A Sole for my aching Soul

Between the broken toe that still hasn't healed (5 months later!), the swollen painful red ant bites, and now the many blisters from trying a slew of shoes hoping to find some that don't hurt, I read the email from Holly that told she was the second sister in a month to be felled by a ruptured achilles tendon. Poor Amy has been in her achilles boot for weeks.  My sister Wendy has nursed a tender achilles ready to rupture for years, and I had a complete achilles tendon rupture 22 years ago myself. That means every single sister in my family has had a ruptured or near ruptured achilles tendon now. What a legacy to pass on to our female offspring!

I stared at the shoes sitting by the back door, the somewhat comfortable shoes that look like duck feet on. Would those make the appropriate fashion statement at Law School day? Maybe if I wore my belly pack with them..... The information sheet on Law School Day for Family and Friends said dress was casual. Can casual be slightly modified to "frumpy and ugly"? Will the son whose first few words to his now-fiancee were, "My mom wears a belly pack," be mortified if I show up in a skirt and Ugg fleece lined pillow boots for law school day?

The folks who have normal feet cannot begin to understand the toils and struggles of us people (we people?) with compromised walking apparatus. Why can't anyone make a shoe that supports the arch, lifts the heel to relieve achille stress, is soft enough to never cause blisters, and makes me look like a movie star? Fashion and comfort in one simple shoe? Is it really so hard? This is the country that can split an atom, take photographs of planets a million miles away, and we can't find a single shoemaker capable of creating a pretty and comfortable shoe.  Forget solving world hunger or curing cancer- I think we need to be directing our bestest and brightest into cobbler school.

I know shoes are important to God as well. He references them often. He is continually telling folks in the Bible to remove their shoes in His presence as they are standing on Holy Ground. But He also understands the importance of a well made shoe. When He sent the Israelites on their 40 year journey through the wilderness, He not only provided daily manna from heaven  for them to eat, a cloud by day to lead them, a fire by night to guide them.... but He gave them sturdy shoes. My quest for the perfect haircut may not be totally of God, but the perfect shoe..... maybe that is.
Deuteronomy 29:5
During the forty years that I led you through the desert, your clothes did not wear out, nor did the sandals on your feet.