My Healed* Back...

It started just about a month before I got married in 2009.  I woke up one day - the day after I had flown to Indiana on my own to have Matt's mom throw me a wedding shower with all their friends and family - and my back was crippled.  I mean all of a sudden I couldn't move, could barely get out of bed, wished I was dead-kind of pain in my lower back.

Everyone had a theory.  My mom is obsessive about diagnosing everything from a stomach ache to a scratch and back pain proved to be no exception.  Matt and his parents were pretty similar.  Maybe it was the extra strenuous spinning I'd been doing lately to get in shape for my wedding dress, maybe it was walking in heels to the plane, maybe it was walking in flip-flops that summer, maybe it was standing in my studio during the final days of thesis show prep, maybe it was...

No one could be sure.

I struggled my way through the time in Indiana and had a wonderful visit through the pain (it got slightly less painful the day of the actual shower).  When I got home, I went to the Dr's and then a physical therapist.  The PT said that my pelvis has a way of shifting - each side wrenching the opposite direction of the other, so it is out of alignment.  I went to maybe 4 sessions until I learned the exercises myself enough to do them at home.  I went back to the Dr and she gave me this way of "popping" my back into position and it worked marvelously.

For a time...

But it comes and goes.  And that trick the Dr gave me does nothing anymore. 

For a while last year, car rides killed me.  Sitting for such a long time in the same place.  Riding was pretty terrible but driving brought me to tears.

Well, it is back again this week and I'm really struggling. 

It sounds crazy, but I'm like 98% sure that I wrecked it lying on a cabana chair in Fiji last week.  The chair was just straight wood with really thin cushions to put over it and unfortunately we didn't get off this said chair for most of the week.  Then on Saturday, we went to the beach in Australia one last time and played really hard in killer waves.

I'm about to get on a plane for 20 hours in 2 days and although I'll have a pretty comfortable seat, I'm really scared right now.  I don't know how I will manage it.

I am trying to turn my attention to God's promises - how the Bible says by his stripes we are healed and I am speaking that to my back today because apparently it doesn't seem to know this yet.

*I am telling my back it is healed