figure 8

Haven broken my collarbones on several occasions and having sprouted up to over 6 feet at the speed of light I was quite clumsy and awkward as a child. I must have stood and walked with a slump. My father was always correcting me to sit and stand up straight. I resented it a good bit. In the correction, (and even before) there was a sense of brokenness as well as a sense of being an mild anomaly that haunted my psyche...The figure 8 was a harness that pulled my shoulders back. It kept my collarbones from healing up in a contracted and overlapping way. Now looking backward at those times I am grateful for my father's correction as well as the uncomfortable figure 8. It didn't hurt much, but it reminded me that I was broken. The collarbones healed well, but deeper scars from other wounds have often taken years to heal.

Looking back again I see my Father's hand in it all. Through the broken and crushed times He provides with experience which leads us to have much more empathy that would have had without the trials. The hurts and heartbreaks, the broken relationships, the disappointments, the cancer with the loss of loved ones, the scars, and the pain - they are all there for both us and those around us. He knows what we have been through and went through so much Himself. He wants us to be His and a light to a broken world. He allows us to go through this stuff so we can be an empathetic light. Like a lighthouse on the shore in the midst of a raging sea or shelter in a warm cabin during a storm. The most empathetic physicians are those who have been through the problems we (as patients) are facing.

The trials grow our strength like gravity builds muscle. It hurts at times, but is much like the figure 8 and my father's correction- which has a purpose and an end...