Reminder from a Jammed Pinky

"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, 
though many, are one body, so it is with Christ...

If one member suffers, all suffer together; 

if one member is honored, all rejoice together. 
Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it."

- 1 Corinthians 12

Last Sunday at pickup ultimate, I jammed my right pinky pretty bad. A picture I took of it the day after it happened is below.

My jammed pinky...look how fat it is!

I was hoping that it would heal up completely by today, but it's still a little swollen and pretty sore. And it's amazing how this impacted my entire game. It hurt a little bit catching the disc one-handed, so I tried to catch everything pancake, and had extremely low confidence and energy in getting one-handed grabs. I dropped a sweet layout that I should had. Because it was on my throwing hand, my confidence in my forehand, which already kind of sucks, also dropped. My intensity on defense which I pride myself in just wasn't there today. I think I was unwilling to stick out my hand in the fear of having it get hurt. All in all, I played a lot more lethargic than I usually play (maybe it had to do with my late night snack of pretzels and peanut butter too).

Anyone who's ever sustained any sort of sports injury knows that the injury really affects the whole person. I've sprained my ankles pretty seriously a few times, and after you sprain one ankle, the other ankle starts to get sore from the heavy load from walking. Eventually the knees start hurting too, as the body really isn't used to walking without an ankle. The weight of walking is no longer evenly distributed, and after a little bit, you really get the sense that your entire lower half is just exhausted and hurting from limping for so long.

My experiences from sprained ankles have always been how Paul's picture of the one body, many parts has been validated for me. But today, I got another great reminder that no matter how small and insignificant a part of the body may seem, when it suffers, the whole body suffers. I was really surprised at how my jammed pinky, which shouldn't affect my game that much, changed my entire play style and really dropped my level of play today. The Bible is right (surprise, surprise) that when one member of the body suffers, all the members suffer together, and I need to make more of an effort to seek out the other members of the body that may be suffering, however seemingly insignificant, and encourage them and lift them up and honor them.

Related post on ultimate (that I should update):
My One Haunting College Decision