The Alignment of the Heart

I developed this pain in my hip several weeks... actually more like months ago.   It was negligible at first.  So I did what every tough Eastern European woman does when she experiences pain.  I ignore it.  It push through the pain until I am able to rest and then the rest takes the pain away.  But, every day, the pain is getting worse, the time of me feeling it decreasing even as the intensity increased. 

But, I keep clenching my teeth.

Pushing through pain.

Being tough. 

Naturally, I favor that side and overcompensate, putting extra pressure on my other hip. Until that side starts hurting - real bad. Yet, I still don't stop.  Then, I hobble through a 5K race, every step a torture, and cross the finish line practically a cripple. Don't even ask why.

The next day I can't get out of bed.  I visualize myself paralyzed, with double hip-replacement surgery bill in my hands.  I think I see heart-attack in my future. My husband makes a couple of phone calls and the next thing I know I am seeing a chiropractor. With one look, he assess the situation.

Your back is out of alignment. 

My back?  It's my hip.  That's how it all started. My back pain came only after the race.

Well, actually, it's your back. 

He makes me lie down and with a tug and a push, and another tug and a snap, Ouch! he sends me home, 

There, as good as new.

I walk out on wobbly legs, expecting the familiar pain. 

Nothing. 

I gently swing my hips from side to side. No pain.  

I hop, first on one leg, and then the other. Buoyed by apparent success, I dance Thriller on the sidewalk in front of his office. Not even a trace of excruciating pain that has been my shadow for something like forever. 

I want to run back and hug the chiropractor and call him a miracle-worker.

On the way home, I can't stop wondering how is it possible that all that pain, searing pain in my hips and my limbs, the headache and the sleepless nights, had this one source - the out-of-alignment back?


And a question crosses my mind if it could be possible that some other pains, the searing relational pains, the heartbreaks, the bone-marrow exhaustion, the drive and the drain, the busyness and the emptiness that plague our age,  perhaps all have the same  seemingly unrelated source - an unaligned mind and heart? But we keep pushing and pushing, thinking that the location of the pain is the problem, while, all along, the source is not in the location but in the out-of-alignment heart.

Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her. Luke 10:41-42

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Matthew 6:33