Mrs Metaphor

A friend of mine made a joke at my expense today. It cut right through me.

You know, I think I must be maturing. I mean this in a good way, not in a “nice way to say getting OLD” sort of way. I mean to say that when he made that joke I realized what a hurtful thing that was for me. It bothered me because it was insensitive, because he’s known me an awfully long time and truthfully, he really ought to know better by now. The part about me maturing though is that I recognized that fact. Now, I didn’t take him to task for it and honestly I don’t intend to be rude or ignorant back to him. You see, I’ve known him an awfully long time as well and I know things are rough for him right now. It’s easy for me to offer grace and easy for me to remember that this is the way his sense of humor runs at times like this.

But here’s the thing…I realized today how often I make off-handed remarks to people, how often I say things without thinking, how often I say hurtful things couched as humor. Because I hope I’m maturing and not just getting overly sensitive as I increase in years I want to make this vow to stop making jokes at the expense of my friends. You know, I’d like to stop making jokes at the expense of people who are NOT my friends as a matter of fact….but sadly, I don’t know if I’ve matured that far yet.
I’ll get there. I want to get there.

This is, at least, a place to start.

I’ve always considered the connections between our bodies and our lives. It’s just part of how I’m wired I suppose. It’s what makes me mrs metaphor.

In my work with developing DoxaSoma I often will tell people that their “core” area, the abs, glutes, lats, all the muscles that wrap around you and keep you upright if those muscles are strong, their core is in the body what the community is in life.

If our “core” is strong (in both aspects) then no matter what is thrown at us we will be able to move through it, we will be able to stand. If it is not strong we will fold and fall to the floor. This is the way we move in our bodies, this is the way we move in the community.

I was thinking today about the process of “failure” though. When we’re strength training we find the failure point and back away from it to find out how far to go. A muscle that is asked too much WILL fail if we go too far, too fast. There must be time to build and time to heal from the work we do. We aim toward working hard enough to fatigue but not fail. When the muscle rests it knits itself back together, stronger.

What happens in the muscle though is fascinating. If we push the muscle fibers to fatigue and then give them time to heal they come back stronger, not just in the fiber but in the WORKING too…the next time I ask that muscle to lift that same weight it’s not just the same group of fibers that respond. The muscle remembers and it “recruits” new fibers to come alongside. The muscle fibers begin to work better together, for the good, to lift the weight and then to become stronger.

Muscles will fail, people will fail…if placed in isolation and given too much weight…but in community, with rest and healing and wisdom…we are building strength and endurance, we work together and then become stronger. We are the muscles, we are the core.

It’s a good design and an apt metaphor.