Asthmatic Christianity

So today I relearned the meaning of the body of Christ or the church body. While I did go to church this morning, I did not stay for the lesson. It seemed my lungs were on a different schedule. I enjoyed the wonders of breathing treatments and steroids, got thoroughly pumped up. Shaking with excitement if you will. In the meantime I have a friend who's in pharmacy school and has been studying asthma specifically. So she was overjoyed to tell me what she's been learning. Things like the fact that asthma isn't actually someone not being able to inhale; it's a problem of exhaling. So CO2 remains trapped in your lungs. Over time I had forgotten that but I was able to hold onto that when Friday's original attack turned into a relapse today. A reminder to me that yes there is air in my lungs. The new information hit me as well. You see, most people don't understand that the aftermath is just as miserable as the attack. They think we get a breathing treatment, breathe better and move on with our lives. However this is not the case. After the horrible trembling finally calms and you stopped feeling quite so much like you drank a gallon of espresso shots, your body starts to return to normal. Enter: fatigue and pain. Consider how you feel after a very extensive workout, how your muscles ache and are fatigued from work they aren't used to. That is the case with asthma. When your lungs and diaphragm aren't enough to cause normal functional breathing, the surrounding muscles in your stomach, chest, neck and back have to pick up the slack. They all have to tense and relax in an unfamiliar way to force air in and out of your lungs. So your lungs, which have no pain receptors, are not the source of pain but the surrounding muscles meeting demands they aren't generally intended for.
Sometimes in life the lungs aren't  working so well. Maybe they are just worn out or feeling excessively reactive to something. They may not have pain receptors but they have other signs to tell you something is wrong. Pain among other things is a warning sign. It's not just Gods way of saying wouldn't it be fun if I created pain? It's how we know something needs help. Now each part of the body has its own particular job or function and for the most part they do it without complaint. But when something is not fully functioning because it has been injured or compromised in some way, other body parts will begin to pick up the slack. They work with the struggling organ and take on the extra burden while it heals. Sometimes it really is just the other organs who feel the strain of the new set up. Sometimes the original one aches alone. Either way, they remain a single unit and always do their best to help each other. Because the physical body truly understands what it means to be a body. It knowws no other option. It was built to work together. To always do anything necessary to thrive. The organs do not complain that the one organ is injured, they may be tired and sore from new stress but they don't quit cause they want to. They don't willingly let the other fall. You see sometimes your organs are smarter than you. They know that with one injury everything is off balance. They know they need every single one to be the fully thriving form they were meant to be. They know the affect of the entire body, to have just one small part struggle. So no, I don't think of my neck or back as important figures in my breathing processes. But sometimes even your lungs need their support to get them through a full blown attack.