Tech Neck at Ninety-Eight

“I’m puzzled,” the physical therapist tells me. “It’s like your mom has tech neck. Her muscles feel like a kid who’s been bent over screens and texting for hours each day.”

He glances around the room. No screens. No smart phone. Just a corner desk with a spiral notebook and a Bible, a paper one.

“Can you think of small repetitive muscle movements she makes every day?”

I could.

“She’s copying the Bible,” I tell him, and his eyebrows shoot up.

So I tell him how she started several years ago at the first verse of  Matthew. She spent hours, day after day, week after week, working her way through the New Testament.

Each year, her handwriting has decreased in size. Now, every line space of her notebook contains two lines of her script.

Long before the last chapter of Revelation, she had a plan—start in Genesis and work her way through to the end of Malachi. By the time of her 98^th birthday in a few weeks, she’ll likely be well into Jeremiah.

“Her head’s heavy,” the therapist says. “And holding it forward like that exhausts her already worn-out tissues.”

He picks up her notebook to look at her handwriting.

“But I like what she’s doing.”

He looks at me.

“I’ll give her the exercises I give the kids,” he says. “And do you think you could talk her into taking a break every few verses?”

Hand on my heart, I’ve tried.

And failed.

She’s got a prayer, she tells me, asking God to keep her alive until she gets to Malachi chapter 4 and verse 6, the verse about turning the hearts of parents to their children and the hearts of children to their parents. And she wants to do her part to make the prayer come true.