Most Of What They Suggest I Cannot Do

You read to the end of the list anyway.

That is the part I want to start with. You knew by the second item that none of it applied to you, and you read all nine, right down to the bottom, the way a person reads a menu in a language they do not speak.

And then you closed it and did not feel anything much, because you have done that so many times now that it does not produce a feeling any more. It is just a thing that happens when you read something about moving your body.

Every one of those lists assumes a body that does what it is told.

They assume you can stand for a while. They assume that if something hurts you can work around it and it will be over. They assume there is a version of tomorrow in which you feel roughly like this, so that a plan is a sensible thing to make.

None of that is true for you, and it has not been true for a long time, and the assumption is so deep in everything written about this that nobody ever states it, which means nobody has ever had to defend it.

So I want to say plainly who this article is for. It is for the person that every other article on this subject silently leaves out.

And I want to say what I am not going to do, because you will be waiting for it.

I am not going to name anything about your body. Not a condition, not a cause, not a likely reason. I do not know and I would be guessing and a guess dressed up as insight is worse than silence.

I am not going to suggest you try harder, push through, or that movement is medicine. You have heard that from people who meant well and it cost you something.

And I am not going to tell you what will help. I do not know what will help you and neither does anybody writing a list of nine things.

My strength is made perfect

There is a sentence Paul is given about a body that does not work the way he wants, and the shape of the answer is the useful part.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. (2 Corinthians 12:9, King James Version)

My strength is made perfect in weakness.

Now the first thing to notice is the thing that does not happen in that passage.

He asked three times for it to be taken away. Three times, which is not a passing mention, it is a man who kept coming back. And it was not taken away, and the answer he was given was not an explanation and not a promise that it would go later.

The answer was that grace is sufficient. Which is a statement about now, about the situation as it actually is, with the thing still in it.

That matters because almost everything else you get handed about your body is about later. Later you will feel better. Later you will be able to. Do this now so that later. And later is exactly the thing you cannot count on and have stopped planning around.

This verse does not go there. It is entirely about the present tense, in a body that is not going to be different tomorrow.

And made perfect in weakness is not a consolation about being weak. Perfect there means brought to its full working. It is a statement that the strength has its complete effect in exactly the circumstance you are in, rather than in spite of it or after it.

You are in the circumstance where grace is described as sufficient, and it has never once been a statement about how you will feel later. Second Corinthians 12:9 answers a man who asked three times without removing the thing or explaining it, and the Holy Spirit is the one whose power is described as resting on somebody exactly here.

Two minutes, and it does not have to add up

Here is the practical part, and it is small deliberately.

You do not need a plan. Plans require a predictable body and you do not have one, and every plan you have ever tried has ended with you failing at something that was never designed for you in the first place.

What is available is much smaller and it is not nothing.

One movement, that does not hurt, for two minutes.

Sitting, if sitting is where you are. Lying down, if that is where you are. Moving one arm. Turning your head slowly. Opening and closing your hands. Rolling your ankles. Whatever your body will do today without objecting.

And here is the part that matters most: it does not have to add up to anything.

You are not building toward something. This is not week one. There is no progression and I am not going to ask you to do it again tomorrow, because tomorrow is not knowable and I am not going to write you a promise you might have to break.

Two minutes today. That is the entire assignment and it is complete in itself.

If tomorrow is a day where you cannot, then you cannot, and nothing has been lost, because there was no streak to break and no plan to fall off.

You are able to do one thing today that does not have to add up to anything, and it has never once needed to be the first week of a plan. The written word answers a body that did not change with a sufficiency for right now, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in two minutes that nobody is counting.