White Collar Blues

My body was made for motion, not for sitting here all day at my desk. I should be hunting buffalo, walking behind a plow, riding a horse, building a barn, or felling a tree and digging up the stump.

But I’m here. Most of my friends at this moment are in the same position. Sitting. Body systems rebel. Veins, arteries, intestines, muscles, bladders, hearts, and lungs thrive with bodily movement and hard pumping blood. Sitting here, the whole body just gets clogged up.

Most of my friends cannot afford to do what they would really like to do. The rugged manual labor they desire cannot pay for mortgage, car, braces, clothes, and college. There is tragedy here. The economic system has us in its claws, and it won’t let go.

Vocationally, my brain is pitted against my body. My work is largely mental. I exercise dominion through thought - studying, writing, talking on the phone, praying, doing paper work, conversing at a restaurant. Frankly, I have great job. But my body gets the short end of the stick.

The paper piles up. It is my enemy. How do I love this enemy? It reproduces at night when I’m gone. One pile becomes two, two becomes four, and the tension builds. I end up carving out an entire day to attack the piles.

“You need more exercise,” the doctor says. “Your blood pressure is too high, your cholesterol is too high, your weight is too high.”

Fine, doctor. But when? Do I take time from my wife, my kids, or my employer? How do I do it all? How do I fit it all in, doctor?

I don’t want the never ending cycle of antibiotics for prostate infections, laxatives for constipation, aspirin for headaches, and antacids for indigestion. I don’t want to be flabby and sleepy from inactivity. I want to be strong, vigorous, and awake. I want to be energetic and productive.

I don’t want to die when I’m fifty five from clogged arteries. I don’t want to spend my last years undergoing chemotherapy for bowel cancer. I want to see my five daughters grow up. I want to know my grandkids, and maybe even my grandkids' kids. I want to have the wisdom of years. I want to keep learning how to be a good pastor, that is, if being a pastor doesn’t kill me.

Why can’t exercise be a part of my work? Why do I have to “find the time” to do it?

I know. Whining won’t help. I’m being a baby. I’m singing the blues, the white collar blues. I should count my blessings. I have a great job. It really couldn’t be better. I am stimulated, challenged, and encouraged. I am appreciated, loved, and valued. I have the rare privilege of actually wanting to attend the church that I pastor. There is no group of people I would rather be with.

But I still don’t want to croak from plaque build up. I still don’t want to have the muscle definition of a wet noodle. Where will I find the time to carve out an hour and a half a day to exercise? I don’t have the time. I don’t have the time not to. I must. Somehow.

I’ve been trying to walk/run four miles as many days as possible. Granted, it’s not felling trees and hunting buffalo, but it’s a start. I’m working on filling up several other hours of my week with similar activity. I hope it works. It has to.

I need to follow my own counsel. I need to remind myself that I too live in a fallen world. What are paper piles but modern day versions of thorns and thistles? Did I really think God would grant Joel Gillespie a personal exemption from the curse?

Though the system seems to have me by its claws, it has also brought good things my way for which I am very thankful, things like this computer, like the medicine that healed my daughter’s bronchitis, like electricity and phones and a warm place on a cold night, like angioplasty...

And maybe we can go buffalo riding in the New Heaven and New Earth. I hope so.