BitterSweetLife

Last night, around 11 p.m., I was riding home from Saint Louis in the back seat of an old Toyota with the feeling that the Italian seafood I'd eaten for dinner had not helped the atmosphere of viva la revolucion in my stomach. Since I don't like monotonous suffering, I prayed that God would fix my stomach and digestive tract. Then I watched the stars go by overhead. I listened to the muffled roar of the tires, which drowned out any conversation happening in the front seat. Eventually I gave the time-honored fetal position a try, which is the only way you can (hypothetically) stretch out in the back of a small car.

I think I had a brief, ultra-lite doze, the kind where you find yourself looking at something--in this case, out the window--and ask, Was I asleep, or did I just blink?

Apparently I had fallen asleep, because the interior walls of my gut had stopped fighting each other. All I felt was a mild fizzing. Recoveries like this don't happen in the time it takes to blink.

I have this long-standing discussion with God about my physical condition, so I took the opportunity to let him know that this was a good start, a fantastic start, but he still had an open invitation to fix other parts of my body that are displaying planned obsolesence way too early.

There was a happy, bubbling levity in my stomach, and I wondered if it would surge up my spinal column like a restorative elixir, splash over my shoulder blades like a wave and cascade down, frothing through striated muscle to my waist, streaming to my knees, foaming between the meninsci, smoothing the cartilage to infant glass. It didn't happen, but I guess it could.

A quiet stomach is a good place to start, but I want more.
I want a stomach that runs like a hemi V8, always.
I want to trade in my vertebrae, which are essentially the vertebrae of an 80-year-old woman, for new ones.
I want knees that work like Aidan's, not like rusted-out hinges.
I want my fast-twitch quickness and my full vertical leap back.
But I want more than that. Much more.

I want a new body. Not only refurbished, but indestructible. No more wincing and tripping and aching and creaking. Permanently new.

Fortunately, that day is coming.