Now that I have spiritualized the experience into a devotion, this one will be the official retelling of what really happened, with apologies for the long-windedness, grandiose nature of this post. But I am trapped at home for the foreseeable future without running, so what else am I going to do?

So it all began on a day like any other day. Quite frankly, it was perhaps my favorite Waypoint worship service from our time at Byron’s. Everyone had cleared out when I had gotten a request to move the room around for their next event. I figured, rather than going to the gym, I would just knock it out myself.

By the end of the setup, I was carrying a large 8 foot wooden table when I tripped over a loose shoe lace dropping the table directly onto my foot (my life consists of stitches in my head from jumping on a bed, a scar in my eye for a stick being thrown in it, and now an injured foot for not tying my shoes–I literally am every parents’ chiding of their child). I crumbled as the burst of white light seared into me. Somehow, however, I managed to pick myself up, set up the final table and head to the car.

While my foot was throbbing on the drive home, I assumed maybe I had done something to tweak it. But as the drive progressed, so did the pain. Therefore, at a light I decided to take off my shoe. At which point, I discovered my sock was soaked in blood.

Upon my initial inspection, I had assumed that I just ripped the nails off of the toes which I have done numerous times while running. Closer look, however, revealed that the nails were attached but the entire top portion of my toe was loose.

When we finally arrived at the Urgent Care, the nurse practitioner took one look at the bloody mess and said, “You need to go to the ER immediately, they may need to amputate.” This entailed another hour drive and wait to our E.R. By this point I had come to the conclusion that if Tommy Caldwell could rock climb without a finger, surely I would be able to run without toes #3 & #4 (I had learned that doctors number the toes and do not use the little piggy naming system).

Finding a chair furthest away from anyone, I sat down in the E.R. determined not to touch anything. Then I noticed a sign that declared I was sitting in the “sick” section of the ER, and quickly moved myself over to the unsick area. However, a few minutes later a woman coughing and wheezing came and sat about 10 feet away from me. Within 30 seconds of her sitting down near me, a nurse came running at her screaming: “Ma’am, you cannot sit there, I need you to go into the isolation room! Come with me now!”

At this point, I hit the lowest of the low. Convinced I was losing my toes, I was also now certain to have gotten COVID. No wonder my blood pressure registered a 141/82 and a note for me to talk with my doctor about my high blood pressure.

In the end, the ER doctor looked at my toes and reported: “Well if the Urgent Care staff would have looked underneath your toes he would have seen they are still attached, so you get to keep ’em. The bones are crushed though so I will have to proximate them.” Foolishly I asked what does proximate mean, to which she replied: “I try to put them back together approximately.” Then I asked, will I loose my toe nails? To which she also replied: “well not yet, because I have stitched through them.”

So this is how God instituted mandatory rest for me in this crazy season. I started January 1, 2020 with the flu (which I am still convinced was COVID) and will end the year with my foot in a boot.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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