Repentance Analogy

The fabulous thing in writing a missionary, I'm always thinking of what spiritual things I can share with him. And at a time when I'm crazily busy and not as good at journal writing as I once was, this means that those spiritual thoughts are more likely to be written down. This past Sunday I came up with another analogy to share with Elder Little Brother, and I got it written down. So I wanted to share it here. (Again, I don't think he'd mind.)

My back has been hurting me for about 5 weeks. In the first week, any sitting aggravated it, and the pain would shoot up my back and to my shoulders and neck. My roommate has had back issues, and she thought I might be out of alignment. So we did a hip exercise and that relieved the pain from the shoulders and neck. However, the lower back would still hurt. But only when I was driving or in certain chairs at work.


I finally was able to go to the chiropractor on Friday. I was worried it might be something with a disc, but he did 4 tests and none of them showed it as a disc problem. Thank goodness!! Basically my hips were out of alignment (one leg was 3 inches shorter than the other!) and my lower back was "jacked up." (Doctor's words.) Heat, electricity, stretch, and a couple of pops. A little more to it than that, but either way he got me back to where I should be. But he did say that the pain will not immediately go away because my muscles have been inflamed and compensating and such and now need to heal. In the mean time, the doctor said the pain in the arch of my left foot since the New Year was most likely from the misalignment because while walking my legs are trying to compensate and I've been landing on my foot so as to aggravate the plantar something or other. It would make sense, as I spent the whole week of Christmas sleeping on the couch because my bed was covered with stuff. The back began to hurt when I slept again on the couch because all my clothes were on my bed drying (our dryer doesn't work well). Anyway, the chiro wrapped the arch to give it better support and build the arch back up. He'll check on how I'm doing on Tuesday.

This could just be a "[My sister's] getting old" story, but I actually got an analogy from it today. Sin and repentance. When we sin, we misalign ourselves from God's path. Even the littlest things, they change our alignment. And the pain or symptoms may be something small--we may not even know the cause. (I had thought my foot pain was either a muscle knot or a bone spur.) And often when we don't get the pain checked on (through personal prayer and self-reflection), we don't know what to do to fix the cause of the pain. Thus repentance does not occur.

Left untreated, the pain can get worse, especially if the sin keeps being committed. Eventually we get around to self-examination, prayer, scripture study. We are able to see what we are doing wrong. We are able to fix it. Sometimes we need the help of a doctor (or bishop) to fix the problem. As we're fixing it (and sometimes even after), there is pain as we are healing. Spiritually we've done a number to ourselves and it takes some time for the soul to heal. And it's helpful to keep careful watch of what we do, and how we do it, and even have the doctor (bishop) help us through the healing process and make sure we're on the right track.

I thought it was a pretty good analogy. :-) Especially as I'm currently in the pain from muscles trying to heal. And I have very much known that spiritual pain when I am repenting and trying to fix what I have been doing wrong. But when it is through, and we are aligned again, we are wiser, more careful, more grateful, and healed. It is such a wonderful feeling!

Repentance truly is a gift.