The Whole Foundation Was Misaligned

All my life, movement has been one of my greatest joys. Running, walking, weight lifting, and moving my body in almost any physical way. It has been my escape, my place of peace, and one of the ways I have always felt most alive, an act of worship for an amazing temple! I never thought much about how I moved, I just moved, until my body began to hurt.

Over the past year, while dealing with extreme ankle pain, I began learning things about my body I had never known. I found out that the internal rotation capacity in my hips was extremely limited. Because my hips weren't moving adequately in one direction, other joints had apparently been compensating for that lack of movement, but my body found a way.

For years, it adapted and compensated. Keeping me running, exercising, walking and doing all the things I love. Until my knees and ankles could no longer compensate in the same way.

Suddenly, I was being forced to look at something I had never paid attention to before: The pain wasn't necessarily where the problem began. My ankles are hurting, but the story was bigger than my ankles, and that realization has made me think about so much more than my body.

What Happens When the Foundation Is Off?

Sometimes I cry because I miss moving the way I used to. I feel like I still have the engine, and I still have the desire. I Have the energy and the power to move, but some of the parts responsible for carrying that power aren't functioning the way they need to right now, this is incredibly frustrating. There are moments when my mind starts asking: "Can something that has moved this way for years really change? Is the physical therapy actually working? Are all these exercises and therapies making a difference? Will my body ever learn a different way to move? Will I run again? " Then something occurred to me.

I have been asking God almost exactly the same questions about my life. Because my physical foundation isn't the only foundation I have had to examine.

I Was Compensating in My Life, Too

For much of my life, I believed certain things about God because they were what I had been taught. I didn't necessarily question them, they became my foundation. Somewhere along the way, I learned to relate to God through performance, fear, rules and the feeling that I needed to do things correctly in order to be okay with Him. I knew about grace, but I didn't always live as though grace were true. I knew God was love, but parts of me still related to Him through fear. Somewhere deep inside, I still carried the pressure to perform, and just like my body, I learned to compensate. I functioned, built a life, I got married, we raised a family, I formed relationships, served God and I kept going. However, functioning does not necessarily mean the foundation underneath was healthy. Just as my knees and ankles adapted to movement that wasn't happening adequately in my hips, parts of my emotional and relational life adapted to beliefs that weren't giving me a true picture of God's character. Fear can look like control, performance can look like responsibility, people-pleasing can look like kindness and hypervigilance can look like wisdom. Trying to manage everyone and everything around us can look like love. Sometimes we don't recognize the compensation because it worked for a while. Until it doesn't.

Eventually, Compensation Has a Cost

Today, I can look back and see ways that some of those beliefs affected my marriage, my family, my relationships, my financies, and even the way I responded to stress in my body.

That doesn't mean every difficulty in my life or every physical symptom came from my belief system. Bodies, relationships, and life is complex, but I can see that living from fear, pressure and constant internal striving affected the way I experienced all of them. Now God is taking me back to the foundation, not merely changing my behavior or teaching me another technique for coping. Not giving me another list of things to perform correctly, He is changing what I believe about Him. Because if the foundation changes, everything built upon it has an opportunity to change too.

But Can You Change After So Many Years?

This is where my physical rehabilitation and my spiritual journey seem to meet. When my physical therapy asks my body to move in ways that feel awkward or unfamiliar, part of me wonders whether decades of movement patterns can really be changed? Then I think about my mind, beliefs, my understanding of God. Can those patterns change after decades too? I believe they can, but change doesn't always feel miraculous while it is happening. Sometimes it looks incredibly unimpressive. One isometric exercise at a time, one corrected movement.

One truth, one thought taken captive, one different response. A moment when I would normally react from fear, but instead choose to pause and remember who God actually is.

Then I do it again. And again. And again. Maybe healing isn't always God instantly removing what hurts. Sometimes healing is God teaching us a completely different way to move.

Rehabilitation Requires Patience

There are days when I want my chiropractor to tell me, "do this exercise three times and you'll be running tomorrow, I would love that!! However, rehabilitation doesn't usually work that way. The body has to learn, muscles have to strengthen, and mobility has to increase.

Old compensations have to be recognized and new patterns have to be practiced enough that eventually they become more natural. I am discovering that renewing the mind can feel very similar. Romans 12:2 tells us to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

Transformation and renewal imply a process. God is showing me beliefs I have carried for years and inviting me to replace them with truth. Not fear, but love, not earning, but grace. Not control, but trust, not condemnation, but conviction that leads me back to Him. Not "I have to get everything right so I will be okay."

But: "I am His, I am loved, I am saved by grace through faith. I don't have to live afraid of God, I can live in reverence of Him while trusting His character." Maybe this is spiritual physical therapy? God lovingly taking me back to movements of the soul that I should have learned long ago.

I Still Want to Run

I won't pretend I don't get discouraged- I do. There are days I miss the woman who could simply put on her shoes and run without analyzing every movement. There are moments when I wonder whether everything I'm doing will ultimately make a difference. Perhaps this season isn't only about getting my ankles back, perhaps God is teaching me something through them.

Never underestimate the importance of the foundation.

• A structure can compensate for weakness for a long time.

• A body can compensate

• A marriage can compensate

• A family can compensate

• A mind can compensate

Even our relationship with God can contain years of learned compensations, but eventually, what is underneath needs our attention. So right now, I am rebuilding two foundations at once. I'm teaching my body a healthier way to move, and I'm allowing God to teach my heart a healthier way to live. Both feel unfamiliar sometimes, and require patience.

Both require me to stop interpreting discomfort as proof that nothing is changing. Both require faith that what I practice today may become the strength that carries me tomorrow.

Maybe one day I'll run again, I certainly hope so! But when I do, I don't just want to be the woman I was before the pain. I want to move differently. Physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I don't want to become better at compensating for a faulty foundation.

I want the foundation itself restored. Perhaps that is what God has been doing all along.

Putting All Of This Into Perspective

When I hold this season, my pain, my limitations, my frustration, my tears, against the greatness of the King of the universe it becomes so much smaller.

When I look at Jesus and remember what He endured on the cross, what He carried, and the price He paid so that I could be reconciled to God and have eternal life with Him, this momentary suffering cannot compare. That doesn't mean the pain isn't real and it doesn't mean I don't grieve what I temporarily cannot do. It means my suffering is no longer the biggest thing in my field of vision, Jesus is🙏🏽. When my eyes move from what hurts to the One who holds me, something happens inside of me. My tears begin to change, the tears that came from fear begin to carry hope. Frustration begins to carry gratitude, and somehow, even here, in a season I never would have chosen- there can be joy 🥹. This body and this season are temporary, but my hope is not.

So yes, I still want to run again. I am going to keep doing the exercises, keep showing up for the therapy, keep rebuilding, and keep believing that change is possible. But whether my progress happens quickly or slowly, my foundation is no longer being built upon what my body can or cannot do, my foundation is Christ; and compared with the glory of knowing Him, belonging to Him, and one day standing completely restored in His presence, this suffering is momentary, and that changes my fear into faith.

“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.” 1 Corinthians 3:11