Excuses, Excuses!

Let me tell you, I am one hot mama. Literally. The heating pad is under my back and I am burning up. But the heat feels so good that I don't care if I'm burning hot. Sometimes to get through the pain you have to go through some hot times, you know?

I think I know how this back of mine got out of whack. A week and a half ago I was down in Kentucky with my son, visiting a college. It was bitterly cold. We walked all over the place, from dorm to cafeteria to admissions hall and back to the B&B I was staying at down the road. I walked everywhere for two and half days straight. I had on new shoes- nothing fancy like spiked heels. Just a pair of rubber soled wedged clogs. They were comfortable- but they did have about an inch and a half of a rise in the heel. Normally I run around in these wool flat slip ons with rubber soles, but a woman has to dress up once in a while, you know? So I did.

But when you're on heels, you lean forward, walk putting pressure on your pelvic area, and use different leg muscles. Add in to that the fact that I was constantly cold and tightening all my muscles in reaction to the bitter cold. I returned home without seeing any effect from this, and I think I'm hunky dory. (Wherever did that term come from?!)

Then this past Saturday as I spent the whole day running around, at the mall with my daughter, walking on cement floors, my bodily suddenly protested. My back said this feels different, and wham! the muscles seize up and the lower back goes out. Now this is just my take on what I think happened. I mean, I know my body and I should know what is too much for it,or what causes it to break down.

I know that if I go too many nights without sleep that I can get hysterical. I remember with baby #2 (our Abby) that I went so many months (nine, ten, eleven?) without a full night's sleep that I started to get desperate and hysterical.

"I'll never sleep through the night again the rest of my life," I sobbed to my husband. Mr. Stick-to-the-Facts Himself thought I was being ridiculous and that of course the baby would eventually sleep through the night and therefore so would I. But to me, it felt like my body would never get that reprieve ever again.

I have to admit that I got a bit dramatic yesterday with Bill and was starting to get fearful about this body of mine not being able to take a simple thing like two and a half days of walking around without having my back fall apart.

"If I can't take that now, it's only going to get worse as I get older," I said to my husband, sighing.

"You have to exercise and take better care of your body. You're small, but you don't have much muscle tone. You need to work out with weights more," he said.

"But you were going to be my trainer," I retorted in protest, remembering that he did offer to help me work out with weights. "It's up to you to get me downstairs, to the weight machine, and motivate me to workout, tell me I'm doing it right, and cheer me on and..."

"And anything else you'd like?" he asked me, staring at me with those blue eyes that know me so well, that see through all my excuses.

"No," I said smiling, "Nothing else. That'll do."


"In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength..." Isaiah 30:15


So who's with me? Do I have any strength training buddies out there ready to pump some iron, ready to trust God for more strength, ....ready to learn to be quiet when you don't have a good enough excuse?!!