Running on Faith: Breathing

I thought it was just going to be a little training run—another step toward our fall marathon. It was easy to sell the race to Emily, my daughter and training partner. The 13-mile Colfax Half Marathon would go through the zoo, a fire station and some of Denver's prettiest neighborhoods. It'd be a nice change of scenery from our typical training run. Plus, there'd be medals. You can never have too many of those.

You can see us here in the picture, ready for another fun, fantastic run.

And for the first four miles or so, everything was great. The zoo was fun. The neighborhoods were neat. The weather was almost perfect.

And then Emily started feeling sick.

We walked some. Then some more. Instead of counting the miles, I'd scan the streets for porta-potties. Emily was hurting bad. I could tell by how quiet she was. Normally, she talks the miles away on our training runs. But now, during this run, she wasn't speaking. She was fighting too hard with her body to talk, fighting with every step. I'd fill in the void with some mindless patter, hoping to take her mind off things. But nothing I said made her feel a bit better. And so we walked when we had to and ran when we could, listening to each other's footsteps, the sound of the other breathing.

And by mile seven, neither of us was sure it was smart to keep pushing on.

"I don't want to quit," she told me.

"I know you don't," I said. "I know."

A half-mile later, when we hit the fire station, we decided to call it. I dialed my wife Wendy and asked if she'd be able to pick us up along the way.

She couldn't: The car was in the middle of the race traffic. We were on our own.

But just when I feared things might get really messy, Emily rallied. By mile 10, she was feeling better. By 12, the only things wrong with her was her foot and knee and hip—the normal aches and pains that you sometimes get when you run a ways. And by the time she was collecting all her "free" loot after we crossed the finish line—including the medal—she joked, "this is the best day ever!"

 In these little running/religion musings of mine, we've talked about how sometimes both faith and a long run can be a struggle, and that's particularly true of when we're in pain. Our relationship with God can be tricky even the best of times. But when we're suffering or grieving, it can feel nearly impossible. The pain can be overwhelming. We can feel like quitting.

I've done quite a few stories about grieving and suffering over the years, and one central question has been at the center of many of them: How can the rest of us help? If we know someone who's dealing with a crushing loss or battling illness or suffering from indescribable pain, how can we carry a little of that burden? What can we do to ease the discomfort?

The experts always seem to come back to the same, sad fact. Sometimes we can't. We can't always take away the pain. We can't speed up the grieving process. Some things, they just hurt.

But even though we can't take away the pain or speed up the recovery, we can still be there … in body and spirit. We can walk, or run, alongside them. We don't have to talk. Sometimes, it's better if we don't. Just to be with someone—to show them they're not alone—can be a comfort, as small as it might seem.

For one of those stories, I talked with a man who had terminal brain cancer. The man, a lifelong Christian, made a startling omission to me—one so different from the feel-good Christianese that people often wrap themselves in. He said there were times when he prayed that he felt … nothing. God, his great comfort and comforter, was silent.

He added that he's had some incredible times of prayer, too, but him talking about the silence of God struck me. I've felt that same silence sometimes. There are dark nights when God's love seems to cover you like a blanket, but others where the blanket is gone. There is no solace found in that dark, quiet space. No spiritual platitudes to savor, no prayer to serve as salve.

But in those moments, I sometimes think back to an old Lifehouse song called "Breathing." It's a psalm, in a way, that patiently tries to accept those silences, to make sense of them and even embrace them. The chorus goes:

I am hanging on every word you say

And even if you don't want to speak tonight

That's all right, all right with me

'Cause I want nothing more than to sit

Outside heaven's door and listen to you breathing

It's where I want to be.

Emily and I spent a good chunk of the Colfax Half listening to each other breathe. It wasn't fun for either of us (and especially not for Em). But maybe there was something special about those painful few miles, anyway. Emily knew that, run or walk or crawl or stop, I'd be with her no matter what. I felt the strange sense of gratitude of sharing a truly, if painfully, unforgettable time with my daughter—a time beyond smiles and laughter, a time beyond words. It was a time when breathing was as eloquent as it got. And it was enough.

Running on Faith: Forced Rest

This year for me will go down as the year of stitches. Not the year in stitches, mind you—which would imply that I’ve had a very funny year. Though I must admit, I did get my last set of stitches in a rather funny (that is, odd) way.

Last Saturday, my wife and I had just come back from an evening walk and our little pooch, Hoover, was ecstatic—as he always is—that we returned yet again. He was so thrilled, in fact, that he started running around the living room, smacked into my leg … and sort of screeched to a sudden stop. And at the same time, he seemed to pull my leg toward him, as if with some mysterious canine magnet.

At first, I thought that perhaps some of my leg hair had gotten tangled up in his collar. And then I realized that if Hoover was pulling on my hair, it’d probably hurt a lot more than it did. And I quickly came to a rather disturbing conclusion: Somehow, his collar had hooked itself into my shin.

