MOVE! …WHILE YOU CAN

It is power to move without thinking, with no pain, no real effort. If you are still in this place cherish and appreciate your power. My husband, Eric and I used to move quite a bit and then I had an accident on my bicycle a month ago. It was a hard fall that fractured my pelvis in two places and right clavicle. The process of recovery is slow and long.

 

When I married Eric forty-eight years ago, he realized the importance of moving, running to be specific. He bought a copy of Dr. Kenneth Cooper’s best-selling book, “Aerobics.” The plan presented in it was encouraging to begin and grow in. As he built his aerobic capacity jogging, he began to ride his bicycle to work. We were in our early thirties, and I did not want to be “left behind.” Dr. Cooper’s wife, I learned, wrote a companion book, “Aerobics for Women” a small paperback: it was a new beginning for me: it changed my life.

 

We had our first baby by then and lived in a mobile home rented from my parents. My sister, Char, decided to join me and we began walking one mile before daylight; then we would jog and walked, then finally jogged the distance.

 

My sister is still walking, five miles at a time in the town where she and her husband live. I grew in my interest too, continued jogging and worked myself into a position as an Aerobics Instructor at a local gym. By our fifties, Eric and I were lifting weights and jogging at a YMCA. Bicycle riding was our hobby. Eric read the Bicycling Magazines and we learned the traffic rules for biking.

 

That was then. Now we are in our late seventies. Eric’s hip replacement and colon cancer stymied his ability to get on the gym floor. Everything changed. I continued bicycle riding solo until late December, I ran into a fluffy bunch of leaves on a sidewalk, but it turned out to be a solid tree. I hit it hard.

 

A “moment of truth” for both of us: what is the plan now? In short, Eric and I are experiencing pain in our bones. His hip surgery and colon cancer, my bicycle accident. Without repeating a previous Blog, our future has taken on a new challenge! We are alive, vertical, we can move. But we are in transition: can we, at this age, heal and strengthen? Will our bones grow whole? Can we be strong and limber again? Move while you can!

 

Last night, lying in bed, a hopeful plan began to form. We can move. We will, by the grace of God, take on the challenge of growing as strong and healthy as the LORD allows.

 

The challenge from the Therapists is my challenge to you: “Move while you can! “

“What? Know you not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which you have of God, and you are not your own.?” I Co 6:19