I Have Veins

Have you ever had that moment when something just clicks?

I remember learning about the venous system in class. In lab we looked at cadavers, saw the highways that transport blood all throughout the body. Going to anatomy lecture, we reviewed what we had learned, gained some understanding about how our bodies work, and left.

But later that day, looking at my arm as I was typing a paper, I noticed the veins on my hand, just like they always are there, but it just hit me. I HAVE VEINS INSIDE OF ME.

I know what you’re thinking: “David, that’s stupid. Of course you have veins inside of you. Haven’t you been learning anatomy this whole semester?”

Yes. And I’ve looked at bodies of deceased people, seeing all of this stuff. But its different when you internalize something. I don’t usually see my bones’ exact shape. I (thankfully) have never seen my muscles (except my tongue of course). But looking down at my hand, seeing my veins running along, just underneath my skin, struck me in a different way. I plugged my ears and listened to my heart beat, pushing my blood throughout my body, powering my consciousness, and sustaining me. And it became so much more than just learning about dead bodies then.

My previous blog post was about how we should not aim to teach anything without the Spirit of God, for it’s not worth teaching if you are not led by that selfsame Spirit. And like I had learned on my mission, internalizing and fully understanding truth changes us. An intimate testimony of Jesus Christ is much more powerful than just the knowledge of Him.

That same reasoning can be applied in secular learning. I am not going to act like I understood everything about veins from then on out. Heck, I still struggle to understand how half of anything works that I’ve learned. But in that moment that I was typing my paper, and in this same moment that I am typing out this blog post, I have that same awe and reverence for the body that I have gained through the learning and application of truths taught in class. And that’s pretty awesome.