Running!

This child.  In my mind's eye, I see her little face and big blue eyes in their 2 pound, 4 oz. form.  I remember her flipping about in scant amounts of amniotic fluid, astounding even the most stoic of a sonogram technician.  And then, I see her now.  There is one thing about her particular personality that moves me ~ when she smiles, she really smiles.  When she disagrees, I know it.  When she laughs or speaks, it is intentional.  And when she runs, she runs like this.

There have been times I have wanted to run like her, but I have no strength to do it.  I have no energy to get the heck up and go--- or press on when the weights of this temporal, unredeemed life press in and hold me down.  Even my exercise induced asthma gives me a physical reminder of what may hold me back.  Most of the time though, I stall because I am trying to run with my eyes focused on the spot where I stand.  It may be fear, guilt, regret, sin, pride, or numbers of things that keep my eyes turned down or even closed.  When I want to go somewhere, that is never helpful to me.  It just isn't.  I need to see what is ahead to run ahead.

At this moment, little Miss was heading toward the bubble maker.  It was scattering bubbles in the air, and it made her so excited.  She had been on the slide, but the bubble contraption got her attention and it, coupled with the newness of discovering something fantastic, made her take off in a clear direction.  And as she ran, bubbles flew in the air, kissed her face, and floated away into the blues of the sky.

When I run, it greatly depends on what I am running toward that changes the way that I run ~ or if I run at all.  Let's say I was running toward a big, hairy spider.  Well, I just wouldn't move.  I would back up, actually.  If it was something good, like chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream and ganache, I would run.  If it was in the direction of the above little girl smiling back at me, I could  really move.

These days, that are shorter than I'd like but longer than I can handle sometimes force me to remember why and to where I am running.  It used to be that I would dangle in front of me lists of things to do.  They were good things, mind you.  Even kind, loving things.  I used to think of myself in terms of what I would complete in a day.  All of those things are important and I certainly feel the consequences sometimes of my incompleteness.  But all of those things are far less important than what they imply about life and the purposes behind them.

What really matters is the Person at the end of the road that smiles when He sees me coming.  I know myself and I know He knows me, and that makes me marvel at the way He loves me.  He has loved me so much that He would finish the race for me and bid me come and walk in the way paved for me.  That is the only way He could say that His yolk is easy and His burden is light to weary travelers.  Like my last post said, I have to rest to see Him and be reminded of these truths.  As He said, "It is Finished†".  I want to know more of what this means.  And the more I believe this is true, I hope to run with endurance.  I can look at my Ellie and the way she laughs and plays and be inspired by her childlike joy.

Today, I confess I am frozen.  But I am compelled to submit myself again to repent of the sin that clings so closely, rest, and ask God to lift my head to the truth ~looking to Jesus~ at the end of the road that will keep me moving (see Hebrews 12:1-2).  I am thankful for the cloud of witnesses that cheers me on, for teaching that grounds me in grace, and fellow sojourners (and Ellie) that join me on the way.