Flowers Fade Friday: Semi-Permanent

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you might recall that I have been in extreme pain this week. Micah and I went to a fitness class called “boot camp” at our gym on Sunday night and by Monday morning I was already aching like mad. By the afternoon I could barely stand up, sit down, or get out of my car. I even had to put my hands on the toilet seat {!!!} to lower myself down. I know that’s too much information, but it’s the truth. At least it was my own bathroom, which I keep fairly clean.

At one point in the day, I tweeted my college roommates to remind them of the only other time I’ve experienced this type of post-workout pain… the night we decided to do lunges all the way around our block. The aftermath was hands-on-the-toilet-seat painful. And one of them tweeted me back to say that lunges were the second worst decision of her life… the first being when she gave her hair to Locks of Love and walked out of the salon {in tears} with a mushroom haircut {which was somewhere between a bob and bowl cut… I was there as a witness.}

Now bear with me as I share with you a tangent of my mind after this tweet. This is where I transition from aching muscles to hair dye to the Gospel. I began thinking that in all reality, my aching muscles from boot camp are only temporary. Hopefully, they will be gone by the time this post is published. Although I am in extreme pain right now, it will be over in a day or two, kind of like temporary hair dye that comes out with one or two washes.

Then I thought of Camille’s mushroom haircut as semi-permanent, like the kind of hair dye that gradually fades out over the course of 6-8 weeks. It didn’t go away quite a quickly as my achy muscles; she had to deal with the awkward length for a few months as it grew out {and those months included lots of photographs as we were bridesmaids in our other roommates’ weddings that summer!}.

Then I began to think about what permanent pain looks like. Losing a limb or becoming a burn victim were the first things to come to mind {my mind is weird…}

And then I stopped myself. Amputation and burns are not permanent. They are semi-permanent too. Sure, they last longer than a bad hair cut or a broken arm, but they are not permanent.

Nothing painful is permanent. No trial is lasting.

That is the hope of the Gospel. All injuries, sicknesses, sad circumstances, deformities… all are semi-permanent because of Christ. One of my favorite promises of the Bible says that… 

I had to put my mind in check during this tangent. My perspective can be so inaccurate sometimes. The apostle Paul says it best…