Think about it. Everyday you get to wake up. Your mind becomes alert; your eyes adjust to the lights and immediately your body is at work. Little muscles are dialating your pupil to let in just enough light and centering it to your fovea capitis where the rods and cones pick up colors and contrasts and then send that image through nerves to your brain and you process what you're seeing: the faces of people you love, the blue sky, the snow falling. And you hear people in the kitchen, or the rain on the window, or the cat meowing at the door. You roll out of bed or jump or climb down from your top bunk. And then you walk into the kitchen and smell bacon cooking on the stove and the chocolate cake on the counter from last night. And these smells send stimulation to your brain and bring back memories of chocolate cake on your 16th birthday when your sister invited all your friends over to surprise you, and you remember eating bacon on late start, the only school night the whole school year when you could have a sleep over. And all of this takes less than a second to pass through your mind. You walk to the table. Muscles in your body respond to what you want them to do without you knowing your communicating to them to put one foot in front of the other so you don't tumble to the ground and break your radius, which is connected to your humerus and your scapula and your spine and surrounded by tons of muscles to give you motion and protection.
You dish up your plate and start eating. The food doesn't just fall right through you and leave you hungry. It gets mashed up by your teeth and ushered to the esophagus by your tongue to the epiglottis which is protecting your air way. Once you're done chewing and swallowing, your body does the rest without you telling it to. It mashes your food further and take out the nutrients and gets rid of waste. The nutrients go into the blood system, which pumps constantly and hard, and spread throughout the body, giving you energy and happiness, because who doesn't like a full stomach? And all of this happens in the first 10 minutes of your day! Just think what more you and your body are going to do during the next 18 hours before you give it a chance to rest and recuperate?
The body is an amazing gift. Studying anatomy has been the biggest blessing of my college experience so far, and that's very unexpected. When I came on a campus visit during senior year I disliked science and my life plan was to come to BYU and learn how to be a good english teacher. I hadn't prayed about either of these decisions, I had just made them myself. While I was on my visit, the tour guide took me by the science building and talked about how at BYU when they study anatomy, they do a lot of secular and spiritual cross over. And for some reason, that's when I really felt the spirit and thought, BYU is a really good place to come to school. But I didn't think much about it after that. I came to BYU to be an english teacher. By Christmas I knew that wasn't really what I wanted to be. So, around February I got up the guts to go talk to an academic guidance counselor. I decided I wanted to work with athletes and exercise and sports and all that jazz. Then, this semester I signed up to take anatomy. One night while I was in the anatomy lab, I was nerding out and just LOVING learning about my body and in that moment I remembered how I felt during the campus visit and my mind was blown away. Heavenly Father knew that I was going to come to BYU and He knew that eventually I would make my way around to studying anatomy and it only took me a year and a half to realize that He was answering my prayers before I even asked them. It was amazing, and I know that I am in the right major and doing what God wants me to do.
And to further my love of the body and it's amazing abilities, and the cross-over with Heavenly Father who knows me better than I know myself, I'd like you to watch a video.
My anatomy TA showed us this video in our last day of lab, which happened to be the day that my newest little nephew, Lewis, was born, and I was overcome with the spirit. What a creation! It's a miracle and there is no explanation except for the divine hand of God for how it can all function, how the body developed and muscles attached in the right places and nerves found their correct paths to complete their individual reactions and the heart pumping blood and nutrients to feed those muscles and nerves. Our bodies are a miracle. Take care of the one God gave you. Eat right (food that's healthy and food that you like) and exercise (park in the back of the lot and walk, or do 5 pushups or go on a run) and sleep (to rejuvenate your muscles and mind). God's given you an awesome gift. It's His best way to show you how much He loves you. Be grateful for it. Love your body and Love God for creating it and giving it to you! What a gift!
