This afternoon I saw my upper cervical care doctor, and we talked about the healing process. Thinking about the sinus infection I’ve been fighting for the last three weeks, I said, “I could use a little pep talk.”

“How long have you been coming here?” he said.

“Two months,” I replied.

“Okay,” he said. “Hang in there. There’s a reason you’re not on a two-month plan. [I’m on a twelve-month plan.]”

Then he showed me a “road to recovery” graph drawn by one of the people who developed upper cervical care (I think). “The top, mostly horizontal line is normal health,” he said. Then he pointed to a line that dipped significantly downward and said, “This was your health before coming here. Things would improve now and then, but overall they were headed south.”

Into the valley of the shadow of death, I thought.

Next he pointed to the bottom of the valley, where the declining line began to slowly climb upwards back to normal (as indicated by the–eekk–“exceptional chronic case” line below). “At two months we’ve got you going in the right direction,” he said, “but you’re still down here. Your posture’s changed because we’ve forced it to. [Get a linebacker to twist your neck around* and see if your body doesn’t respond.] You’re seeing improvements, but it usually takes three to four months for your nervous system to begin working and integrating with your immune system. THAT’S when we typically see the most dramatic results, and that’s when YOU should notice a difference in your sinuses and things like that.”

Fingers crossed.

*To be fair to my doctor, this isn’t exactly what happens. For an in-depth and less dramatic description of what DOES happen, read here.

So I’ve thinking about this graph this evening, about being in the valley of the shadow of death. Not just in health terms, but also in symbolic terms. What I mean is that there are so many times in our lives when things are going down, down, down, getting darker and darker and darker. Like we would if we were playing a game of limbo, we think, How low can I go? But then by some grace we reach–to borrow a phrase I used yesterday–a turning point. One day we see a therapist, get a new doctor, pick up a book, start a class, or hell, get married or divorced. Regardless, we think, Okay, I may not be out of the woods yet, but at least I’m not going any deeper into them.

Having struggled with sinus issues for decades, I can’t tell you how much I HOPE that one day they will be a thing of the past. Or at least be less frequent, more manageable. Technically, I guess they are. Despite the fact that they’ve reared their ugly heads (in my head) lately, they’re not as bad as they used to be. Still, my point is that for all my hoping, I also find the notion that they COULD be significantly better a little hard to believe. Just because that hasn’t been my experience. Ugh. It’s the damndest thing. We WANT better health, better relationships, better finances, and yet it’s difficult to truly envision them for ourselves because we naturally project that our future will be not all too dissimilar from our past. This is why we NEED others who are NOT where we are but are rather where we want to be to keep reminding us that other realities are possible, that–I promise–your viewpoint will change when you’re not in the valley.