Stress Fractures - Softcover

Swindoll, Charles R. And Larry R. Libby

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0880703741 ISBN 13: 9780880703741

Publisher: Multnomah, 1990

Synopsis

Offers biblical perspectives and healing for the stress of everyday living and culture's moral and spiritual pressures. The author argues that more than anything else, we need God's perspective in our daily lives, to catch a fresh glimpse of our status, resources, defences and destiny.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

If you feel like the pressure of life will break you in two, Stress Fractures offers a way out of the heat, noise, and confusion of life in the '90s. You don’t have to let your life be defined by the pressures of panic, adversity, pain, or suffering. And you don't have to hide your injured heart under a crumbling façade or cover up your weakness with false bravado. Instead, you can discover your place as a child of God, and enjoy the comfort and rest He offers to those who seek Him with their whole heart. Inspirational readings show you that leisure, hope, trust, peace, and God's assurance of unconditional love and acceptance offer real answers for the pressures you face every day. Chuck Swindoll says, "Your stress fractures don’t have to go on hurting, to cope with the pressure you've been enduring. You don't have to push yourself until something snaps with a sickening crack." Stress Fractures brings God's perspective into your daily life and offers relief from the stress that injures the mind, the heart, and the spirit.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Introduction
My editor, Larry Libby, had just finished two weeks of intensive computer work on the book you now hold in your hands. Secreted away in a tiny office off his garage, he leaned back in his chair as the orange of an Oregon sunset splashed through a narrow, cobwebbed window. He was pleased with his labors—compiling, sorting, checking, and double-checking. The manuscript was completed, and on deadline. All that was left now was to make a backup copy and take it to the office.
What he had intended to do was erase some old files on the disks and make room for the new files he had labeled "STRESS." That’s what he intended. But that’s not what he did.
Instead, he typed in a command that erased the whole book.
Are you sure? the computer asked him. Yes, he was sure.
As quick as a click, it was gone. All of it. Two weeks of work, including a Saturday when he could have flown a kite with his kids. Two weeks of peering into the amber glow of a computer screen. Two weeks of honing, fine-tuning, and formatting. Gone with the wind. Gone to that twilight zone where all erased computer messages exist in perpetual limbo.
He stared dumbly at the screen, like a calf staring at a new gate.
And then Larry got sick.
Desperately, he lunged at the keyboard and hammered in a directory command, to see what remained on the disk. Other than one single, mocking message, the screen was as clean as an early morning snowy field. The message on his screen simply said, STRESS: NO FILE FOUND.
My friend was experiencing a stress fracture.
Consult a medical book, and it will tell you that stress fractures have to do with microscopic cracks in bones. Consult an engineering manual, and it will tell you that stress fractures have to do with hidden, hairline fissures in bridges and pillars and foundations. Consult your daily life, however, and you’ll acknowledge that the constant stress and pressure you’ve been enduring has produced fractures of an entirely different sort.
You’re hurting, and you can’t explain why.
You have wounds, but you couldn’t say where.
You’re desperate for help and healing, but you have no idea where to find it.
You feel so pressed and pulled, you begin to wonder if you’ll break in two and drop like one of those engines on a DC-10.
Stress fractures.
The medical definition offers some insight. Stress fractures occur, says Black’s Medical Dictionary, after an undue amount of exercise ... "an amount of exercise which an individual is not capable of coping with in his or her state of training. The main feature is pain over the affected bone. This is usually insidious in onset, and worse at night...."1
A Sports Illustrated article painted the picture this way: "A stress fracture begins when the shocks and strains of playing game after game create microscopic cracks in the outer layers of bone—usually in the legs and feet. If the pounding continues and those tiny crevices, which often go undetected, aren’t allowed to heal, they can enlarge. When the cracks become large enough to cause pain, they are stress fractures."
Breaks in bones are painful, but can they match the ache of a fractured spirit ... or a broken heart? Perhaps you’ve felt that kind of pain recently. A pain that lies deep. A pain that haunts you through the day and throbs into the night.
Some people try to deaden the pang with chemicals or booze ... or try to silence its insistent voice with loud music or constant noise and activity. Ah, but in those rare moments of silence, when the music is gone and the crowd is quiet, it comes right back, doesn’t it?
Did you ever think of that pain as a friend? As a warning?
"On November 7, 1986, 12,666 people in Portland’s Memorial Coliseum saw Sam Bowie catch the ball at the low post on the right side of the key, pivot and go up for a jump shot. As Bowie left the floor, those sitting near the court heard a sickening crack. By the time he landed, his right shinbone was all but sticking through his skin."
Bowie had a stress fracture that suddenly became a compound fracture. He’d ignored the dull pain in his right leg for weeks, knowing how NBA coaches and owners tend to look unsympathetically at high-paid athletes who complain of injuries that don’t show up on an X-ray. Big Sam’s neglect, however, ended his season ... and might have ended his career.
Let me pass along some good news. Your stress fractures don’t have to go on hurting. You don’t have to turn to noise, drugs, alcohol, or an extra-marital affair to cope with the pressure you’ve been enduring. You don’t have to push yourself until something snaps with a sickening crack.
This book has some answers that cannot fail to bring you relief. I make that statement with confidence, not because of this author’s ability, but because of the unfailing, infallible source from which I draw. I speak of our great and gracious God and His eternal Word, the Bible.
Just as there is purpose in your fractures, there is also peace in your future, my friend. Peace and encouragement and perspective and a hope big enough to carry you along from this very day through the rest of your life. It’s all in His Word, and it’s there for you.
No fracture is too deep for Him to detect or too hidden for Him to heal.
Chuck Swindoll

About this edition

• Publisher: Multnomah
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0880703741
• ISBN 13: 9780880703741
• Binding: Paperback