Old pain

I went on a hike yesterday. I was with friends, out in gorgeous weather, and greatly looking forward to it. About a quarter of the way up the trail I became aware of a dull pain in my bad right knee. At the halfway point I was in serious pain. And then I started thinking about how going downhill on a bad knee is more painful than going uphill, and how each uphill step I managed meant an even more painful downhill step on the way back. So I decided to stop. I let the group continue, and I found a place to sit and enjoy beautiful scenery while I waited for them to come back down the trail.

This isn’t abnormal – the knee has been injured since my sophomore year in high school and I’m used to it flaring up and messing with my plans for physical fun and glory. I came to terms with this a long time ago. It’s just the way it is, for me, with my bum knee. But yesterday, it pissed me off. A couple of minutes after my group left me alone, the tears came. At first I thought it was just the pain that was causing me to cry, but I don’t cry from pain often, and these tears felt different anyway – they were hot and they stung. And then I realized that I was angry… like… super angry.

I think I was okay with my knee ruining my activities before because of my mindset. I believed that, in every aspect of life, my old stuff – the pain and wounds and sin patterns and JUNK – was just a natural part of me I had to learn to accept and work with. It was just reality to me, and the best way to deal was just to come to terms with it, submit to it, and do the best I could despite it. But I no longer think that way. And as my world has been blown open by a revelation of grace, I have – apparently! – lost my tolerance for being limited by old pain.

Obviously, I didn’t sit on top of a massive boulder halfway up that trail crying for an hour because I couldn’t make it to the top. But my inability to complete the hike and see the view reminded me of all the other things I’ve been missing out on because of old injuries… Injuries to my heart and my soul that have yielded power over me for so long. The longer I sat there the more infuriated I became that my experience of the goodness of God has been so limited due to those old wounds. My former apathy has been replaced with a burning desire to eradicate all constraints on the freedom Christ died for me to have. I’ve realized it’s not the “norm” to operate with those limitations… and I’m no longer okay with submitting to that warped idea of reality. So I’m moving forward expecting the Spirit in me to overcome all the old junk that’s been limiting me so I can step into complete freedom, unlimited possibility, and overwhelming goodness.