Home, Sweet and Sour

There is never any pleasure in the realigning.

Whenever I go to Anissa, the chiropractor of every bone in my family's collective body, I fear the alignment. The whole process begins with a problem - an unsettled joint, a strained muscle, an ache, a pain, a problem. After greeting the receptionist you sit down in the chair with the funny back rest and realize just how terrible your posture has been as of late; sadly, you realize that your back pain is at least partially your own fault. Keep those shoulders back, and you might be in this office less.

The next part is wonderful: Anissa (or Meegan, sometimes) ushers you into the first room and ask how things have been going in life. While you give updates on siblings and school or work (or neither), she lays you down and puts weighted heating pads all down your spine and tells you to relax and have a little nap. Then she leaves, to align another client or get a glass of water. I never actually know what happens at this point, as I tend to actually fall asleep.

Inevitably your ten minutes of warm and peace conclude with a buzzing, bleeping timer and your chiropractor returns. She removes your heat, makes you stand, waits patiently as you steady yourself and escorts you to the next room. In contrast, this room is always colder (or feels it, as you've just been in the dozy, dopey sleep-heat a moment before), and the light is more diffused. During my last visit, Anissa spent a fair amount of time letting me cry and explain why I was feeling so heartbroken and miserable... a double fix. The psychologist bit doesn't last forever though, and eventually I find myself face down again (this time on chilled leather/vinyl) with Anissa's hands preparing to crack my back. "Deep breath, and, out..." she says.

It is incredibly difficult to relax your muscles at this point. Anyone who has gone through this before knows exactly what it takes to realign: your breath is pressed right out of you, a sharp pain jolts through your body, and you can hear it. The problem, what was out of tune and out of place, is set to rights again, movement restored, things are as they should be once more... but the alignment itself is an unpleasant process.

I feel like I'm waiting for God to crack my back.

When I moved to Hamilton this fall, it was an act of hopeful necessity. I had a problem; spiritual heartache and the burden of a perennial depression several years old (which I will argue is just as or more debilitating than back pain). I felt the need to move somewhere that I saw God healing/working/acting in obvious ways - I wanted to get into His "office," and the MoveIn program, and this city, seemed like a good waiting room. The first few months here were spent primarily in observation - looking on in envy laced with hope at the people around me who seemed to have such straight backs and pain-free promenades. I sat in the proverbial funny chair and realized more acutely that I wasn't okay - and that I was, in deed, part of the problem. I needed to change something.

Then I went home for Christmas and out West for the last two weeks. It was definitely my heating-pad experience, preparing my heart for the real work to be done. I truly rested while I was out there... but the point of the heat isn't to rock you to sleep - it is to prepare your body for the adjustment. Yesterday was the walking to the second room, and tonight I am fighting the impulse to flee.

When the buzzer goes, I often joke with Anissa that, should she want to leave me be for another ten, twenty, thirty minutes I'd be more than happy to stay put. She laughs good-naturedly but moves me right along all the same. The reality is, of course, the heat soothes but does not solve. Only the adjustment can put right what has gone wrong.

So tonight, alone in this place and feeling rather uncomfortable, I am trying to remind myself that the best way to brace for an adjustment is to relax... I have done my part in coming, and now I must wait for the touch of the Master's healing hands. He's the only one who knows what's out of whack, and He's the one who will have to set it right again. I can't do it on my own - that's why I came in the first place.

Adjust me, O God. Then let's work on my posture together.