“Let me hear joy and gladness, let the bones You have broken rejoice.” Psalm 51:8

I woke up one morning and as I began to move about the house, I noticed that the top of my foot was in pain, making it difficult to walk on it or bear any weight on it. It puzzled me because I had not done anything so overly active in the days beforehand nor had I fallen or twisted my foot in any way. As I hobbled through the house, I clearly understood the Spirit to say, “stress fracture”. I immediately began my research and discovered I had all the classic signs and that while it may have just started to bother me, it could very well have been the result of an overactive day a month before. I put in hours on my feet, up and down concrete steps and carrying more weight on my body than I had in a long time. It’s not certain that was the reason why, but the end result was a stress fracture on the fourth metatarsal bone which requires my wearing this lovely shoe for several weeks.

I can’t help but think about the diagnosis and see a word play of sorts that reflected physically what I was probably going through mentally and emotionally. It is not that I have had to deal with any major trauma, but there have been multiple situations over the past few months that were on my mind quite a bit. Problems and situations needed resolutions and I was trying to find the best ones available. A relationship has been tenuous. Health and wellness have not been going as I would like them to go. Creativity has been at a bit of standstill and personal goals aren’t being met. All of these separately are really quite manageable but together they are a nagging in my gut and mind. Like I usually do, I internalize stress. I might seem cool, calm and collected but inside, my mind is like scrambled eggs, I don’t sleep regularly and I will mindlessly graze on snacks that do me no good. So how fitting and proper it would be for me to develop a “stress” fracture literally in a part of my body that forces me to slow down and wait for the healing process to be completed.

David’s Psalm is his response to being called on the mat for committing his most memorable sin, conspiracy to murder his lover’s husband. When the trusted prophet, Nathan, revealed to David that God was well aware of what he had done, David did the proper thing; he came clean with Nathan and he repented to God and begged for forgiveness. What I love about Psalm 51 is how David owns up to his mistakes, humbles himself before God and then vows to live in a manner that reflects his gratefulness and willingness to serve God. Now David’s bones were not literally broken, but it is a description of the brokenness of his relationship with God. In it, he is not blaming God for the brokenness but he is asking God to heal him. Further down, he makes his vows to teach, lead, and help others to come to know God the way he knows him. David seems to understand that overcoming his situation will ultimately lead him to a stronger relationship with God. That’s what adversity can do for the believer, if we allow it.

Stress is a form of sin. There I said it. How so? Because stress occurs when we take on problems and situations and try to manage them all by ourselves without the consultation of God or the guidance of His word (Prov. 3:5-6; Matt. 11:28; 1 Pet. 5:7) thus putting ourselves above God. It is so easy to go there. Even though I was praying about the small things that were compiling in my mind, I recognize that I wasn’t necessarily listening for God’s response and truly leaning and depending on Him for the answers or to trust Him even when I didn’t see or hear the answers. Even in the first few weeks of my healing process, I was trying to walk around the house without my boot, under the pretense that “I’m not really putting weight on it.” The second x-ray and doctor’s visit, made it clear to me that I was only prolonging the process by doing that. Do I like wearing this beauty shoe? No. Do I like that it’s preventing me from summer activities I would like to be doing? No.

BUT, I do appreciate that it is making me evaluate and look carefully at my health, wellness, habits and practices. It is making me slow down, re-examine myself once again and it is strengthening my connection with God. I appreciate the way God can use something like a stress fracture to open my eyes to the truth about stress. At the end of it all, I do believe that the bone that has been broken will rejoice.