Healed

“So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” ⁷ Then the man got up and went home.” Matthew 9:6b-7

This really happened to me. I swear (if I need to).

In the early 2000’s, I was happily working as a Pastor in downtown Oakland, a perfect place and a perfect, diverse community for me to serve. And then it hit. One day, a pain developed in my lower left jaw. Of course, I went to the dentist to have him take a look, to get the toothache taken care of. I arrived in the doctor’s office early one Saturday morning, and methodically, he numbed one tooth after another in my mouth, and methodically, we both waited for me to announce that the pain was gone. He was looking for the culprit, the one tooth that was causing me pain.

After several hours in the dentist’s chair (and have I mentioned that I cringe even now at the thought of needles?), we both ascertained that the pain in my jaw was not caused by a tooth. There.

And so I was left to go about my life for almost a year and a half, living with the pain that had mysteriously arrived and mysteriously stayed.

I tried massage – neck massage, back massage. The pain persisted. One day, I made an appointment with a Rosen Method therapist, a woman in Berkeley whose work I admired and trusted. Miriam was working on me that day – she had her hands on me -and as she worked, I began silently to pray: “please Jesus, help me!”

Miriam stopped moving her hands and stepped back from the table. “I don’t know why I haven’t thought of this before,” she said. “but have you tried Feldenkreis work?”

Like most of you – I suspect – I had not heard of Feldenkreis work. But I left Miriam’s office that day with the name and phone number of an acquaintance of hers who lived in another city in the Bay Area. And that afternoon, I called and made an appointment with Iren.

I arrived in Iren’s office for my appointment, not knowing what to expect. First she had me walk through the short hall from her reception area to the room where she did her work as she watched. Then she had me – fully clothed – lay on the low massage table in a small room where she worked. She set to work on me as I lay quiet, not hoping, not expecting any particular result.

As she worked, Iren was silent. At one point, though, she stood up straight from her work position, bending over me to methodically move one part of my body, then another. As she stood: “I can help you,” she said.

I made another appointment. I was looking forward to traveling to Paris with Jeff in a couple of weeks, and I made one appointment a week with Iren in the weeks coming up to the day of the trip.

At the last session before my trip, as she worked on me, we were both silent. And when the time for the session was ended, Iren said to me: “Now, go and enjoy Paris!”

I did. Jeff and I did enjoy Paris together. And I was pain free for the first time in many months. And the pain, the mysterious pain, has not returned. Ever.

photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, Art Museum of Estonia, Tallin, Estonia, 2024.