{"id":2293,"date":"2012-06-01T07:00:57","date_gmt":"2012-06-01T11:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/?p=2293"},"modified":"2014-09-28T13:02:00","modified_gmt":"2014-09-28T17:02:00","slug":"36529-oh-my-aching-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/36529-oh-my-aching-back\/","title":{"rendered":"365+#29: Oh, My Aching Back!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>PART 1:<\/strong> Periodically my back gives me trouble. It happened recently when I spent a day preparing the garden for spring planting. This zealous gardener over did it. Not to worry. Usually one trip to my friendly chiropractor fixes me up just fine. Oh oh, time to worry. It didn\u2019t work this time and my back continued to ache. This prompted a series of return visits, home remedies, new exercises, and self-doubt.<\/p>\n

Eventually, it also prompted me to reflect on my health in general and the meaning of life. (The fact that I\u2019m about to turn 65 and thus have been inundated with Medicare literature and decisions amplified my anxiety.) I really don\u2019t feel old and basically consider myself in good health, but occasionally these little blips come up in my life and can send me into a downward spiral of \u201cWoe is me, I might as well say farewell to my current lifestyle, and prepare to be an invalid.\u201d I know I\u2019m being melodramatic but when something interferes with my health it trumps everything else and it\u2019s easy to become obsessed with what\u2019s wrong.<\/p>\n

This experience stirred me to think about the concept of \u201cgiving away one\u2019s health.\u201d After all, isn\u2019t life a gradual accumulation of cells and skills until we reach a point (always a few years beyond my own age) when we start to lose cells, abilities, knowledge, and memory. (Of course it doesn\u2019t always happen this neatly like a nice bell curve, but my life has been pretty predictable in this way.) When a curve ball comes my way like an illness of some kind, however, it usually prompts me to pray. (I keep telling God that he doesn\u2019t need to get my attention this way, but God doesn\u2019t seem to agree. Maybe I need to ramp up my divine social network \u2013 like friend God on Facebook, follow Jesus on Twitter, or put the Spirit on my email database. \ud83d\ude15<\/p>\n

Giving away health to a higher power<\/strong>
\nWell, prayer seems to mysteriously work \u2013 not necessarily in the sense of magical cures \u2013 but rather through insight and comfort. Some things that prayer re-teaches me each time I start to wallow in self-pity are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Calm down.<\/strong> Sitting quietly in prayer calms my over-active imagination and fears.<\/li>\n
  2. Put my problems in perspective.<\/strong> I start to remember that many people in our hurting world have much more serious problems than I do. Some have lost a limb, their income, their mind, a loved one, their way…<\/li>\n
  3. Communion of Saints.<\/strong> This focus on others reminds me of the old\/new Catholic concept of the Communion of Saints. I remember how all of us, living and dead, are united. I call upon my beloved deceased grandparents who were the epitome of unconditional love and generosity. Certainly they have God\u2019s ear and I pray through them.<\/li>\n
  4. \u201cOffer It Up.\u201d<\/strong> Typically this leads me to a practice that the good nuns taught us in grade school \u2013 \u201cOffer it up.\u201d It made sense to my child\u2019s mind to offer up my little sufferings for others (the souls in purgatory, the starving children in China, etc.) but as a young adult I dismissed this as trite and too passive. Now I return to it with renewed understanding. I start to think of others close to me, especially my own parents and children, who are struggling with various parts of life. It gives me comfort to think that I can let go of my minor suffering and offer it up for the good of another whom I love. It seems to make it useful.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Of course these could all be mind games, but the wisdom of age and faith tells me that God can work through mind games too. How do you<\/em> deal with health problems?<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    PART 1: Periodically my back gives me trouble. It happened recently when I spent a day preparing the garden for spring planting. This zealous gardener over did it. Not to worry. Usually one trip to my friendly chiropractor fixes me up just fine. Oh oh, time to worry. It didn\u2019t work this time and my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[30,29],"class_list":["post-2293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beyond-stuff","tag-faith","tag-intangibles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2293"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3649,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293\/revisions\/3649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}