I am now in the camp of promoting Chiropractic care. I don't love going, but in completing eight weeks of adjustments I must admit I've seen a huge improvement in my back, neck, and overall health. It's amazing what you grow used to when your compensating, "Well so what if I can't turn my neck to the left, who needs peripheral vision anyway?" Pitiful really. Clearly I needed help. When I first started going to the Chiropractor I must say it was a bit of a culture shock. A girl in Mickey Mouse scrubs gave me the dime tour. The main room was described as "The Adjustmentorium." This room had people in all manner of interesting positions. The name alone suggests a cross between a Medieval torture chamber and a Sanatorium.

The staff are incredibly friendly, but have no problem strapping a six pound ball to your chin and asking you to hang your head back behind a chair for ten minutes. "There you go sweetheart, be back in ten!" they say cheerily as they leave you in anguish until released from what I have come to name "The Ball of Death". Two minutes feel like thirty. To distract from the pain I would try to read the upside down blurb of fun pinned up for our perusal, like "How to Achieve Your Dreams!" or "How to Become a Positive Thinker!" Both articles made me want to cuss, and I would have if my larynx hadn't been so restricted from the weighted head strap. My feeble attempt came out in gurgled sputters nearly choking myself on my own saliva. There was nothing left to do but submit to The Ball. This is what they call "therapy".

I am grateful however I do not have to use the Walking Head-Brace. Now there's a ritual in public humiliation. It is exactly what it sounds like. After your adjustment they strap on a head brace that rests on your shoulders, and you walk around the office, waiting area, down the hall, around and around slowly for an allotted period of time. It's meant to add more curve to your neck by lurching it a bit forward and keeping it there by way of straps, bolts and padded metal bars. A woman shuffled through the waiting room in that contraption as I was filling out my first patient profile. I was tempted to drop my pen and run. What strange vice will I be strapped into? And more importantly, will I be asked to bare the shuffle of shame through the waiting room?  One wrong move could land you in the magazine rack,  oh horror.

By far the easiest therapy is the Wobble Chair. In a small room five chairs with wobbly seats sit snugly side by side in a half circle. You sit on the wobbly seat and shift slowly in all four directions. It's a strange thing to be doing next to people you don't know. Seems rather intimate really, with no music or television as a social buffer,  just silent shifting forward, back, side to side. I can never let silence go for too long before I offer up some cheesy small talk, "Sure is chilly today huh?" I'm hoping this will become as familiar as two people riding the subway, but it won't. We are in a small room... wobbling. It's worse when the other individual is a man. Then I can't even handle small talk, I just wobble and smile, which is way more creepy, "watch out for that one, she likes the Wobbling Room. Best keep your distance."

The thing is this stuff works. Easy to poke a little fun, but I've noticed a huge difference. And without any need for medicine. I had real pain in my hips, neck and back for a while, but now I hardly have any. After only a few weeks of adjustments I began to feel like a new person.  Like the Tin Man after a few dabs of oil I could move with such freedom, such ease, and suddenly eager to link arms with Dorothy and Brainless to brave the flying monkeys. But you must submit to the program, there are no shortcuts. It can be humbling and weird, but you grow accustomed to your little tribe of weirdos you see every week, and together you wobble, hang your heads, do the stairclimber thingy with one arm raised, whatever it takes to be free of pain and stay that way.

I'm amazed what we will submit to to be free of pain. But yet its so hard to submit wholly to Christ. He promises freedom, peace, joy, life to the full, and yet the day to day time I need to spend with him sometimes gets forgotten. Why? The sad human condition of selfishness and laughable self-reliance. Slowly, I become hunched, rusted, more and more immobilized by encroaching sin and selfishness. And only when it hurts too much, well then I'm screaming for that oil can. Living for self leads to death. Our resurrection has been bought at the highest price. Not only to be saved, but it was for freedom Christ has set us free, and the only thing required is complete surrender under His hand. Continually I pray for the fog to remain lifted, and that God would not allow my deceiving heart to lead me back into bondage. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

"If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it." Matthew16:24,25