The Winter of My Discontent

Lent does not begin for another month, but for me, it started last week. 

After six weeks of back pain, three appointments with the chiropractor, dozens of phone calls to my insurance company, and one MRI, my doctor delivered the news that I was hoping would not be true: “It’s quite severe.” “It” is a stress fracture in my sacrum, which, if you’re like me and didn’t know what a sacrum was, is the bone at the base of your spine. “Quite severe” is a polite way of saying that the break will require far more than a couple of Advil. A fracture resembling tributaries surrounded by a whole lot of inflammation had shown up on my MRI, explaining the source of my pain.  

“It’s quite severe” was not the diagnosis that I wanted to hear — especially not this year. 

I am a runner and have been for 17 years. Last year, I qualified for the Boston Marathon and was registered to run it on April 15, 2024: my 30th birthday. As a massive fan of all things running, I considered this to be an absolute dream. I love the challenge of a big goal, the grind of marathon training, and the reward of a race well run. What better way to begin a new decade than showing up on the starting line of the world’s most iconic marathon in the best shape of my life?! 

But then. 

On the day before Thanksgiving, I set out for a normal afternoon run, blissfully unaware that this run would be the beginning of the most abnormal season of my life. A few miles in, my back tightened up and sharp pain radiated down my leg. I stopped and tried to stretch, but nothing helped. I called my brother to come pick me up. By the next day, I could barely walk, wincing in pain with every step. I knew something was wrong, but I hoped and figured I’d feel better after a few days. It was just a weird fluke. A few adjustments, a few days of rest, and I’d be back to normal. Right? Right. 

But six weeks later, my doctor told me it was going to take more than a few more days of rest. In fact, it was going to take at least three months of rest. Three months of no running, no biking, no swimming, and no walking. That’s right — no walking, aside from the daily walking that comes with being a human who sometimes walks to the fridge to get an afternoon string cheese. The inflammation in my bone presses into the my nerves of my spine, causing my extremities go numb. I suppose it is quite severe after all. 

Recovering from my stress fracture requires giving up the things that I love — the activities that previously filled my free time and gave structure to my days, vacations, meal plans, sleep schedule, social calendar, spending, and just about every part of life as I knew it. I’ve been running for the last 17 years. What now? I texted a friend that I’m in my “laying down era.” For the next three months, it seems that you will find me laying down on the couch and laying down my burdens at the feet of Jesus. Both begrudgingly. 

After the appointment was over, I walked back into the waiting room and texted my family to tell them what the doctor had said. “It’s quite severe.” I opened my laptop to review my insurance plan, recorded the co-pay in my budget spreadsheet, and then began to cry. First a few tears, then a lot. I cried because my dreams for this year would not come to pass. I cried because I was scared of becoming depressed, scared of having to buy new pants because my body would change, scared of people noticing that I had to buy new pants and then scared of realizing that I cared about whether or not people would notice that I had to buy new pants. I cried because I was sad and mad and because I felt guilty about feeling so sad and so mad. I cried because I felt like I should be stronger in the face of this trial but also I should have been strong enough to not break in the first place. My thoughts were like a thousand fractured tributaries streaming out of my chaotic consciousness. I was a broken woman. 

And so that’s how I started Lent early. For Lent 2024, I’d be giving up running and walking and jogging up any set of stairs. I’d be giving up on my plans for the 2024 Boston Marathon and my 30th birthday and that epic Instagram post I already could imagine making on that day. 

I’d also be giving up on my illusion that my sacrum is the only thing about me that is broken.

Before my stress fracture even happened, I have spent the last few months feeling a lot of grief about how my twenties are nearly over. I’ve thought about all the things that happened in my twenties, but mostly, I’ve thought about all the things that didn’t; about friendships that changed and plans that fizzled. About how I take Tums now and how my front tooth where I had a root canal is getting more gray, how my hips hurt when I sit in the car for too long. All of this sometimes makes me wish that I could be 21 again, when brokenness was more of a concept and less of a physical, emotional, and spiritual reality. 

On the evening of Epiphany, I was listening to a podcast about infrastructure planning (this is 29) when the guest said something that, yes, was technically about sidewalks, but felt like it was about me. She said: “Humans are much better at loss aversion than we are at seeing the possibilities of new things.” 

Earlier that same week, I had been cleaning up my Christmas tree when I felt a wave of sadness come over me. Christmas — the thing I’d planned and prepared for — was done, and it was time to move on. I was feeling a sense of loss, and I really didn’t want to. Could we just not? But alas, we could not just not. The tree’s needles were dry and sharp and littering the floor of my living room. Trash pickup was the next day. Christmas was over. And so I lugged the tree to the curb, vacuumed the needles, and rearranged the room. 

Each year when my Christmas tree is kicked to the curb, I put back up a poster on the adjacent wall that reads “Good Luck In Your New Venture.” This year, the poster stopped me in my tracks, just as that quote I heard on that podcast. It reminded me of the prophecy in Isaiah 43: “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

I have to agree with that podcaster: I am quite bad at perceiving the possibilities of new things. Broken back and on the cusp of leaving a hallowed decade, I feel as if I am crossing a proverbial Rubicon of life. The brush is thick, and my view is obstructed. The water rushes around me, and sometimes, I feel as if the current might be too strong for a broken woman like me. “It’s just three months,” the logic in my left brain asserts. “But it’s quite severe!” my right brain replies, my questions and anxieties and overactive, pessimistic imagination rising like the tide, threatening to pull me under and away.

When I hear the question in Isaiah, “Do you not perceive it?” my brain shouts both “yes!” and “no!” I know that God is surely doing a new thing in this season of my life. But there’s still a part of me that feels like scrambling up the riverbank, that wishes the fractures that looks like tributaries never showed up on the MRI, that my plans for 2024 would’ve just worked out and that I wouldn’t have had to give up the hobbies I love and the goals I had. 

I am in the winter of my discontent and yet I also believe this to be true: a great thaw will come. And so as my levees burst, I’m praying for faith to not scramble back up the riverbank. I’m pray that my worries, my vanity, my pride, my self-reliance, my determination to run this particular race of suffering and win—may all these things be swept away. In this season of loss and giving up, I pray, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

While I may not perceive it right now, the miracle of the gospel is that whether or not I have the faith to proclaim it, its good news is still true. Whether or not I have a clear sense of what God is doing in my life, the prophecy holds: Jesus has already made a way for me. A way that acknowledges brokenness and redeems loss. A way that doesn’t hold our disbelief against us. A way that takes us by the hand and helps us up. A way that is good. 

And so I take heart in the words of the prophet Isaiah: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.” (Isa 43:2) Do you not perceive it? He is making a way through a winter of discontent, in this Lenten season that came too early, in this unbidden time of laying down on the couch and laying down burdens at the feet of Jesus.