Shoulders back!

Tendonitis in the shoulder. Maybe some damage to the rotator cuff. Maybe the beginnings of a frozen shoulder. The physio’s diagnosis was clear.

But why? (the question always on Flick’s lips...) Maybe this, maybe that; nobody really knows. As I lay on my stomach, though, she remarked that she could see from muscles in my upper back that I was beginning to get into a habit of slumping. Posture! 

It horrified me. When I was growing up, my mother drilled it into me. Stand up straight. Shoulders back. Tummy in. The gym teacher repeated the mantra. The instruction took root within me and I thought that is what I do. But it seems I’m beginning to slacken. 

So now I’ve got some exercises, and the instruction that whatever I do, from lifting shopping to lifting children, I need to remind myself to keep those shoulders back. 

We easily become frozen in our stances towards issues, towards people. Why? Big reasons and small and no reasons at all. Some valid and many prejudiced. As we freeze up, our vision narrows and becomes myopic. 

Perhaps because of the shoulder pain, the muscles on my upper back are hard, locked in spasm and as painful as the tendonitis. I’m sitting here with heat on the muscle, hoping to encourage it to relax.

So with stiffened attitudes: they are accompanied by stiff necks. God often called the Israelites a stiff-necked people, and he wasn’t pleased. 

Sitting with God’s Word warming my thinking is the best way to relax and let my eyes be opened, my vision expanded, my love deepened. 

Shoulders back. Eyes up.