Yesterday I went into Physical Therapy at a later time in the day than I’m used to. I went through all of my exercises and was being assisted and coached by my normal therapist and another person because my therapist had two patients. When it came time to do my strength resistance test, my therapist asked for her co-worker’s help to assist me. This machine buckles me in so that I can not use anything but my lower back and core to do reps of weight resistance to test my muscle strength. Since my car accident, I haven’t been able to exercise like I used to be able to due to pain from muscle tears. Now other muscle groups have compensated for the injury. That being said, my lower back muscles aren’t what they used to be. So I get locked into the machine and I’m brought forward with assistance to 72degrees. Then I can’t move. Seriously I’m stuck! The weight increments are supposed to go up 5lb for every 20reps I get in. Try again….wow! That burns!!!! I made it though and reset at the forward 72 degrees. I lean back again and….. Pop pop pop! My back is not liking this and I’m feeling like my 3day weekend off made my back somehow weak. On the third attempt for a rep and several demonstrative groans, I ask if I really am only 5lb more than last Friday. My therapist chimes in from, “Yes. We are increasing you by 5lb as long as you’re getting 20reps.” I groan again and say how I really think it’s too much and I can’t do it. She comes over and checks the machine. Sure enough, I was programmed on 100 pounds and not 55 like I should have been on!! Well no wonder! I knew I wasn’t crazy.
After the burn and probably muscle irritation of my 4-5 reps on that weight, the 55lb still was a challenge but thankfully not quite so difficult. We all laughed in the moment and I thanked the other assistant for believing in me to double my goals :-)
Then nighttime came….! I definitely was kept awake until the early hours of the morning with back pain. Something that should have been healing for me was unnecessary aggravation and now prevented sleep.
This made me think of the unnecessary weights and baggage we often carry in our lives. We carry our own stresses and worries and we often allow others to put their baggage on us. We can constantly carry around what we think someone thinks about us, how someone mistreated us, or other shortcomings we think we have. The weights of comparison, greed, shame, and the lusts of our flesh cause us to strain to walk in righteousness. Sometimes the excess baggage causes us physical, emotional and mental harm by pushing ourselves beyond the grace that is there to empower us. If I had stayed at a 55lb place and worked up to 100lb, I would have had the strength to take it on. However, since it came prematurely, it was more than I could accomplish. This is often true of tasks or responsibilities that I take on that should be rolled onto The Lord.
His yoke is easy and His burden is light. This does not abdicate my responsibilities to seek Him and to live holy, but it does free me from doing things in my own weak strength. I could do a few reps at 100lbs, but it was much easier to do 55lb in the strength that was already made available to me.
Principle for today: throw off the excess baggage that is slowing you down!
Hebrews 12:1-2 “Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”