Category: surrender

For twenty five years I have been learning to run. 

When I was ten years old my best friend and I were in a children’s track club.  There is no telling how I ended up in a track club. I was the little girl who adamantly marched off the soccer field at five years old boldly declaring that she was never playing soccer again after falling in a mud puddle.  But somehow there I was in a track club with my taller, more slender best friend who looked liked a swan at any sport she played while I looked more like a waddling duck.  For the next seven years I have no recollection of running except maybe to get out of the rain or the cold.  The track club didn’t make me runner.

Then this running-thing came up again when I was seventeen.  In the back of my journal I wrote, “become a runner” along with about ten other aspirations I wanted to accomplish in my lifetime.  Each morning a friend and I would run in our neighborhood.  It was hard.  And it was only about a mile.  But it didn’t last for long.  My journal didn’t make me a runner.

Throughout college I ran off and on, but it wasn’t until after college that I became more serious about running.  If you want to call it serious.  I could finally run several miles – my farthest being seven.  Wow, did seven feel good.  I remember starting out on a seven-mile run one day and passing an old man.  He smiled and waved.  Then as I was on my way home, an hour later, he said, “You’re still running!”  Yes, yes I was, so proud while trying to stay humble.

At one point in my twenties I got up to about nine miles.  That was the weekend I ran my first 15K.  But that’s as dedicated as I got. 

Now it’s important to understand that I am not a running fanatic.  I have a serious love-hate relationship with running.  But the raw truth is

• I am barely five feet tall.
• I do not have skinny genes (nor jeans for that matter).
• Cancer thinks it has been personally invited to a party with the women in my family.
• And regardless of how sophisticated we get, exercise is still the best preventative medicine.

So I taught myself to run. 

At first it was a body game.  My heart and lungs did not want to run far.  And they let me know it.
But very quickly running became more of a mind game. 

Each time I would go out for a run I would keep my eyes focused on a place on the ground only a few feet in front of me.  I wouldn’t look far off into the distance.  This would just make my organs plead to stop.  Two miles ahead seemed impossible.  But two feet were right there.

Then I started focusing on the mailboxes.  I would pass one and look three ahead.  “I can make it to that one”, I coached myself.  A few minutes later I was there.  “I can make it to that one”, I would pump myself up again.  And off I would go to the next one.

Soon I was running miles. 

This past September I ran my first half-marathon.  It took me twenty-five years to know what thirteen miles feels like.  I now wonder if it was more that my body couldn’t finish the race or if my mind wasn’t ready.

As I begin this new year with my letter to Jesus and #oneword365, I hope to approach the year like I did running – fixing my mind on the landmarks that are right in front of me instead of the finish line that I cannot see yet because the finish line may take more than one year to get to.  My body may be ready for the whole race, but my mind has to get there too.

Several years ago the idea just came to me. I did not see in a magazine or on a blog. I just decided that on January 1st I was going to write a letter to Jesus. 

So I began to write. And I wrote and wrote and wrote. Four handwritten, computer-size pages later I finished. At the time I was a thirty-year-old single woman. And you know the exact words, bold and obvious, that danced around those pages. Who? Where? How? Why? . . . When?

The words were my tears streaming down my face. 

When I finished I folded the pages together and inserted them into a legal-sized envelope, wrote on the outside “My Letter to Jesus 2006”, and sealed it.

A year letter I unsealed that small capsule of 2006, and read those words once again.  Strolling down the sententces of the past, some words created out loud laughter and others revealed the wet tear stains.

Now, five years later, I still write a letter to Jesus every year.

I encourage you to do the same.

As you reread your letter a year later, it reminds you of two important attributes of God:

God is sovereign.

But he is also

faithful.

In my life so far, no year has left tear stains that are still sopping wet a year later until 2010.  That was the year the soil beneath my feet disintegrated right where I stood, and all that kept me from falling were the hands of Jesus.

It was the year my husband was put on life support and underwent a heart transplant. Simultaneously in a hospital 350 miles away my mom laid dying of cancer.

But as I read my letter from last year I am reminded of his hands. His hands formed with sovereignty and faithfulness. That kept me standing.

As you write your letter:

1. Thank God for the past year – for the good . . . and the bad.
2. Tell him how you plan to grow closer to him in the new year.

3. Ask him to show you where he wants to take you and to give you the courage to fall into his plan.

There are days that turn into seasons sometimes.  Seasons that I wonder if it’s real.  This abundant life I admire in others, strive for in myself, and read about as Truth.  These days feel low and hollow, like I am deep within the earth.  And with every peak above the dirt I wander if it’s just for them.

I shame myself for trying.  I know it’s in the abiding, but for some reason the abiding takes more than the striving.  So I just continue with what I know. 

I am star-struck. 

My mask is off, and I admit it. 

Last Thursday Emily Freeman, the author of the new book Grace for the Good Girl, had a book signing where I live.  Just days before I found out that Emily lived here, and I pranced around telling everyone.  They didn’t quite get it, but I did, and I couldn’t wait.

That day my nerves began and my mind did, too. I had never been to a book signing, and I, a little blogger, was going to meet Emily, a BIG blogger, and more than that a WRITER.

What if she doesn’t even recognize me? 

What if she says, “Brenda who?” or “Triple Braided?” 

What if I’m not dressed the right way for a book signing?  What if I’m too dressed or not dressed enough?

What if she wonders why I really came? I mean I don’t really “know” her?  

Should I ask her if I can get a picture with her?  I really would love a picture!  What if she thinks that’s creepy?  What if she’s too busy?  But when I’ve seen book signing on T.V. people get pictures. 

What if she thinks I’m weird? 

What if I stutter or say something stupid?

All of these things went through my mind.  Secretly I think I was telling myself that I am not good enough to meet someone like Emily.

I approached the table with Emily sitting behind it, and I said, “Hi, I’m Brenda, from the Triple Braided blog?”

What happened next was unexpected and such a blessing!  Emily jumped up, ran behind the table, and hugged me like I had known her for years!  She was amazing, and in that moment I felt genuine acceptance, and it was so freeing! 

Since getting Grace for the Good Girl I have only begun to read it, and by this simple post you can probably see how much I need it.  It has already shown me my need for freedom – freedom to believe that I am already accepted, – and my soul already feels the relief of grace-filled fresh air.

Thank you, Emily, for making me feel so special, and thank you for the endless wisdom I am finding in Grace for the Good Girl.  I am loving it.  And you are lovely.

Please read more about Emily and Grace for the Good Girl on her blog, Chatting at the Sky.