Here & Now

Ugh. I stared at the weight rack in disgust. I tried lifting twenty pounds. I nearly burst into tears right there in the fitness center when the pain in my biceps screamed its way to my brain. I lowered the peg to ten pounds and waited for pain to subside and courage to rise. What if ten pounds was too much? What then?

I’m used to starting over. I have had Crohn’s disease for thirteen years now and I’ve had my share of flares which leave me weak and frail. Each time I head back to the Y, the gym, the fitness center. Each time I grimace as I lower the weights from where I had left off. Starting over.

I’m fairly certain most in this fitness center understand, because this time I am in an active older adult community. By this time in life, most have started over at least once. To my right is a man who comes in a wheelchair and his friends help him relearn to use his limbs. Across the aisle is a woman in a foot brace using her good leg to lift weights, practicing a new way. On the treadmill is a woman barely moving the tread, starting the slow walk back from cancer.

I wonder if they all see the mental tightrope I’m balancing, swaying between despair and hope, mourning and gratitude. Or maybe the entire fitness center is a web of tightropes binding us together:
Thank God, I’m out of bed, out of the house, lifting weights!  Dang, I have to start over at ten pounds.
Look at me; I’m working out! Don’t look at the ten pound peg, please.

Gratitude, visualization, positive attitude. I hear they help almost miraculously with healing body and soul. Yet, I can’t help but stop a moment and mourn the forty pounds I used to lift. I want everyone to know what – who? – I used to be. That pain screams too.

Watching, I am fueled by the web of community, pulled to celebrate who I am, what I can do right now, through the grace of God. The mind dominates, the ego puffs, the soul yearns. Gently, strangers, saints, and God call me back to the privilege of beginning again.

I overhear an encouraging friend, “Alright, Ed. Let’s do it one more time!” Saint Benedict chimes in my brain, “Always we begin again.” I recall the author of a Hebrew letter: “God again set a certain day, calling it Today.” (Hebrews 4:7)

I grab the weights and lift. I sweat; my arms quiver; I grunt through an exhale.

I lift ten pounds.

I thank God.
And I begin again.