A POUND OF CURE

I've only really broken a bone once - coming down the stairs in the dark, sleep-drunk at 3:00am, to fill a bottle for my crying baby. I thought I had judged the bottom, but I miscalculated. I put my foot down hard on air before sticking the landing, and felt the snap. Something inside of me broke because I had missed an important step, lost my footing and hit solid ground ever, ever so slightly off balance.

It happens. In life, in general, you can be cracked for no good God reason at all, just the consequence of being half-asleep on the job and not quite knowing where the bottom is. It's a sometimes consequence of growing older, having less tolerant bones, not being quite as nimble on your feet, not quite as bendy, not quite as able to run on empty. When you feel the snap, it is the hot stinging of something beneath the skin not fitting exactly where it should.

Doctors always say the same thing - stay off it. It's a useless thing to tell a person. Life doesn't let you stay off a broken foot, much less a sprained heart, spirit or brain. They might as well say, Thanks for spending the day with us getting x-rayed and all. You've got a lovely skeleton - at least the parts of it I've seen. There's nothing more important than having good bones. You know, there isn't anything we can really do to help you - it's just in one of those funny spots, you know? It will heal eventually. I've got a little support system for you to wear on your foot but, really, it's going to throw your whole body out of alignment if you hobble around with one foot an inch higher than the other for too long. Well, best of luck.

If Doctor's were allowed, I think they might sometimes be tempted to just say, Let me step on it for you.

People only give you a wide berth for the first week after an injury. After that it's Effie, we all got pain. Sitting on the couch one morning, feeding my baby and keeping off it, my husband walked up to kiss me goodbye on his way to work and, forgetting to give me that wide berth, stepped hard on my bare broken foot with his deep-tread steel toed boot. There was a pop, a flash of pain, pretty colours exploding behind my eyes, and then nothing at all.

Healing.

Sometimes we do get a little cracked and broken down, on the inside, in out of reach places. We  know we're injured, we know why, we know it's throwing everything off, sapping our strength, fraying our emotions - but we don't know what to do about it. It's not going to kill us, it's not going to make us any stronger, it's just slowly going to grate away and wear us down until we start to look unneccessarily miserable longer than is considered polite.

We think what we need is an expert, a cast, a splint, a good long rest with our feet up. We think we need intercessory prayer, wise counsel and chocolate. Tender loving care.

But sometimes - sometimes - all we really need is just one good boot stomp right on the sore spot, to pop everything back into place.

When that happens, it is absolutely awesome.