Now, If I Could Just Make Peace With My Body . . .

I'm always fascinated with the abilities of the human body. I grew up loving to watch gymnastics, figure skating, ballet, and old musicals. I loved how graceful these athletes were, they moved so beautifully! What's it like to fly through the air or spin or move like that? I want to do that! When we lived in Albuquerque, my mother looked into getting me involved in some kind of activity. We discovered I wouldn't be able to take ballet because I had flat feet. I had to get fitted for corrective orthotics, which I still wear. Ice skating would have been my next option, but we ended up moving to southern New Mexico, where no ice rink would prosper. I dabbled briefly in soccer, but I wasn't very tough and kept having the wind knocked out of me. I complained enough that my parents didn't make me stick with it. I wish they had or found some other sport for me to get involved in, something that would put me into a habit of challenging and strengthening my body. I've grown up with a greater tendency to not push myself when something is a physical struggle for me. I get tired of having to work so hard and not acheive results as fast as those around me. I know every body is different. I know everyone has hang-ups about their body, particularly women. I've seldom,though, come across anyone who has the hang-ups with her body that I have with mine.

I'm incredibly UNgraceful, I fall down a lot and tend to injure quite easily; although, I'm getting better about that. Of course, I try to avoid activities that would increase my likelihood of losing against gravity and sustaining injuries. It's hard to avoid walking completely, though. I mean, I have to walk from my bed to my bathroom and from my car into the school building, right? It's been one of my life's great conundrums. I'm just pliable. Always have been. There's something about my joints and ligaments. They can hyperextend or twist quite a bit before something tears and tearing almost never occurs. My brother often refers to my hands as "putty". I've had one broken arm and two toes my whole life, which is interesting considering all the falls I've taken. It took blunt force trauma to crack those puppies. Everything else has been scrapes, swelling, and painful humiliation because my crashes generally occurred in public venues. If you've ever seen those doll-toys where the doll is constructed from large beads connected by an elastic string--you know, the kind where you can pull on the leg until the string shows and let go and it snaps back with a 'clack!'--well, that's what it's like living in my body. I went swimming once and was kicking around in the water and my bones in my leg separated at my knee. I actually felt my leg below the knee stretch away from my knee and snap back. Another time, I was doing a climbing wall and I was trying to push up on the first foot hold and my upper leg slipped away from my knee towards the wall while my knee and shin pulled away. I howled in pain, "My knee! My knee!" (Amanda always loves that story and to re-enact my screams of misery, even though she didn't actually witness it.) It slid back in place but it was painful.

And let me just tell you, it's scary to feel the parts of your body that are supposed to stay connected attempt to make a break for it. I had another experience with that today. I was playing baseball with my students, which doesn't require a lot of exertion given that most of them have little to no coordination or athletic ability. I was jogging the bases and one of my assistants decides to grab me and hold me so that the boy who has the ball can tag me. In my efforts to evade her grasp my knees AND ankles completely gave way . . . my feet were going one direction, my shins another, and my quads another. I was certain I was going in for a crash landing, but somehow managed to stay upright. Given the bellows of laughter from both my assistants, I'm sure it was hilarious to watch--like maybe watching the Scarecrow off The Wizard of Oz. My knees and hip were sore afterwards, along with my dignity. Can I not even change direction without my whole body getting confused about what it needs to do?

The truth is my body is an enormous source of frustration for me. I have no natural strength. I have to work really hard to build it up and even then, I'm still not as strong as an average woman of my size. I worked out for months to have the strength and stamina for that climbing wall, only to be thwarted by my ligaments. I am whining here, but don't misunderstand me. I can laugh at my mishaps, I do it often. However, at times I'd just as soon not have mishaps. I've frequently asked God why. Why did He make me this way? If I'm so "fearfully and wonderfully made", why is my physicality such a challenge? Why do I have to work so hard just to be average in this area of my life? "Haven't You given me enough?" I'm working on my attitude. I'm working on accepting myself and all my flaws and seeing what God sees through the blood of Jesus in spite of them. Why is it so hard to see ourselves the way He does, anyway? I'm being rhetorical here, mostly. I know that exercise and nutrition is the only way I'm going to even come close to having the type of functioning body that I want, so, along with working on acceptance, I'm working up my courage to try again . . . just one more time. It would be nice, though, to know what it's like to have a body that can do anything easily and fearlessly, for a change. I suppose I'll have to settle for running down the moving sidewalks at airports in order to acheive some sense of how it feels to run like the wind. At least if I fall down on one of those, I've not come to a complete hault. In the meantime, I will take advantage of having the ability to walk and be thankful that I can.