There are some weird things about how our bodies work.

You know how you can be fine one day and wake up the next morning and have a pain that wasn’t there the day before? You can’t put your finger on where it came from; it just showed up in your body … like Canada Post delivering the mail – you never know when it’s going to arrive.

But that’s nothing! I once went into the hospital to have an operation on my nose. It had suffered a little hockey damage and needed a tuck here, opening of the passageway there, kind of thing.

Anyway, when I came to after the operation, I had the worst charlie horse in my right thigh that I’ve ever had. I had to check to see if they had taken some tissue from my thigh and strapped it onto my nose.

Fortunately, there wasn’t any noticeable thigh parts in or around the centre of my face. But when I was leaving the hospital I had a little cast on my nose and a major limp in my walk. It wasn’t pleasant.

Then there was this week. I was playing ball hockey at our pastors’ retreat and, though my favourite position is centre in front of the other team’s goalie, I felt I needed to run a little to show my team I wanted to help out.

Near the end of the game I could feel my muscles starting to react to the running. An hour later, I was walking like a 75 year old who rode horses for a living until he was 65!

I was thinking, “It’s not like I haven’t used my legs. I play hockey regularly. I try to walk about 10,000 steps a day. Why all this muscle pain?”

But that was nothing! The next day I was worse – just thinking of having to walk up or down a flight of stairs sent me into a panic attack and looking for someone to piggyback me.

To say my muscles were barking is an understatement. It was like every muscle from my waist down was in agony; even the muscles in my feet were yelping. And getting up after sitting for a while threw all of them into creating a symphony of pain.

The pain was there the next day too, and even three days later I was avoiding all stairs if I could help it.

How could a little running up and down a gym floor generate all the pain that it did? It just didn’t make sense to me.

Well, it’s called lactic acid build up. I needed it to help me exercise but I produced too much and it couldn’t all be burned off. I had acidosis. It sounds like a contagious disease – I felt like quarantining myself to flat surfaces only.

The preventive measure is to ease into exercise, pace yourself, and do a cool down. Other things that help are water, diet and sleep.

… Lot of help that does me knowing that after the fact!

Here’s the thing: Sometimes we get energized to develop our devotional life with God, and so we go hard at it with big plans and commitments. What happens then is we get a dose of spiritual acidosis and we then back right off. Instead, take it slow, warm up with a short time with God, and build up to longer sessions of spiritual exercise.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How have you recovered when you’ve stopped your time with God? Leave your comment below.