My ankle: rattled by God

A few weeks ago I went on a short trail run. I felt great while running, but almost immediately afterwards I could only hobble on my ankle — it was incredibly painful. For 3 days it progressively got worse, and I had no idea why. Finally, on the third night, I had the desperate urge to ask God to fix it. For context, I don’t really ask God to do things like this very often. When I woke up the next morning, it was perfectly — shockingly — healed. I was relieved, but honestly I was rattled and daunted. I spent the morning trying not to think about it, somewhat expecting it to just start hurting again. I ran almost 20 miles over the next 2 days without a moment of pain. I have no natural explanation. 

When I ponder what God may have meant by this act and what it stirs in me, I’m flooded with multiple layers of emotion. I was spooked: “God can still do this? Like, God is that close to me?” I would have told you I felt close to God, wrapped into Him most of the time — at least convinced He’s as close as my breath, that He cares, that everything we’re experiencing matters. If I’m honest, though, that closeness often seems a lot more intellectual than emotional.

“I mean, it’s not like He’s that involved in the minutia of my life. There’s all sorts of things God should be doing besides the small stuff.” I’m used to listening for God’s voice, but I rarely think about Him listening closely to mine. That morning, I was sheepishly thrown off by my blind spot.

I also felt a new sense of spiritual hopefulness. A week before my ankle problem, I’d listened to a guy tell wild, life-changing stories from the Asbury Revival that started in a small church on a tiny college campus in middle-of-nowhere Kentucky a few years ago.  In my post-Enlightenment culture, “revival” is a loaded word, no? The guy melted away some of my skepticism with stories of lives being changed by something powerful and unexplainable. “Could God really change lives like that?” My unexplainable ankle healing seemed to reinforce a sense of restoration and hope. A healed ankle is cool, but a restored hope has a different quality of momentum to it.

Healing and restoration raises all sorts of “What could be?” questions. We’re all trained and predisposed to be opinionated about what should be. Now I really feel the momentous question, “What could be?” If I believe God changes things, it naturally leads to a different relationship. I feel sheepish about my lack of jumping for joy (pain free) the next morning. I’ve been mostly comfortable with my faith — I trust God to do his cosmic stuff and I get to come along for the ride, but I’m not getting swept up in promises of quick fixes or intimate moments that upset my sense of security or don’t really fit into my busy life. I’ve been so turned off by the idea of God as a vending machine that I was mostly closed off to the offer of restored hope and adventure — one where God asks me to ponder what could happen if I cared to ask and press in. My faith doesn't have to be so measured. Spiritual maturity apparently doesn’t mean avoiding childlike questions, desires, and wonder. I yearn for a spirituality that embraces jumping for joy when something lovely happens. 

My ankle pain felt so cosmically insignificant. I think God used the miracle to show me again that it isn’t always about cosmic significance… it’s sometimes about what’s just significant to each one of us. May you ponder God as a God who hears our voices, who sometimes spooks, and who restores hope.

-Conor