With another couple, my wife and I are on vacation, celebrating both my birthday and our anniversary in a resort in Mexico. Which sounds lovely, and it is. As first-worlders, we are blessed to live as few in the world can. I am grateful; and, honestly, also not so grateful. Like much of life, this vacation is now a glass of margarita or straight lemon juice. Both/and.

An errant golf swing (which happens too often; my handicap, channeling Abraham, is about the same as the number of stars in the sky) caused me to pull a muscle in my groin. Not only excruciating, but–let’s be honest here–this painful pull quickly put an end to any amorous moments my wife and I might have dreamed of. Men, I see you stealthily nodding. For almost all of us, testosterone and hope spring eternal. Women, I see you smiling, too. Men are such simple creatures, your knowing eyes say. Perhaps TMI, but I try to be authentic here. I know you, and you know me.

The groin pain is not intense, thankfully. But in every way, the twitching-shooting pain comes with almost any movement, perpetual the like Mexican hawkers with trinkets and sombreros on the beach. It has slowed me down from my normal bouncy energizer-bunny self to a speed more akin to a geriatric sloth. No, more like an aging sloth, hospitalized in its last days with a deep groin pull. I “moooove sloooowly”. Everything, it seems, is done in slow motion. The slower, the better.

This, while limiting my return to the eighteen grass-holes of pending and perpetual shame, has also been a blessing. I walk slowly back up the path from the pool, and so I see things. Light sparkling off the beautiful ferns and pink-blue flowers. A turtle, sunning itself on a rock. A stone path, made up carefully and deliberately from the collected white stones of a far-away river. People in love, youthful, probably newly married, standing on a high bridge but seeing no grand vista but each other. An aged grandmother that flashes by on a red scooter, giving her grandson a quick ride down the path, with his eyes as wide as someone on Space Mountain in Disneyland.

At my slower pace, I can see things. Things that my 65-mph life too often misses. Be honest for a minute. At our normal rushing pace, we are always on our way to somewhere for something by some time. We move so quickly that we drive past everything, and everybody. We don’t see. We make life a collapsable package, like an empty grocery shopping bag, so as to quickly carry it to the end-of-today.

At the pace of a sloth, life unfolds like the best novel ever written, one page at a time. Or the last few tasty morsels of perfect meal, chewed slowly. The word savor comes to mind: to enjoy food or an experience slowly, in order to enjoy it as much as possible. Pause, watch, look, taste, and savor life.

Jesus probably never went faster than 3 miles per hour. It is the speed that a human walks at. At 3 mph, you see things. You notice things. You can embrace life and become encapsulated by what the moments of breath-time-beauty offer. At 3 mph, you can talk with those with you on the journey and listen to them more fully. It shouldn’t strike us as odd that almost every miracle of Jesus took place on the road, on the way to and from somewhere. On the road, he took the time to stop and heal, to listen to blind men cry out, and to overwhelm a widow with joy at her son’s funeral march. It was at 3 mph that he taught those who followed him. Looked at the fields, the lilies, and the soils. This is where he explained his parables and taught them truth, so they would grow deeper, not faster. At 3 mph, the pace of relationships.

I would have picked a different teacher than pain. But I embrace this classroom. Show me how to learn to live at 3 mph, Lord. Help me to see, not pass by. Unfold my life slowly and earnestly, without any frantic or frenetic twitches. Help me to breathe and live and savor. Amen.