The Only Race Worth Running

Feet Series, Part 2

To my friend, you know who you are. :)

 

“I have spent most of my life running away.”

This confession from my friend who feels she is being broken, who lives within a cloud of uncertainty in a life she never imagined for herself. She stopped running because there was nowhere left to go.

And now she has stopped and the past, heaving along as it ever does, has caught up to her in a mighty collision of hurt and shame and regret.

We were all born to run.

We were made for it.

But learning how to run isn’t easy and the race can be confusing. Some of us run away and some simply run in the wrong direction.  That kind of running, it hurts us, cripples us, in fact.

We run and run, so sure we are doing things right. But when feet are crippled by disease or the future is crippled by fear or today is crippled by yesterday’s choices, we stop.

And we see our crippled souls, serving fear and lust and ambition.

Moses’ fear took him running to the wilderness, where his feet wandered aimless for years. Then a blazing glory stopped him in his tracks and he met God.  “Take off your sandals,” said God. “This ground is holy.”

Stop, Moses. Let your dirty feet touch my glory. Let me show you your crippled soul.

 “I thought I was so strong,” said my friend. “But now I see I was never anything but a coward.”

It’s when we stop running that we realize we are lost. And all those things we ran after—those achievements and strengths and little heaps of trophies—all those things that once made us confident become little more than rubbish (Phil. 3). And we are just like a would-be pharaoh kneeling barefoot before a blazing bush.

Back in my track and field days, I wrote Hebrews 12:1-3 on a little card and read it before every race: “…Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.”

It seems somewhat ridiculous now that I thought those words were meant to propel me for seven minutes around a track, enduring little more than a charlie horse and the frustration of being slower than my competitors.  

Christ endured the cross.

His feet took him to places of want and need, hurt and rejection and shame, and then to the wood and the nail.

His feet were crippled for me.

His race was to death.

Stop running. Touch the holy.

Now, now, crippled one, now you can really run. Now you can “know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death” (Phil. 3:10). Now you can forget the past, set aside the rubbish heap of trophies and “press toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14).

His call is always to death. But He is the master of bringing life from death, beauty from ashes, strength from weakness. I wonder if that is why crippled souls seem to trust Him more.

You have a race to run. Do not be weary or discouraged. “Do not run like a man running aimlessly . . . do not fight like a man beating the air” (1 Cor. 9:26). While everyone else is running the wrong way, run to “get a crown that will last forever” (1 Cor. 9:25).

Twisted Toes

Feet Series, Part 1

My ski boots lie there on the floor, covered with at least three years’ worth of dust. Three years of sitting on a shelf in the garage, waiting through the pregnancies and needs of newborns, waiting as I watched my oldest, learn to ski without me. I told myself the day would come when I would go too, skiing with my kids just like my parents used to ski with me.

I didn’t consider my feet.

The medication had worked for a long time, keeping the arthritis at bay and opening up possibilities I thought were lost to me. Lately, though, the pain had been creeping back, bit by bit.

Funny how disease does that, sneaking up, stealing away small pieces and by the time we notice, the damage is done.

I stare in disgust at my twisted toes, ugly arthritis toes. I can barely get the boots on, much less ski in them.

I try not to think about how my toes reflect my heart, twisted, so quick to frustration, anger, questioning blame. And even while the hot tears of disappointment fall, I ask myself, how will you handle it this time?

Because I do have a choice. The grief is real, undeniable, but I can choose how the grief shapes me. And I can choose who my son sees.

I can let the storm flood over my hard heart, washing away all peace and wreaking havoc, or I can let it soak into the soft soil of surrender.

I can’t help it, though; the question forms itself unbidden. This time, though, I whisper it. Why?

I hear the verse like the first tender shoot poking up. “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9)

A riddle. How to understand? What is His strength if it means this, this pain and loss and brokenness?

“The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Neh. 8:10).

My strength is in His joy.

“We are cold when it comes to rejoicing in God,” John Calvin wrote. “Hence, we need to exercise ourselves in it and employ all our senses in it—our feet, our hands, our arms and all the rest—that they all might serve in the worship of God and so magnify Him.”[1]

My toes used to be perfect, used to propel me swiftly up mountains and anywhere else I wished to go. I didn’t think much about my toes. But I thought much of my own abilities.

And then the disease of the flesh revealed the disease of my heart.

I am called to worship God—to thank Him—not in spite of my twisted toes, but because of them. For how would I know of the grace of God if I didn’t know just how much I needed Him?

Paul learned weakness through “a thorn in the flesh,” a “messenger of Satan.” God did not cause it, but He allowed it lest Paul “be exalted above measure.” Paul learned to boast not in his abilities but his infirmities, “that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” He was even so bold to say he took pleasure in infirmities, for there he learned Christ’s strength.

The only exercise I am called to is worship.

Even twisted toes—especially twisted toes—can do that. For those who have been made un-able get to see the abilities of God.

My son may or may not remember if I send him off to the slopes tomorrow with a smile. But he will certainly remember a bitter mama. I have much to learn about this. But I can choose how to spend the day. I can spend the day counting graces, employing all my senses—even my feet—in rejoicing.

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[1] quoted in One Thousand Gifts Devotional by Ann Voskamp, Zondervan, 2012