“You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.”
~Psalm 139:5~

In December of 2020 I knew something was wrong. On the first day of the month I started my Orange Theory membership and went in for one their early morning workouts. Not only was I thinking this would be a way to burn off stress and take care of myself during the busy holiday season, I was also thinking this was going to be the time where I finally got into the best shape of my life. The combination of strength training and cardio was just the thing my body needed.

The first day I ran on the treadmill and felt good while I was on it. I did the rowing machine and the strength training also. The girl showed me the three different stations and how whenever you came in your name would be on a board showing which station you’d start and then move to. During the workout you wore a band to track your heartrate. The idea was to stay in the orange. This was the zone where your body would be getting the most out of your workout.

I didn’t like seeing my heartrate that high. I didn’t like seeing my zone in the orange. Everybody’s was up there on multiple screens. The room was dark and the music was loud. I actually liked that part, and loved the intensity and sensory overload. I expected to come out of there drenched in sweat and feeling amazing. I don’t remember what I felt until I was home and sitting in our living room chair. I curled up in the chair and stared at the floor. I didn’t want to move.

That was the only time I could finish the workout. Any other time I went back that month I could not get through the treadmill part, or any of the sections without stopping. I was out of breath within a couple of minutes. And then I couldn’t get my heartrate to go down. I stepped outside where I could walk around in the fresh air, waiting to feel normal enough to go back in. The leader people would check on me and I’d say I was okay. Except something wasn’t right.

I remember being in Joann’s parking lot after another early morning disappointed that I wasn’t getting that feel-good post-workout feeling. None of this activity was anything new. I did kettlebells on my own and had been running for months. Again my heartrate would not come down. I opened the windows hoping cold air would do it. These weren’t panic attacks, but it was the closest thing I’d felt to it in a very long time. Each time I came out from a workout it took longer to recover.

After Christmas there was another event, right on schedule for it’s regular time. Something hadn’t been right then either. Every month, for five or six years, we wrestled in ways that should never have happened. Not once, not twice, but over and over until I couldn’t move. And again the next time and again the next. And then after that last time I thought I was fine again. Except during New Year’s while hosting my family I noticed I had a hard time standing up. I went to bed to lie down.

And I stared at the floor and did not want to move. I had no thoughts, there was nothing I was thinking, I just stayed there in the bed and didn’t move. Mom came in, Dad came in, my sister came in and brought me food. A couple of days later I was still in bed and read a story in the Bible about a woman who’d been oppressed by a spirit for 18 years so that she could not stand up. I suddenly realized what had happened and called my Dad to say I’d accidentally been starving myself.

No wonder I was so weak. For those three days over our New Year’s gathering I’d hardly eaten, and so I thought I’d been starving myself. I tried to eat something to replenish what I’d lost, hoping then I’d feel better. On January 6th I went to the hospital and that’s when I tend to think this all started, a little after the first of the year. But it had really been going on a while before that, the shortness of breath having started before COVID. I was able to keep doing all of the things until I wasn’t.

The kids and I didn’t go to church this morning. I wanted to talk to them about some things. These past several years in my experiences with infirmity, my son leaving the house, my father-in-law most recently passing, these have all been things that have reinforced for me the shortness of our life. Once I no longer had to work for money, I left my job for the sole reason of being able to spend as much time with them as possible. I could always be a nurse. They wouldn’t always be little.

And one of ways I wanted to use that time was for teaching them deeply in the Christian faith. I wanted to pass on the love for God that I had, for them to know the Bible, for the hope of Christ to take root in them so it would stay with them throughout their lives. And I’d seen this already in the way they’d been during our last days with Papa. And that gave me some comfort then, because especially over the last few years, I haven’t been able to be as engaged or involved with them as I once had been.

Not that I was trying to promote my own mothering. If anything by the time your child grows up, you realize then how much you lacked, how much any good was only by God’s gifts. And they all thought it was funny, at least a little ironic, how I was telling them this while we had stayed home from church. Dad had even called to make sure we were up. And we went again for Sunday School because I had to teach, and because they wanted to go to church. I agreed that I would go now too.

Yesterday I spent most of the day in bed. It was one of those where I’m super tired which I know is going to be the way that it is sometimes. It gives me time to assimilate the truths of God and know him more as he knows me. My body is his as is all he holds together. There’s so much in my head that is swirling around. It is helpful to know God is patient with me even as I am not always patient myself. But what I don’t say here I try to live out, if not on any paper, then in the light of the day.