I just got invited back in again.
When I was preparing to come out
here to Ireland the first time, I spent a few days and months not working, just
preparing. I had to move apartments and use money that I didn’t necessarily
have: but the Lord was providing. On one of those days, I went by a park where
I used to run as a kid and there it was: the cross country races in full swing.
Of course, I was caught up in the
nostalgia. I used to be a runner myself: I remembered the agony and grit
required, how quickly it all went by, the feeling of waiting to just start out
(awful!). I wrote a grand little paper later that day on running the race
together that I asked all of my soon-to-be-teammates to read (they thought I
was a bit nuts, poor things. Mores the pity for them.) But God was doing
something, reminding me that there is a race to be run and inviting me in, at
my old stomping grounds.
Races are hard, ardous,
deadly-feeling things. It’s all over really quick, but the blood, sweat and
tears in the middle can leave you feeling as though you haven’t a hope in the
world: best give up now. You can especially feel that way when you’re the girl
who is so slow that your friend can go to the bathroom in the middle of the
race and still find herself with a better time than you (that was a humbling
day). I remember one race where we had been practicing in really wet, soggy
conditions and then race day was dry dust and I lost heart…but we’ll finish
that story in a bit.
Races…races are about the
endurance, the anticipation of what’s around the next corner without letting
that become your whole focus. They’re about running well right now, being fully
present, with an ear and an eye to the future, knowing what is to come and that
the energy you’re exerting now is worth the gain to come in the future.
I was never any good at races. I
was never good at endurance. I hadn’t the head for it: I couldn’t—or maybe I
never learned—to take what was in front of me and crush it so that I could
reach my ultimate goal. I have had countless conversations with my mother where
I tell her about what is in front of me (in a panic) and she calmly explains to
me that the mountain I think is in front of me is actually a molehill.
It’s a crazy thing to race, to
actually believe in oneself and move forward despite the jeers and catcalls and
overwhelming doubt you can feel in the crowd. If you tune in, it can capsize
you. My first race in college, I was competing against schools in the Title I
division. In other words, they were the best in the nation as it came to cross
country. Stanford was there, for gosh sakes! I was cart girl in that race: dead
last, with the man on a cart following to make sure we all knew where the field
of players was divided: just in case a winner happened to pass me, we’d still be
sure to know who I was.
But you know what: I was in the
race.
I take myself out of the race so
often. I lose heart, get discouraged, stop making available what I have been
gifted with when I perceive that it’s not being appreciated…gosh, I act a baby
sometimes! And the body of Christ around me suffers for it, suffers for my
selfishness, my selfish ambition, my unwillingness to reach out in love.
I’m in a new season currently,
reevaluating. What do I want out of life, what do I need? It’s a time of
introspection, looking at deep wounds (far too often self-inflicted) and choosing—as
I see myself clearly—to move forward with confidence: fully aware of myself, my
faults and all that I perhaps can’t change and also aware of who I want to be,
dreaming about how to get there and offering myself again to the world around
me.
I want to be back in the race.
I am currently in Dublin. I have a
few days here, seeing off my last students as they take off back to their
respective homes. The lot of them has gone off to explore with one of their
families and there wasn’t room enough for me in the car. I had (well, at first
I was miffed by it and then I chose it) to stay behind at the hotel. There’s a
glorious pond with swans and a wonderful park nearby. In search of a place to
write, I took off into the park. The girls who entered before me had duffel
bags hanging on their shoulders and I presumed that they were football
(American soccer) players, that being the sport of choice in these parts. As we
(I following these girls) made our way toward the center of the park, I saw
more and more students around their age and then: a race marked out clearly,
and all of them either walking or jogging it. As I walked past a microphone
(nearly blasted my ear off) a female voice cheered, “Welcome to the Irish
National Championships!” I had stumbled upon a race, and one with a prize to
win no less. I felt the invitation again: what would you do?
What could you do? What can you do,
when invited into this race with Him. I tell you what you’ll do:
You’ll run in a manner worthy of
the calling to which you have been called.
For me that means putting aside the
straight up laziness that often keeps me form accomplishing anything. It means
gathering people around me who will encourage me and help me to keep training,
no matter what the ‘weather’ conditions may be. It means choosing to take on
each new day as a new day and then going forward establishing and living out as
a pattern in my life to choose forgiveness. It means discarding all the sin
that tries so hard to entangle and throwing off every weight that tries to
hinder: I want to run free! It means being a living sacrifice, making these
choices every day for as long as it is called a ‘day’.
I’ll end
with this, for those who are fainthearted. The story I began earlier, the dry,
dusty championship race, didn’t end well. I hardly placed, didn’t help my team
much and just fell into feeling an utter failure. Fear was winning and I got so
overwhelmed, I almost started walking. There just wasn’t any point to this
anymore.
It was then I heard an inner voice
say, “I’ll never give up on you, even when you give up on yourself.”
That moment changed: and is still
changing, a lot of things in me. To know that the God of the Universe is still
rooting for me, will never give up on me, even when I am besieged on all sides
and so unsure of how to move forward. His love never changes and in the small
schemata that is my life, He has grand designs. I can’t see them yet and can
hardly believed He’d deign to glance my way but its true: it’ll always be true
and never stop being true that He is obsessed with me and all the details of my
life. He has directed so well so far: how could I ever just wander into Irish
National Cross Country Championships? And only He would know how significant
that would be for me. I take away today what I overheard one coach say: “Don’t
think over the whole race, it’s too much. Concentrate on doing the section you’re
in really well.”
Yes Coach.
