Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

As I went through a recent day of meetings and work, I walked stiffly, tentatively.

You see, the night before, with my wife working at the part-time job she goes to several days a week (she also has a full time job), I had a free evening. I worked on some things and then, decided to go get a Steak Bowl at Chipotle's. On the way there though, I went to the walking track at a nearby park. I wanted to do one loop around the track before I had my meal. As always when I walk solo, I took a book to read while walking.

I was just finishing my loop and tucking the back flap of the dust cover into the book to mark my place, when I came to a final slight curve in the blacktopped pathway, just before it meets the parking lot. Somehow, the toes of my right foot slipped over the edge of the paving and my legs buckled under me. I couldn't believe how quickly I went down, sprawled on the blacktop like Superman.

I skinned my knee, stoved my left hand and arm (it took awhile for the feeling to come back to my left thumb), skinned the palm of my right hand, and strained my chest, back, and neck.

The fortunate thing is that I somehow had the presence of mind to put the book in front of me so that when my head came crashing toward the pavement, it was cushioned and I had no pain in my chin or head.

Immediately, I was able to pick up the book and walk to my car. I even went to Sam's Club to pick up a few items we needed at home before getting my dinner. Ibuprofen has helped in my recovery, although I'm still sore today.

But, today I keep thinking about how amazing the human body is! I haven't taken a crash like that since I "drove" a go-cart into a mailbox when I was fifteen years old. (The box popped up out of the ground and climbed several feet into the air before crashing, bent and useless, next to its original location. I, meanwhile, skidded across the street, a scar the size and shape of a red pepper on one of my arms my only sovenir. But I just walked away.) Today, after last evening's mishap, with the exception of a few sore muscles and several scrapes, I'm fine.

Joe Frazier once said of fellow heavyweight prizefighter, Oscar Bonavena, that he was "built for punishment." I think that you could say that of most of us. In spite of our mortality and an aging process that eventually robs us of much of our vitality, the body is also an amazing healing machine, demonstrating a remarkable capacity to recover from things that even anchored mailboxes can't endure.

No wonder King David wrote in the Old Testament that we are "fearfully and wonderfully made."

God is the greatest design engineer of all. Even an occasionally klutzy person like me proves that!