Weight bearing

In the world of orthopedics (bones) you hear the terms "Non-weight-bearing", "partial-weight-bearing", and "full weight-bearing". Now for those of you who have been ever so blessed not to be receiving those special instructions, this may not mean as much to you as it does to those of us who have seen those very important words written on some sort of medical order. Not that it's a real pickle to know what these terms mean, but just in case you don't know - it's referring to how much weight you can put on the certain area in question. So basically non-weight-bearing equates to "it's bad ju ju if you even fall on that bad boy", partial weight is -" it's not so bad ju ju to put weight on it and even try to walk on it a little bit with the help of crutches", and then the glorious full weight bearing means "you've waited six weeks, now it's time to put this bad boy to the test". Today I was able to have my orders change from the "non" to the "partial" and honestly that's such a beautiful thing! I got a new smaller cast with a ghetto little block on the bottom so that I can put weight on my foot without putting weight necessarily directly on the break. I'm now able to not have to be so ginger in my maneuvering or have heart palpitations at the idea of wet surfaces knowing that they all but mean inevitable doom for my walking security. I've now had my very "special" cast for a month, and this new one is to last me the final two, and then hopefully I can have FREEDOM!!!


Now, as one who frequently get opportunities to teach, that therefore necessitates that I find good illustrations, introductions, etc...on a fairly frequent basis Needless to say, as a teacher you begin to think of the events of life in illustration format: "ooh! this could be used to teach this, and that, etc.." With this idea of weight bearing in mind, I can't help but think that in our spiritual lives, there are times when God breaks us as he is giving us lessons, helping the bone grow so to speak, and sometimes we need to give it time to set. After some time, when you've finally started to get a grasp on what He's trying to teach you or change in you, there comes the next time where you kind of begin to slowly test it out - as they say "a faith that's not tested can't be trusted". The time of "partial weight bearing" is a time where you actually encourage the bone to grow even stronger, it's that little bit of resistance and pressure that makes it what it needs to be. Spiritually speaking, the times when God is trying to let us test what we've learned, he gives us new opportunities to do so, encouraging us to grow in the areas He's working in. Finally, there is the time when you're kind of set out on your own - you really show what you're made of, if it's really what it needs to be. The cool thing is that if you look at an x-ray after a break has healed, many times it's stronger than the other areas around it because of that new growth. During this time of "breaking" in my life, I would love to be able to look back later - after all the different levels of restoration, testing, and healing and see that I'm stronger than I was before this time. Now, you can also talk to people and hear about when bones didn't heal properly and they had to be re-broken, talk about a party?...NOT! The real trick is to make sure that you listen to the lessons or else you're going to be hurting later and this time of pain will have to happen all over again.