too much rest?

Too much rest?

My mother in law is-was- a great supporter of rest. Whenever I informed her I was on my way to the gym she would sigh and tell me to relax. I do too much. I need to take it easy. Oh, she was so persuasive. I could feel the comfy couch under my back with my legs propped up on pillows, a soft throw over my lower half. I could picture myself reading… for three minutes before the book toppled to the floor as my lids closed. (Three minutes is actually stretching the
possibilities.) Yea. It was enticing but…I do love a good workout. The exercise bike. The weights and time in the pool. The adrenalin rush. That was relaxing for me. It was time away from duties. From doing for people. From answering the phone or driving someone around. No. The gym was where I really got my breathing space.

My mother in law did however follow her own advice. Approaching 75 she was well rested. Real well rested. My husband would hand carry her dinner to her during our Sunday dinners so she wouldn’t have to get up when we visited. He was being considerate of her age. He was respecting her hospitality, repaying her for fixing our repast. She was so rested that getting up out of her chair was a work out. Huffing and puffing, she would wobble for a few steps till she got her equilibrium and continue to whatever activity that called her to her feet.

Then she started falling whenever she got up from her chair. We began intensive interrogations when we spotted bruises on her. We worried about her. We got her to commit to going to the doctor. I felt it was her knees, arthritis, bursitis or some other “itis” caused by the phenomena known as aging. Or maybe a reaction to her blood pressure meds or seizure meds. Or maybe she had started drinking while she was chilling out.

My sister in law received the honor of escorting mom to the doctor’s office. What she learned was more devastating to us than something that could be corrected with simply altering meds or sending her to alcoholics anonymous. Her diagnosis was…. Are you ready? She was pronounced….get set….well rested. She had rested herself into muscle shrinkage. She had been losing weight over the past couple of months (Yep, that really surprised me since her only exercise was getting out of her chair to go to bed) but the weight loss was mostly muscle mass. Let me explain this simple thing. No muscle mass, no strength. No strength, no balance. No balance no fall prevention. No fall prevention yields broken hips, legs, femurs, arms, faces or wrists. Broken bones in the elderly can heal but they may spend time in a nursing home for rehabilitation, (the person, not just the bones) that is providing they are discovered within a reasonable time frame or they don’t get a fat embolus and….. Well just imagine the worst. The most common reason that nursing homes are filling up with those approaching the later stages of life is due to falls, mostly falls at home.

The doctor predicted at her rate of “resting”, she’d be bed bound in five years. Well, my sister in law responded quickly to this crisis by not taking mom straight home to her easy chair. She took her to the local Senior Citizen’s Center and signed her up. What good does that do? Well, a properly run center has activities galore that keep the participants. She walked. She exercised. She talked. She ate. She socialized. She was even the secretary for a period of time. She redeveloped her muscles and with civilized respect for the miracle of healing, threw her cane in the air. Unfortunately when it landed it knocked her out and we had to take her to the emergency room for a head injury….just kidding!

The point of this long emotionally boring story? “If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it” means something. That goes for many things, like…. using our spiritual muscles. If we don’t keep them fed and exercised we’ll become weak floppy Christians. Our spirits will atrophy. We won’t know how to keep our balance when we get up and we’ll fall. And when a Christian falls, well once again, just imagine the worst. We may not lose eternity, but we may fail to bring someone else along with us to eternity; someone like a child, father, mother, friend, or even a stranger. We can’t afford to rest in our easy chairs while we are still here on terra firma. We need to attend the Christian Citizen’s Center if not five days a week at least once, maybe twice. And in this country there is no law that we can’t flex our muscles at home. Daily devotionals and prayer groups at work are all still permissible, (provided you do it in a dark closet at the back of the hall!) Along with meeting around the school’s flag pole; something school kids do in Fort Worth at the start of the year to seek God’s blessings, and I hope we’re not an isolated patch of religious fanatics.

So stop resting you lazy slugs and get out your bibles, it’s time for a work out. You don’t even have to check with your doctor on this one, even if you are over forty. There are no contraindications due to pre existing health conditions; as a matter of fact it’s the perfect cure for heart disease and mental illness. However there are side effects, like long life and peace of mind. Okay, let’s get started: One, two, three. One, two, three.

Math. 22:29
Luke 24:27
John 5:39
1 Peter 3:15
1 Peter 3:15