"But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness and pray." Luke 5:15
When my body breaks on the trail, I know how to respond to it.
Give me the honest ache of muscle and bone- the fierce language of physical pain and I can keep going.
I can push myself into a path of unknown, I can cover miles of unplanned, and I can tumble through angry terrain and let the hard work carve me down to TRUTH.
Let my heartbeat pound like a battle cry,
Let desperation pierce me.
And I will meet you another mile.
I can sweat until my shirt clings and I my eyes sting and I taste the end is near.
That is the kind of grief I can manage: finite, accountable, earned.
But the kind of pain that lives in yesterday- the slow, quiet undoing hope-is a different kind of torment.
Grief and disappointment will try to bury is, be our undertaker. It wants to tuck me into a confusing sleep where mothing makes sense.
The sweat of despair on the day, or my soul crying in hopelessness.
The pain of the mundane, the distractions, the disappointments of yesterday's hauntings and today's realities want to bury me and leave me lost in a slumber of confusion.
SO I RUN.
I run into the woods, through the backroads and into the wind because the path lets me speak the language I know. I can cry out among pines and rocks and hear an answer that feels like God's own breath.
Out there the pain has edges, its work I can breathe through, a mountain to climb, a pulse to follow.
I can manage the mountain and the agony it takes to conquer it.
But that mountain of mishaps, the mountain of miscommunication, that mountain of mistakes I curl inside myself.
Even Jesus went into the wilderness alone: "But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed" Luke 5:16
In His solitude, He sought His Father.
In Mine, I DO the SAME.
Let it HURT.
Let it STING.
Let it BLEED and teach me how to rise again.
This is why I run when it hurts so bad.
Not to escape sorrow, but because in the honest, intimate aching motion of my body I find a way through the sorrow and a clearer place to listen for the Voice of The LORD.
THE RUNDOWN
Even Jesus "often withdrew to lonely places and prayed."
Let's say it like it is: Pain is heavy, but it is not wasted.
Let us be reminded that solitude and struggle can draw us closer to the Lord. And we al need more Jesus.
Out running or in my writing, pain has its place-as it does for you.
Pain can strip us down, make us vulnerable and desperately afraid of the raw honestly revealed, but it makes space for the Lord to manage the pain that I cannot.
In Peace, Not Pieces,
Anita
