Whipped

This might be hard to visualize, but bear with me.

I was doing an in-home workout just now. For Christmas, I received exercise tubing—three several-foot-long rubber tubes with handles on each end. The three are different thicknesses, meaning the thicker ones offer more stretching resistance than the thinner ones. So, by mixing combinations of the three together, I can vary the “weight” of my “lifts.”

Anyway, to do a bench press-like exercise, I thread the tubes through a device which attaches to a door. One does this by closing the door on the device. A thicker portion remains outside the door and a thinner portion passes through the crack between the door and the frame.

This method has almost always been fool-proof. Until today. Today, when I set up my “bench press” on a door I’d never used before and as I pressed the handles away from myself for my first rep, my bare back was greeted violently with high-velocity tubing and a loosed door-harness device.

I immediately screamed, swore and cursed the crappy door for letting lose from its shut position. I proceeded to check my back in the mirror to assess the damage. Welts only; no cuts.

I then thought about Christ, who bore the nine-tails and by whose stripes we are healed. And I realized my pain wasn’t so great anymore.