told her that I’ll turn sixty this year. It sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but I told her I’ll be seventy in ten years. I was trying to tell her that I don’t want to wait to do important things. Our limitations generally don’t decrease as we get older.
At the time, these felt like distant observations. Lying there on Tuesday night, they didn’t feel distant at all.
Pain has a way of shrinking your world. You stop thinking about next year, or even next week. You think about whether turning your head an inch in one direction or another will make the pain better or worse.
Even time feels different when you are in pain. You measure in small increments, like how long to stay in one position. Sometimes movement helps, and other times it doesn’t.
Getting older isn’t something that waits for us. It creeps up in ways we don’t always notice, like in the way we fail to bounce back as quickly as we used to, the care we can’t afford to skip and the quiet reminders that our bodies won’t let us ignore. We move through life without noticing what’s right in front of us, until something forces us to slow down.
Limitations aren’t just problems to solve. Sometimes, they are invitations to pay attention. The reality is, we are not in control. For the Christian, that’s not a bad place to be. We have limits, and often, that’s where God meets us.
On Tuesday night, God met me in the gentle prayer my wife uttered over me. And somehow, it transformed the moment. My pain didn’t go away, but it reminded me of God’s loving presence, even in the midst of pain.
P. S. I was able to see my massage therapist on Thursday, thankfully, so I’m feeling much better.
