Crippling Self Protection

In the end of May 2000, I ran down Mount Yonah with a seventy pound pack on my back and a 240B machine gun in my hands. My squad was at the end of the line of Ranger School candidates traipsing down the mountain to the bus waiting to take us back to Camp Merrill near Dahlonega, Georgia.

My black combat boots land hard on the broken trail. My often-injured ankles had gotten worse and worse throughout the training so I paid close on the ground beneath me wary of a rock or root. I looked up for a moment at the man in front of me to make sure that I wasn't too close to him or in danger of falling back.

I don't know if I landed on something or if my injured left ankle just flopped inward on it's own. Either way, the outside edge of the sole of my boot struck the path first and my ankle snapped. Ligaments and tendons tore under the pressure. A sharp pain tore through my body. I landed hard on the forest floor.

My classmates helped me up. I grabbed my weapon, put on my pack, and hopped on my right leg back down the trail. Two days later, my right knee gave out from the added stress of dragging around my left leg.

The knee healed on its own. The swelling in the ankle didn't go down for months. The podiatrist didn't think I'd ever walk again without a brace. Eventually I did. Surgery followed and then hours of physical therapy. After a few years of healing, I was even able to hike and go on the occasional run, wrapped in protective braces.

But by the summer of 2005, a constant pain had returned to my ankle. It was getting hard to walk. I'd seen VA doctor in the spring, but the only surgical option remaining was to fuse the ankle bones together. I wanted to avoid that at all possible costs, so I wore my brace more often and began to shop for canes. Slowly getting used to that new reality.

One day, I read a newspaper article about barefoot running, and then I saw a similar article in an outdoor magazine. The proponents of barefoot running described how all of the protection of modern shoes, ankle braces, etc. were actually help injure feet and joints by forcing unnatural movements and preventing ankles from developing natural stability on their own. Pavel Tsatsouline, the Russian fitness guru whose inspired the kettlebell explosion, made similar arguments about the dangers of overprotective footwear in his books.

That summer I began working out with barefeet. It wasn't much of a start. Just a few runs on a sandy dirt road below the Elkhorn Mountains. Soon after, I picked up a pare of Vibram Five Fingers to allow me to bring barefoot-style workouts in the gym. It's hard to overstate how much my injured ankle improved when I quit wearing the shoes and braces that were designed to protect them.

The day-to-day pain almost completely went away. Beyond walking without a limp, I was able to activities that I'd resigned myself to never being able to do again. I still have to be careful about overworking that ankle. It'll never be quite the same that it was, but it's been several years since I walked in a store and sized up canes. That wouldn't have been the case if I hadn't decided to stop using some of the protections that I thought were essential.

It's hard to imagine how many times I've had to relearn that lesson in my life and I continue to relearn it. Every injury, great or small, creates a defense mechanism. It doesn't take long for that defense mechanism to become more dangerous than the injury it was designed to prevent.

How many times have we isolated ourselves to protect our hearts. Over-planned our lives to protect from the unexpected. Walled off our faith to protect from it from hurtful challenges and judgments. Numbed ourselves to hide from guilt and grief.

At some point, we have to stop. To put down our guard and experience life - pain and all.

                                                                     ****

William James - "It is only by risking ourselves from one hour to another that we live at all."


NOTE: Please consider making a donation to my team at Montana's NAMIWalk to help us support, educate, and advocate for people who live with serious mental illness and their families. I'm biased, but I really believe it's a great cause. http://namiwalks.nami.org/mattkuntz Thank you!

Reflections Hiding the Depths

I stood on three inches of inflatable surfboard above the Missouri River. My shirt and shorts dripped from falling off before I got the board's air pressure right. The paddle in my hands and the current below pushed forward along of the seven and a half miles from Holter Dam towards Craig Bridge. 

Mountains rise up on each side of the river. They're covered by a mix of dark pine trees, jagged gray cliffs, and prairie grasses. Pelicans fly sorties over fly fisherman. The river reflects the image of mountains as dark curtains opening up to the reflection of the scattered clouds above. Eddies bob and swirl atop the reflected mountains and sky.

The water is deep and slow at the beginning of the float. The current barely moves.  The Missouri's depth hides the bottom from view. The river grows shallower as it crosses around the bend.  The sun pushes through the clouds to illuminate the rocks, sand and weed beds beneath the water's surface. Rainbow and brown trout chase each other across my field of vision.

The sun pulls back behind a cloud. The river bottom disappears as the surface of the Missouri regains the reflection of the sky and mountains above. The wind comes up from the north.  Ripples rise over the water.  The board  shifts under me. I struggle to paddle against the headwind. My legs quiver. My muscles in my back strain with each stroke.

The combination of wind and clouds hid my view of the depths below. It didn't matter. The awkward combination of trying to balance on a shifting board while paddling had my full attention. The river could have turned neon green and I might not have noticed.


Then the wind calmed, the sun slipped out from the clouds. My gaze returned to the river bottom and the fish that danced above it. The sun, the clouds, the depth, and the wind continued to shift my view of the river from reflection of sky, to inky blue, and then greenish river bottom. 


By the end of the ride, I was thinking about how similar those changing views are of our views on life and sacred reality. There are moments in life where it is nearly impossible not to see the outline of the Divine Hand. There are also moments, hours, weeks, and even months where the view is obscured by the distractions of life and the tasks at hand. 

These varying levels of spiritual insight are natural part of the Way and there can be a tremendous amount of power in the moments our vision stops at the surface. The letters of Mother Theresa of Calcutta demonstrate that this incredible woman of faith lived in spiritual darkness from the founding of her Missionaries of Charity in 1949 until her death in 1997. Mother Theresa's struggle to maintain her faith against the darkness was one of the most inspiring acts of spiritual endurance of the 20th century.

Most of us will not experience the darkness of the spiritual struggle on anywhere near the level of a mystic like Mother Theresa, but we will all experience it.  We need to see that darkness that spiritual blindness as an opportunity to demonstrate our faith. To continue forward against the challenges until we fight ourselves back beneath the glow of the Creator's divine light.

For without spiritual darkness, we would never be able to demonstrate that we meet the standard Jesus described in John: 20:31, "Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed."


NOTE: I wanted to include one more quote from Mother Theresa, but couldn't figure out a way to tie it into the post. "My dear children - without our suffering, our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the redemption." What a remarkable woman. You can read more about her spiritual struggle in the book Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.

If you have a minute, please sign/share this web petition to the Secretary of the Army John McHugh to help injured soldiers access service dogs. Your help could make a big difference. Thank you!