Your Body Is a Temple

Part of being confirmed in the Catholic Church is taking preparatory religious classes. One of these classes was Theology of the Body. When I was 16, taking this class was more of a check in the box so that I could get confirmed and get back to baseball after school. In hindsight, I was sining but I did actually learn a good bit from everything. Of course, I have a much more profound respect for the human body now. In theology of the body we were continuously told “your body is a temple”. I never really understood it... until I was forced to.

I grew up as a skinny, lanky kid. I had an athletic build and a stupidly fast metabolism. I had a decent respect for myself already. Throughout high school I played sports and stayed physical but it wasn’t until I went out on my own that I knew that I really needed to maintain and improve myself. I entered the military at a whopping 140 lbs. I had just turned 19 and I was pretty much a clean slate. I thought that Army Basic Training was an absolute joke. I suffered through it while maintaining my weight, which was actually easier. The skinny guys have it a bit easier there. Then I went into Airborne school to get my jump wings and become a Paratrooper. It’s a fairly simple Army School. In laments terms, it’s a lot of ‘crawl-walk-run’. It’s all repetitions, a lot of running and finally a bit of jumping out of a plane. There really wasn’t much time to work out or anything so not much changed. My next stop was RASP (Ranger Assessment and Selection Program). Truthfully I’m not going to try and describe everything with Ranger selection. My Ranger buddies understand. Essentially RASP is just a few months of “eat-shit-and-die”. The Rangers don’t want anyone that is mentally or physically weak to make it into their ranks so RASP is where they try to break you. I rolled with the punches and came out a better man. I was a little, banged-up, skinny Ranger but damn I was proud. 

When you get to your Ranger Battalion, you have to hit the ground running. You have to prove yourself every day and not much changes from RASP. I started working out like crazy but the Op-tempo was so rapid fire prepping for deploying that bettering my body was difficult. Then we deployed. I was on a small compound in Afghanistan and I got to use the gym at least three times a day. Both of my team leaders were gym-rats and I owe them a lot of thanks for getting my ass into shape. Ultimately, being in good shape saved my life. 

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Yeah, yeah kinda douchey... sue me. I’m just using it to compare with the bellow picture of sick Josh.

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Before I was shot, I was in the best shape of my life. Not just physically, but also mentally. I left Ranger Battalion after 4 years of Rangering when I fractured my neck and tore my labrum in my shoulder in a car wreck. I went to a different unit and I started going back to the gym 3 times a day. I was now 185 lbs of muscle and I had one single month left in the Army when my whole world flipped upside down. 

I was now a cripple. The first time that I realized “oh shit, I’m really paralyzed” was when my Battalion Commander visited me in the hospital and my drugged up mind said “salute him”. I couldn’t even lift my arm off of the bed. Well I guess that I am a clean slate again. 

A lot of people that are paralyzed have a hard time finding motivation. Well the Ranger in me said “fuck that”. I will never forget when my Command Sergeant Major visited me. He only came once. He walked in, looked me dead in the eyes and asked “when are you going to stop being a bitch and get your ass back in formation?”. Then he turned and walked out, probably headed back to Battalion to yell at someone for walking on the grass. It almost brought a tear to my eye. I was so proud and ready to get out of bed and back to my normal Army life. But this was a game of anatomy, and the spine is a real bitch. 

I now know more about my body than I would ever want to. I am really happy that I took such great care of my body before I was injured. I started losing body weight like crazy. I threw up almost daily and had no drive to eat because of it. Some of my paralyzed muscles had started atrophying. On top of all of that, I was becoming addicted to my painkillers. This is a tough one for me. 

I treated my body well. The only pain med that I had ever taken was simple ibuprofen. I jumped right from that into opiates and narcotics. This was some SCARY stuff. I was hooked before I even knew it. The closest feeling to being high that I had ever experienced before this was riding my Harley Davidson through the Olympic mountains. I tried to stay away from the junk for as long as I could but my neck was so mangled that I needed something. The bullet was working its way out of the back of my neck and it was excruciating. I told everyone that I was fine and after a few months, my doctor started weaning me off of the Dilotid. I was becoming so angry that this change was happening which was my first warning sign. I started to spread my doses out and lower them. The doctors knew what they were doing and before long I was bedridden, going through withdrawals. I was already so sick every day that I just thought something was going on with me. I had no idea that I was actually in the middle of withdrawals. I was ignorant of the fact that I was even craving opioids. It just goes to show how easily it can happen, and I thank God that he gave me the strength and resiliency to come off of that junk. Thank the lord that I have never had an addictive personality. 

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This was shortly after I started getting back into the swing of things. Ignore the funny face. Notice that I’m swimming in my clothes and look sick. Everyone has to start somewhere. 👍
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This was really my turning point. My lowest low was while I was going through withdrawls. I was now 130 lbs and I was so malnutritioned that my organs were at serious risk. I looked like a skeleton and I looked sickly all of the time. I grieved, and I grieved some more, and with help from all of my loved ones and some pushing from the medical staff, I gained weight back and really started to crack down on my physical therapy. I needed to crack down and perform at my top ability. It wasn’t long before my appetite came back and I started working hard in the gym to approve whatever muscles I could. When I left the hospital I was back at a normal body weight of 155 pounds. After my last weigh-in I was back at 170. Obviously I can’t say that it’s all muscle now, but I am very very happy that I have a normal and healthy body weight again. 

I continue to improve every day and with the extra push from my family and friends, I know that I will always continue to better my circumstances. With this post, I just wanted you to stop and think about your body. It truly is a temple, and you can make it and craft it however you want but life can always take a crazy turn. I still drink beer and whiskey and eat unhealthy food and skip workouts some days and I have tattoos so I won’t sit here and preach about how your body needs to be perfect, but you should truly respect it. Use your body and do something good! Use it for me, but most of all use it for you! Life is a fragile gift, treat your body like a temple. 

God Bless.