And that is exactly what happened.

The good news is that is sounds way worse than it felt. The pain was minimal, really.

But the bad news was that the wound necessitated seven stitches. Worse, the nurse on call said that the stitches were in an awkward place. Too much activity around the area, and there’d be a threat the things would pop. I’d be unable to run until someone yanked ‘em out … in 10-14 days.

Now, if you’ve read my running blogs, you know that I’m not exactly a runner runner—a guy who can’t wait to lace up his running shoes and dive into the cold, rainy, sleety morning for a jog, singing as cheerfully as Snow White does when she’s polishing furniture.

I don’t like to run. I like to eat, and running allows me to eat and still fit into my work pants. I like to say that I’m a runner, because I’ve never been athletic and it’s nice to pretend every once in a while. The running itself? Yeah, I could do without it.

Or so I thought. But as it turns out, I’ve been running regularly for so long that to not run feels very, very strange.    

At first, the forced break was nice—like a little vacation for my calves. There were many, many benefits. I got home earlier, for one thing. Cut down my showering to once a day without offending anyone (that I’m aware of).

But after about four days, I was missing my runs. My body felt like it was growing ever-more gelatinous. My brain was getting a little sluggish, too, not having a nice, steady regimen to latch onto. I felt like I was grumpier and not sleeping as well. I was turning into Robert Louis Stevenson’s Mr. Hyde without the fun of his scintillating night life.

Yesterday was the worst. I was on deadline for a couple of freelance writing projects and, moreover, had a devotional to give the next morning at work (I work for a Christian ministry, and we have a dizzying number of devotionals).

As I was sitting at my desk, wondering whether I could bum some Maalox off of someone, I thought to myself, “man, I could really use a run right now.”

That might’ve been the first time I’ve ever consciously had that specific thought. But in the moment, it was absolutely true. An hour-long run would give me time to plan my devotional. It’d burn off a little of the stress I felt over my deadlines. A run, I realized, would give me a sense of peace that I, at that moment, sorely lacked.

For me, running has always felt so much like my own experience and struggles with faith. Yes, I appreciate the discipline that faith requires of me. I like the benefits that I gather. I love the relationship inherent in faith—the privilege of communing with God (as imperfectly as that communion may look at times). But for me, the Christian walk can be work, and hard work. It’s hard to be ever mindful of God and faith (even when you work at a ministry). It’s trying to push forward sometimes. There are times, frankly, when it’d be cool to take a break.

And let me be completely honest: Sometimes I do. I know I fall short on what I should be doing to keep my faith up to snuff. I can forget. I can grow lazy. I can shove thoughts of God into the back of my mind and find myself far more mindful of other things: Work. Kids. Fantasy football.

But whenever I forget to pray, or contemplate God, or even when I purposefully shove aside my questions about spirituality, I find that it’s not long before I feel empty. I find that I miss it. I need it. I’m not whole without faith. I’m lost without my sense of God.

I just got my stitches out a few hours ago. All is, alas, not well with my little wound. It may be a little infected, which means another 10 days of antibiotics for me. And it’s not closed yet, which means the stitches have been replaced with some super-sticky tape.

But the doctor gave me the thumbs up to start running again. It can only help at this point, he says. Running will spark better circulation, and the more blood the cut gets, the better it’ll heal.

So after work, I ran. It was a short run. It’s amazing how out of shape you get after just a 10-day break. It was hot, sweaty, exhausting work.

And it felt really, really good. 

Running on Faith: The Marathon

When you train for a marathon, there's a lot of stuff you need to account for. You've got to train like crazy to get your body ready for the thing. You have to mentally prepare yourself for being on the road for several hours. You have to plan what to wear, given the fact that marathons here in Colorado might have huge changes in temperature and weather. You need to make sure your running bib's just right, you've got enough food in your pockets and you've put Vaseline on anything that could conceivably chafe.

Oh, and it helps to bring your running shoes.

Emily, my daughter, forgot hers. We were staying overnight in Denver for the Colfax Marathon--her first--and she brought everything else she might ever need for this or any other marathon: hats, gloves, shorts, sweatpants, Ibuprofen, Pepto-Bismol and safety pins. But she left her running shoes at home. She discovered it at 4:30 a.m., just 5 minutes before we were to drive to the starting line.

When you're running for 26 miles, shoes are a big deal. Sure, I've heard of folks who run marathons barefoot and say it's the best. But let's face it: Those people are crazy. When you've trained six months for one running event, you know how cantankerous your feet can get. The least you can do is give them some expensive shoes in which to cantanker.

She must've felt sick when she figured out her mistake. I know I did. Months of training, I thought. Her first marathon, down the tubes, I thought. There's no way she's going to be able to finish. No way.

What I actually said was, "Oh." And then, "That's kind of a bummer."

