The 12 Days of Chirstmas - Day 7

Tend to Your Temple

Erin Miller

1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.

For years, I hated exercise. I hated the sweat, the fatigue, the coordination it took, the whole thing. Nothing about it was for me.

And then I got sick. Very sick. I couldn’t eat anything without searing pain in my stomach that would literally leave me in tears on the floor for a few hours until my body had fully digested whatever I ate. As the pain dulled, I would slip into sleep of exhaustion. I lost a lot of weight, relative to my size. I couldn’t go to classes in my grad school program. I couldn’t go to work.
Test after test came back negative. Blood tests were just the beginning. Every doctor looked at every part of my digestive system trying to find some source of the pain. Nothing. “You’re fine!” they’d say. Yeah, right!

One night all of this happened and I also felt like I couldn’t breathe. The air felt thick and my shirt felt tight. My roommate said to me, “I know what this is!” It began my long journey toward overcoming an anxiety disorder.

One of the first steps toward healing for me was to find myself a physical outlet for my stress. “Oh joy,” I thought, “I just love exercise.” By happenstance, I tried a yoga class that was offered for free.

And there it was. The place where my spirit, my mind, and my body connected to find hope. I walked out of that room, bought a membership to the class, and have barely missed a session since that day about 4 years ago. It has become what keeps me together.

The word “yoga” means “union.” It is the place where the body and the spirit are to unite to find God. When I match my breath to the movements of my body, I find healing. I find a silence where God can speak through the breath – the pneuma – the spirit. In Greek, these are all the same word – the wind, the spirit, the breath. As my body finds strength, my soul is strengthened. As I put my hands in prayer position, my heart cries out to my God. As my breath gets tired, I am reminded that the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. In those moments, my body is quite literally a temple – the place where God and I commune.

In the busyness of this season don’t neglect your exorcise routine.