and know
In the new, pink light, Kevin and I set out on a run, past trees covered in bridal blossoms like lace trailing down, limbs cupping silken petals in shades of plum, and bushes tossing lemon-yellow blooms on the ground in front of them. It’s early yet, and Spring has sprung.
I can tuck my head and buckle down to get it done and check the box on the paper planner splayed out on my desk—that is, of course, what I set out to do in the first place, but this morning, it feels as though the hand of God gently lifts my chin, reminding me that I can rest while I run my race.
Be still.
It’s such an odd thing for the Spirit to say while I am running down the street, and yet, that’s my overwhelming impression of His desire for me. Beneath my feet, the light intermittently catches on flecks of mica and the asphalt winks.
“It’s beautiful,” I say to Kevin as we begin to climb a patient hill, patient in the languid way it stretches up, like a long arm slowly reaching. “Everything is blooming.”
He nods, and I lean into the run, thinking that patience feels so much less noble as longsuffering.
Before I reach the crest, a sharp, stinging pain seizes my right shoulder and the top of my spine begins to throb. The arresting sensation helps me understand: I am running in the way I often work, pushing forward with a force of will that originates in my mind and travels down my neck and across my shoulders, as though somehow it will be my clenched fists and taut shoulders that propel me forward.
Today I run not with my legs, even though my legs move up the hill like two efficient, muscled pistons, trained to manage the exertion, and I run not with my lungs, although they seem unharried by their critical function, and I run not with my heart, although it vigorously pumps impetus into everything. No. Instead, I run with parts of me benign to the work of the hill, and that’s why my body screams in pain. Bad form, that’s what they call this, and no matter how hard my fingernails cut into my palms, I’ll not make it to the top of this hill any faster.
Be still.
I lift my eyes to the saturated sky, commanding my shoulders to rest, focusing on the persistent, powerful movement of my legs, on the fullness of my lungs as I inhale. Gradually, the self-destruction stops and the pain slides away, and I begin to think about how often I misplace the source of my strength.
I have struggled to understand how being still with the knowledge that He is God and running the race marked out for me can happen at the same time, how I can receive the rest Christ promised to give me while also bearing a yoke. He seems intent on one point in this conversation, that my living and moving happen as a function of His will instead of my own. So, if I fix my heart on His ongoing work, if I let His movement propel me, I need only be still. All through scripture, God keeps saying this. Be still. I will fight for you.
I know that He’s God and that I’m definitely not, that’s what’s on my mind as I reach the top of the hill gasping over the beauty of those lacey trees standing plump against a vibrant sky, over the wild color now sprinkled over the world like confetti.
I equate knowing this truth He keeps repeating with accepting it as a fact, but Biblical writers, coming as they did from a different culture, meant something different. Their word know assumes an understanding through intimate experience. They didn’t just know the truth with their minds; they lived it in their bodies, felt it in their souls. They held it in their hands, tasted it with their mouths, beheld it with worshipful eyes. The Bible uses the same word to describe the intimacy between a husband and wife. That kind of knowing doesn’t just sit in a mind, it moves a body. That kind of knowing changes a heart, and so it is that true knowledge, knowledge in the Biblical sense, that He is God, stills the human soul and focuses the human mind on His power and strength. And so, He will be exalted. As He does His continual work, His gift to me is rest as I trust in His persistent effort.
What way is there to know Him so intimately except to give myself over to Him again and again?
It will be this way for a long time, I see that.
This morning before Kevin and I set out on our run, I read a passage in the book of Numbers, my fingers stopping their travel at these sharp words, “…remember all the commandments of the LORD, to do them, not to follow after your own heart and your own eyes, which you are inclined to whore after.” He says that relying on myself will only lead me to break our union and prostitute myself. I can make light of self-reliance, as though that’s not exactly the same thing as following after my own heart and eyes.
We turn down another street, and I am thinking about Hosea, who married a prostitute at God’s command, who kept taking her back, because that’s what God does too.
Be still.
With a love like that, how could I not try?
Repeatedly, I will run my race with bad form. I will forget all this as though it’s been erased from my mind (Paul called it forgetting what I look like), and once again, I will misplace the source of my strength. I will clench my fists and tense my rising shoulders, striving in my own weakness until I feel that same pain in my shoulders, warning me sharp. And I will listen as He urges again, be still, because He cares for me, and as He gently lifts my chin and tells me to behold behold behold, I will begin again, looking for His beauty in everything.
We will go on this way, in love for years, until finally one day running a hill will feel not like running at all, but only letting Him carry me along in His arms.
