I have always wanted to have a “thing.” You know, that one thing that makes you stand out or gives you individuality. Like when people say, “What do you like to do in your spare time?” And you have an actual, interesting response. Or when you have to fill out those doctor’s office questionnaires and after you debate over how honestly you want to answer the exercise frequency question, you stumble across the “What do you like to do? What hobbies do you enjoy?” I always hated those questions. First of all because inevitably the exercise question would make me feel terrible about myself, and then I could never seem to come up with something for the other questions other than “reading, cooking….” So lame. At least that is what I would tell myself, every. Single. Time. And then there are those times when I would meet someone for the first time and would be thrust into that introvert’s nightmare of small talk. They would ask me to my face: “So what do you like to do?” And my response something like, “Umm, I… uh like to…. eat pizza?? But I’m gluten free…so I don’t know…” And every time I would answer this question, or something of a variant, I would find myself walking away feeling defeated, lame, and passionless. Believing that really, I’m just boring. In fact, I remember one of my friends in college once telling me she thought she was boring, and I was excited that someone else felt the same way I did! We would laugh about it, but in the back of my mind I would think that she may think that, but she is really not boring. I am the boring one.
Its not that I have never wanted to do something. To have a “thing.” And a lot of times it wasn’t because I didn’t try! In high school, my best friend was in color guard. That seemed fun, and she did it so I decided to try out. I didn’t even make first cut. But the next year rolled around and I practiced for hours the try-out routine (I believe to some Fat Boy Slim “…right about now, the funk soul brother…” anybody??) in my garage. (#90sgirl) Only to strike out again. Fail. Then there was the time that I tried out for girls basketball, unaware that an actual game consists of two baskets, not just one like when we played in P.E…. I’m guessing you can figure out how that one ended. One time I even decided running track sounded like fun, so I started going to practices and I believe shortly after the yearbook photo was taken, I quit. Those sprints gave me side pain… In fact, I quit a lot of things. To the point that at times, I thought that quitting was my thing….
So here I am in my mid-30’s, still struggling with those same questions. Except it never really consciously occurred to me that they were such a struggle for me until recently. I never really stepped back and listened to my own thought process and the things that I was telling myself. They were tiny whispers in the recess of my mind. For years I have been reverting back to these thought patterns, apparently on quite a regular basis. To the point that recently when I decided to dig deep and walk through some spiritual healing, I realized I had been letting these thoughts define what I think of myself ever since I can remember. Thoughts like, “I cant. Defeat. Just give up. They wont take you seriously. Loser.” Just to name a few. And it began to take my breath away when I realized just how often these thoughts were actually at the forefront of my mind! Just hovering over every life circumstance, in every day life. As though someone was nearly constantly whispering these lies into my ears.
Pause for a moment and step back about a year ago after an insanely intense year medically for Rylie. I was dealing with post traumatic stress among other things. During her 6th hospital stay that year, I sat there and thought to myself, “I am going to run. I am going to run, because my daughter can’t. I will run for her, and I will run for me to therapeutically work though all of this.” And after we got back home for a while, I put on some active wear – because I was going to run. *Disclaimer: I refuse to wear “active wear” in every day life. It must serve a purpose if I am going to wear it. * Anyhow, I threw on my clothes, and despite it being barely 40 degrees out that day, I ran. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. Then I came home, collapsed, and decided I would do this. I had certain goals I wanted to meet and friends who were encouraging me in the process. “I can do this,” I thought. And then shortly thereafter, there were some insensitive words spoken to me about my feeble efforts to reach these goals. And looking back, I don’t know that the words were directly intended to harm, but I absorbed them, and cried over them, and I didn’t run again that year. I think maybe in some way because it was like the words in my head were spoken out loud.
That was a year ago. Then this last winter I found myself walking through a different season of more life altering diagnoses for my already medically fragile daughter, and the deep pain that comes with that. Feeling like I needed some sort of stress relief, I started to say out loud that I should run. It was the only thing I could think of that seemed therapeutic and that would maybe help me clear my head from the chaos. And yet I kept saying it for a while, without actually doing it. Shortly after, is when I began walking through some spiritual healing as I slowly looked deep into my soul and realized all of the lies that had been lingering there for so long. Lies I was telling myself daily, and things I believed to be true about myself. None of these things were even close to lining up with what Jesus thinks of me!! And so one day in the midst of all of the painful lies that I was working through, and learning how to let Jesus heal me from it all – I had got the kids off to school and I thought- I’m going to go for a run! I threw on my sweats and shoes, and ran out my back door. I ran. And as I ran that morning, Jesus almost audibly began bringing to mind every lie I had ever believed about myself. Every lie I had made up. Every lie I was told about myself. And with every painful step I felt release. I made it back home and sobbed. It was release. And there was something very powerful about the spiritual healing that was taking place, in the midst of me trying my hardest to run. Because let me tell you, when you are 35, and the number of degrees outside are the same as your age, and you go for your first run – you think you just might die. In fact, I had to wait like 3 days just before I could run again because my shins were SO sore!!! Ha! But I ran again. And again. AND AGAIN. And the more I ran, the more I pushed myself physically, the more beautiful the balance between spiritual healing and physical perseverance became. For the first time in my life I pushed myself physically to go further, to push through the pain, and to work towards an ultimate goal. I decided I would train for two months and run my first 5K held where Rylie goes to therapy at United Cerebral Palsy. It seemed fitting.
Thing is, I never knew the amount of effort that went into “just running.” The planning, the discipline… And the thing is, I realized I never had a “thing,” because I had never really put the effort and discipline into any one thing. And the thing is, I always wanted a “thing” for me. Not for Jesus. Honestly, because I have struggled to solely find my identity in Christ. I think I have just always been on the search for what defines me.
Today, I ran my first 5K. Today I finished my first race. My goal was to run the whole race, no matter how slow without stopping. To finish well. There is a lot of symbolism that can go along with that. But running has brought to light a whole new understanding for me of life, and running this race. And just as one cannot simply wake up one morning and run a marathon without training, so also is this life in Christ. It has given me a deeper level of understanding, in how I have to choose to discipline my time and choose to dig deeper into His Word and choose to only believe what Jesus thinks of me, and not to believe those lies anymore!
And while maybe I could finally say I have a “thing,” because now I run, instead I will run because, Jesus. I will run because of His grace, mercy, and unconditional love for me that I have realized in a whole new way. I will run because of the way Jesus uses the pain and perseverance of physical running to reflect my own spiritual journey.
I will run because I can, because my daughter can’t, and because of the beautiful way Jesus is bringing healing to my soul as I run both in body and spirit.
From Hebrews 12:
…”let us run with endurance the race that is set before us…”
Valiant 