Muscles CrampING!!

I have been working really, really hard for several weeks.  Sometimes I am holding sanders, sometimes, sandpaper, sometimes screwdrivers, sometimes saws and sometimes drills.  I am in awkward positions.  I don’t take any breaks.

Consequently, after a nice shower, I fall into bed exhausted.  It is a good feeling, but two or three hours later it is NOT so good.  I wake to cramping muscles.  Occasionally my hands cramp, but mostly it is my legs and even my feet.  I have studied cramping and even published a couple of papers on the subject.  I know how to slow exercise-induced cramping. Clearly I do NOT know how to prevent cramps.

The good part is that I get a particular “pre-cramp” feeling.  When that odd feeling comes on a muscle, I know I need to do something to head-off a full-blown cramp.  It is a good thing to head them off, my younger friends, because there are VERY painful.

The odd thing I discovered, and counter-intuitive, is that when a cramp is coming, in this particular situation, the ideal   I would have thought that as soon as the muscle is to… CONTRACT the muscle!  What?  Logic says to relax it, but practice says to work it a bit.  In fact it seems a bit odd that the typically onset of the pre-cramping is after I have been asleep a while!  I would have expected them much sooner.

There is a lesson for life in my cramps.  Pain can come when you least expect it.  The best response to pain may be counter-intuitive.  And, it may be that when we feel the pain approaching, we OUGHT to count it all joy (James 1:2).  Sometimes our intuition is WRONG!

Yep, it’s important to realize that intuition is NOT trustworthy.  The only trustworthy thing is G^d, and G^d alone.