As those of you who’ve made it through to the afterword of God’s Not Dead (And Neither Are We) know, a few years ago I had surgery on my left arm to alleviate ulnar nerve entrapment, this going along with carpal tunnel surgery on my left hand. The latter condition was primarily due to the former, although the uncounted thousands of hours I’ve spent tapping away at computer keyboards over the decades certainly contributed. One of these days I’ll need to have the right hand sliced and diced in a similar fashion. But I digress; back to the left I go (that’s physically, not politically).
The primary symptom of ulnar nerve entrapment is weakening of the affected arm in general and the hand connected to said arm in particular. This leads to attempting to compensate whenever working with the hand in question by squeezing tighter, longer and harder than would normally be the case. Now, combine that with the thousands of hours spent in the days of my youth and after playing guitar, thus constantly using my hand fretting the strings… you get the idea.
What wound up happening was that an additional symptom of ulnar nerve entrapment, this being the numbing of the little finger on up through the other digits whenever any kind of additional pressure was placed on the nerve via such moments in time as, say, tensing up due to stress — not that I would ever do such a thing (brief pause here for gales of derisive laughter before continuing) — began cropping up. I had endured brief spells of this since high school, but now it was setting in for the long haul with symptoms lasting several weeks at a time. Feeling left out of the fun, the carpal tunnel decided it wanted some attention, thus grabbing a stiletto and having at it. I tried my best to convince the stabbing pains to merge with the numbness just a couple of inches away so as to form a more palatable union of mere pain, but no soap. No relief, either. Off to the doctor, who set up an appointment with a specialist who expertly wielded the nerve conduction probes. The look of shock on her face the moment she made the first test and said this was one of the worst cases she had ever seen was something to behold. Hardly comforting, but it did explain much.
In the preceding few years I had gradually stopped playing guitar, enough so to the point where more than once I considered selling my dust collectors and being done with it. The reason wasn’t the nerve damage, at least not initially. I had learned how to deal with that to a point. Rather, it was frustration over never having “made it” as a musician coupled with admittance why this was. I was a decent songwriter, but not great. I was a passable guitarist and singer, but no great shakes. Finally and most important, I had frittered away two decades plus daydreaming about appearing on the stage instead of actually getting off my happy self and working toward that goal. To play now was little more than an embittering reminder of my own failure. So I stopped.
This allowed what little strength I had in my left hand to rapidly dissipate, so much so that on those few occasions when I did attempt to make music I discovered I was unable to so much as push the string down on the fret. Any string. On any fret. A sobering discovery. It was bad enough that I wouldn’t play guitar. Now I couldn’t.
I pulled out the couple of cassettes I had laying around documenting assorted home recording sessions, filed them under nostalgia, and thought even more about selling my equipment. Why have hanging around the house stuff I couldn’t use? Why keep mementos of what never was and would never be?
Never did get rid of any of it, though.
Why?
Somewhere inside, deep inside, I wanted to play again. Not for the sake of futile dreams, but for the sake of playing itself and the sense of peace it brought doing my best to speak God’s language. In short, the reason I had started playing in the first place, which somewhere along the line had been misplaced in favor of misguided pursuit of the spotlight.
After the surgery, which the doctor informed me was more complicated than he had originally anticipated (so that’s why I had a scar that would make a MMA fighter blanch) , I didn’t think about playing again much. Frankly, I was petrified of re-injuring the now repaired area and having to go though it all again. Finally, a few months later I screwed my courage to the sticking place, opened a case, and pulled out a guitar.
I could play.
Not well, to be certain; the rust was thicker than on a mothballed battleship. But I had the ability to play. Which was, after all, the idea.
Oddly enough, I didn’t start playing regularly again. Or perhaps not that oddly; I was a busy blogging bee at the time, and shortly thereafter the book’s initial spark came into existence. It became the priority, and any time spent not working on it was drenched with guilt. My music would have to wait.
It’s pretty much done waiting. I’m playing regularly again. Be it the folk music I grew up loving whenever I grab my acoustic or reflective blues-flavored rock/power pop on electric, it’s becoming a nightly habit to shut everything else off and play. I wouldn’t dream of taking myself out in my current playing shape and attempting to perform anywhere; give me a minimum of three months intensive practice first. But it’s my music, and when I’m playing I feel tremendous peace.
I like that.
