The Pros and Cons of Lifting Weights

Dear Reader,
            Thank you for joining me on the road to publication. In July, I’ll send out my first-ever periodic newsletter, Overcomers Journey with TAT, updating you on the status of my writing progress.
            I’m hoping this newsletter will help me connect with 1,000 people on several different social media platforms—readers who find deep-seated delight in my writing. The sooner I attain this goal, which is entirely attainable with your help, the sooner the agent I’m searching for will request my full manuscript and offer me representation.
            In the newsletters to come, I will always try to include not only a Personal News section but also three consistent non-writing topics. Most likely I’ll stick with a Medical Moment, since I practice family medicine, and a Humor section, since laughing feels so good. I haven’t settled on the third topic. Possibilities include Family Life, Athletics, Nature, Faith, Reading, or Song. What would you most like to see? Please, let me know in the comments.
            Because I wrestle daily with chronic pain, a ponderous current flows beneath the surface of everything I write. This Gulf Stream is my never-ending search for meaning through suffering. I hope to make something good come out of any hardship I experience or witness in others. If readers can find hope and purpose to overcome their difficulties because of my writing, then anything I endure, no matter how severe, bears good fruit, perhaps even eternal fruit. No hardship is wasted; everything has purpose.
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Weightlifting with TAT

            Are you wondering about the pros and cons of lifting weights? Let’s start with the cons.
            If you begin lifting weights, you will have new expenses, starting with food. My wife, Lori, and I had five teenagers at one time. One of them was a powerlifter who ate like three men. Every week, Lori bought the food for the family. Each time, she filled multiple carts at the grocery store. Dismayed cashiers frequently asked her what big event she was preparing for. “No event,” she said. “It’s just for our family.”
            “There are ways to solve that problem,” one cashier said, helpfully. Lori thanked her for the advice on contraception and paid the $400 bill.
            Various additional costs associated with lifting range from Olympic weights to gym memberships, from specialized clothes to creatine supplements, from competition entry fees to unexpected doctor visits.
            To make matters worse, those who lift weights tend to break things by accident. They crush their weightlifting benches, bend their squat bars, and knock holes in walls. As their strength increases, they ought to change the way they grip things, but they forget. They shatter drinking glasses with their bare hands. They rip handles off sinks, doors, and cars. They even tear railings out of walls in the stairway. In the routine course of life, they frequently squat down to pick something up and shred their last pair of pants beyond repair.
            Swimming becomes difficult for lifters. Prolonged treading of water is nearly impossible without floatation: their muscle density makes them sink.
            On the positive side, weightlifters can carry amazing loads. They lift lawnmowers with one hand. They carry pianos upstairs and drag stuck cars out of ditches. Medical doctors who lift weights discover they can take 200-pound patients out of their wheelchairs as if they were infants and set them properly on examining tables.
            One year, TAT had been lifting weights consistently when added strength came in handy in his medical office. A large woman had fallen in the walk-in clinic and could not get up. She was three times the size of most adults, so where she fell, there she lay, stuck against a wall. Several nurses tried to help her, but it was no use. They needed the fire department.
            “Where’s Thompson?” said one of the Nurse Practioners. “Bring him out of a room if you have to.” She knew TAT had been deadlifting and gotten a personal best just a few days before.
            TAT responded promptly. He was delighted to be needed, thrilled that all his lifting might finally do some earthly good. He approached the patient from the front, selected the locations for ideal foot placement, and chose the optimal site for grip beneath her arms.
            “You’re never going to be able to lift me,” the woman said, her chin up, her eyes wide, and her words breathy.
            “I can lift 500 pounds,” declared TAT, choosing certainty over doubt. It was a slight exaggeration, to say 500 pounds, but he didn’t mean to lie. He was rounding up from 475 and felt confident in his ability.
            The lifter bent to the flaccid load and raised her to her feet.
            The woman, now standing, turned her misty eyes upon the one who had lifted her from the floor.
            “Who are you?” she said.
            “That’s Doctor Thompson,” said the Nurse Practitioner.

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