Because really, at that point, what can you do? You've either got to race or go home, and we weren't about to go home. The last thing Emily needed was her father to freak out.

Fortunately, my wife had a pair of old sneakers with her (pictured above, at the starting line) --just a size-and-a-half smaller than Emily typically wears. Sure, they weren't the most comfortable things. Sure, they were five years old and had the tread of a 1953 inner tube. But they were a better alternative than Emily's flip-flops.

For the last few months, I've talked about how training for a marathon reminds me sometimes of our journey of faith. It requires discipline. Patience. We might suffer aches and pains along the way. And we get to experience a lot of joy, too: The gentle thrill of running, the fun of spending concentrated hours with someone where all you can do is talk, the wonderful feeling you get when a long training run is over.

Most importantly, you have the thrill of knowing, in the end, you've done something pretty worthwhile. You've been a part of something pretty special.

And when you're training for a marathon, the actual marathon is, you know, kind of a big deal: The proverbial carrot at the end of the stick, the fresh-baked donut after a six-hour hike on Pikes Peak. In my little catalog of running/faith metaphors, finishing a marathon would be, I suppose, akin to getting to heaven--the shiny medal being the equivalent of God telling you, "Well done, good and faithful servant."(Only when we reach heaven, I hope we won't be quite as sweaty and achey.)

I was not really prepared to figure out a metaphor for forgetting one's shoes. But maybe I should've. After all, I'm sure she's not the first. Unexpected things happen to lots of runners. I know one runner who tripped during a marathon and knocked out a couple of teeth--and still managed to finish. I knew another who started bleeding from his nipples. (Yeah, remember that Vaseline? Important stuff.)

Maybe the lesson here is that, sometimes when things go a little crazy--either through your fault or just by happenstance--we've got to lean on God. There's nothing more we can do. We've put in the time and effort and energy. But in the end, success or failure is out of our hands. We must sit back, enjoy the experience and let God do His thing.

Those moments can be liberating, in a way. We cling so tightly to our own agendas and place so much trust in our own plans. it's a strangely great feeling to unclench our hands and open them to the heavens, ready to catch what we may.

When I heard Emily left her shoes, what I said was, "Oh." Perhaps that translates to, "Thy will be done."

The story has a happy ending, by the way. Emily's substitute shoes carried her through all 26.2 miles. She ran almost the entire way. And while her feet were hurting by the end, they didn't hurt nearly as much as I feared. Be it by God's grace or the wonderful resiliency of 19-year-old feet or a combination of both, Em made it to the finish line and accepted her well-earned medal. If I hadn't been so tired myself, I would've hoisted her over my head in celebration.

The finish line didn't look anything like heaven for either of us. But for her, two words seemed quite appropriate: Well done.

Running on Faith: Terror

I thought about the runners in Boston this morning.

Long before I heard about exploding bombs or injuries or death, I thought about the people running today—the 27,000 people fast enough and disciplined enough to qualify for the United States’ most prestigious race.

It’s a big deal to run in the Boston Marathon—out of reach for a plodder like me. Those who were finishing up when the bomb went off were slower, by Boston’s lofty standards: For many of them, merely lining up at the start would’ve been the pinnacle of their running careers. To finish—well, after being on their feet for more than 26 miles, the elation (weary as they might’ve been) would’ve gone beyond description.

And then for some, it was all torn away.

I’ve written about my marathon training a time or two on this blog—drawing a few tenuous parallels between running and a life of faith. Both require discipline. Both can be incredibly hard and even painful. But both offer rewards, both tangible and transcendent.

But I didn’t think that a marathon would run headlong into that sort of unexplainable horror we sometimes suffer in life—the kind of cataclysm that can make some question the mercy of God.

“Where was God?” Goes the question. “Where was He in …” and then the blank is filled with pain. In Aurora? In Sandy Hook? In Boston?

If you’re Christian, it’s a hard question to answer. If God is who He says He is, then He was there—there in some capacity. But why, then, did He seem to do nothing? And there’s no answer, none at all, that can satisfy.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,” Paul writes in Romans 8:28. And yet he died at the hands of a Roman executioner.

“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care,” Jesus says in Matthew 10:29. And yet the blood of Jesus fell to the ground as He was crucified.

But then, I think to the prayer that same Jesus taught us to pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, you kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

That line suggests, to me, that God’s will is not always done here on earth. Sometimes, people with evil in their hearts and weapons in their hands get in the way. We were given free will—to love and obey or go our own way. And sometimes, we use that will badly.

We don’t have to like all that happens in this world. We should hate it, in fact. That free will, so destructive at times, is the very thing that can spur us on to correct and curb such destruction. We can pursue evil. We can care for the wounded. We can be the hands and feet of God.

“If you are losing faith in human nature today, watch what happens in the aftermath of an attack on the Boston Marathon,” writes The New York Times’ Ezra Klein. “The flood of donations crashed the Red Cross’s Web site. The organization tweeted that its blood supplies are already full. People are lining up outside of Tufts Medical Center to try and help. Runners are already vowing to be at marathons in the coming weeks and months. This won’t be the last time the squeakers run Boston. This won’t be the last time we gather at the finish line to marvel how much more we can take than anyone ever thought possible.”

Distance running is, in some ways, an exercise in dealing with pain. It requires those who participate to push through fatigue and hurt and boredom. Yes, the tragedy in Boston makes those standard-issue running trials feel pretty lame. And yet, the principles are still in place: When it seems outlandish to imagine going on, we do.

And so it is with faith sometimes. Sometimes, God’s will is not done on earth. Sometimes, evil walks with us. Runs with us. It hurts us and threatens to break us—and at the most heartbreaking times. And yet we go on. We go on.

A few hours after I heard the news, I drove to the local Y. I laced up my shoes, the soles still crusted with dust and mud from the previous weekend’s long run. I filled up my water bottle, flipped on my iPod and listened to Philip Yancey’s book, Prayer.

And then I began to run. I’ve got a marathon to do in a month. And I plan to do it.

Running on Faith: Aches and Pains

My daughter and I are now in the teeth of our marathon training—the point in time where we start talking about blister mitigation, tote our CamelBaks around and wonder whether we should bring snacks. (I'd like to take nachos, but they'd be a bit messy.)

It's also when I figured we'd be faced with a decision: Would we be able to continue?

Emily's always liked running—more than me, truth be told—and she's already run a couple of 13-plus-mile half marathons. But lately, she’s been struggling with one of her knees. 

Note the girl only has two of them, and both are fairly critical to running 26 miles. And while we weren't worried about her doing any real structural damage to the joint—her doctor said the area around it was just sorta "irritated" and "inflamed" (like me during rush hour)—I didn't want her suffering during our runs. Or, at least, not yet. Let’s face it: Most marathoners deal with some aches and pains when they run, but I didn't want my daughter to be miserable before her time. And on some of our longer runs, Emily’s been running a little like a well-conditioned Quasimodo.

But now, it seems as though her knee’s getting better—thanks in part to Em stretching the thing out whenever possible. She takes ibuprofen the second we head out to cut down on swelling. When I take one of my (frequent) bathroom breaks, she keeps the knee moving so it won’t stiffen up.

And, as I said, it seems to be paying off. We cruised through a 12-mile run without Quasimodo showing up for more than a half a mile of it. It’s feeling better, she says—and her left leg (the one without the injured knee) didn’t get nearly as tired as it sometimes gets, which means her right leg must be working a little bit harder.

Part of long-distance running, I think, is figuring out how to handle a bit of pain. We deal with the aches that come with running 26 miles—from stinging feet and aching backs to blisters and chafing. You learn to listen to your body: Is it screaming or just merely whining? Sometimes, your body absolutely tells you you should stop—before you do some serious long-term damage. But sometimes, like Emily’s knee, it’s just grouchy. It’s tired of putting up with all those miles, and understandably so. But if you can persevere and push through, your body sometimes decides to stop grousing and chip in a little more.

In our lives and our journeys of faith, we experience pain, too. Sometimes, the pain can be the product of really serious stuff: Loss. Heartbreak. Sickness. A crisis in the family or at work. When we suffer pain like this, we can’t go on as if nothing had happened. We’ve got to stop. We’ve got to heal.

But sometimes, the pain can be just part of life—irritants from a broken world that get into our joints and make it hard to push on.

I think that pain manifests itself a little differently for each of us, and it can come from loads of different places. We grow frustrated, disenfranchised. When it comes to spirituality, we lose sight of Christ and focus instead on all the fallible Christians and the imperfect trappings of Christianity. We get mad at our pastor or struggle with hypocrisy (be it ours or someone else’s). We grow intolerant at our own apparent inadequacies or bridle under its restrictions. Somewhere along the line, many of us Christians find that being Christian just hurts sometimes. And it’s tempting to just stop … because we hate the pain and we understand that that hurt won’t just go away. It’ll be with us, at some level, with every step.

But if we persevere, we find we can manage it. Just understanding the pain is bound to be there, actually, goes a long way toward accepting it. We stretch—not our knees, but our brains and our souls. The more limber they are, the more effectively we can sort through our issues intellectually—and more generous our souls can be with the shortfalls we see. 

This is the unsexy part of faith—the work of the thing. We can talk all we want about our relationship with God, but we sometimes conveniently forget that successful relationships take work. And that sometimes, through no fault of God’s, they can be painful.

And yet, we know it’s worth it. It’s worth the work, worth pushing through pain. It’s better to go forward than move back. Because in the end, we’ll see the object of all of our hard work … and it’ll all be worth it.